Woman's Profession as Mother and Educator, with Views in Opposition to Woman Suffrage

by Catharine Esther Beecher

Although the plan aimed at is large, this Association commenced with only a small portion. At Milwaukee, where is their first institution, a school already organized was taken as the nucleus. The citizens were to furnish land, and building, and pupils enough to support by tuition fees a given number of teachers. On these conditions the Association agreed to provide endowments to support a certain number of teachers, so long as the plan of

the Association was carried out, but if it was relinquished, to remove their patronage to another place. The Lady Agent of the Association is still at the head of this Institution, which has prospered on this plan for more than fifteen years, the Association supporting by their funds a portion of the teachers.

In my former address in this place, I showed how in this and other cities, the more wealthy, and best educated classes, and those who pay the most taxes for public education, provide for their own daughters inferior advantages to those given to the humblest poor. Our own High School in this city compared with this Seminary and all private schools, will illustrate this remarkable fact.

For our High School has a building healthfully and thoroughly warmed and ventilated, as can be said of neither this Seminary, nor any private school of this city; while its apparatus and library are superior to any except those of the College, and the Theological School, to which no girls have access. By reason of subordinate graded schools, only well prepared pupils are admitted, or this is the rule which can be enforced; while all scholars must enter

at regular periods. Thus, only four classes are formed and only a small number of studies are pursued at any one time. The teachers are thus allowed time to prepare themselves, and other great advantages for instructing, while their salaries are much higher than can be given to assistant teachers in most private schools. Thus the best class of teachers are tempted to forsake private schools for these superior advantages.

In contrast to these advantages, although this Seminary is warmed and ventilated as well as most private schools, it is necessary to employ much of the time of an intelligent and careful teacher to keep the rooms at proper temperature, well ventilated and free from poisonous gases, and yet with but imperfect success.

Then the pupils enter this and all private schools, at any time and at all grades of advancement, making it necessary to multiply classes and to tax the teachers in order to bring forward the new comers to certain classes. The method of arranging certain studies at one time of the year, and others only at other times, as in colleges and our public

high schools, often cannot be enforced without dissatisfying patrons, and thus lessening income. Then the accomplishments, especially Piano music, to which classes must conform, greatly increases the difficulty of classification in this and in all private schools.

The result usually is, a most inferior, desultory, and unsatisfactory course of education. There are cases where by overworking poorly paid assistant teachers, and by small profits to proprietors, some private schools turn out as fine scholars as our best managed High schools. But these are exceptions, and exceptions that bear very severely on the subordinate women teachers.

Thus comes to pass the remarkable fact that the most wealthy and cultivated pay the largest taxes to furnish the poorer classes a gratuitous and a better education than they gain for their own daughters by paying the largest tuition fees, or at expensive boarding schools.