Education of Women

This Monograph is contributed to the United States Educational Exhibit by the State of New York

J. B. LYON COMPANY

1899

The higher education of women in America is taking place before our eyes on a vast scale and in a variety of ways. Every phase of this great experiment, if experiment we choose to call it, may be studied almost simultaneously. Women are taking advantage of all the various kinds of education offered them in great and ever-increasing numbers, and the period of thirty years, or thereabouts, that has elapsed since the beginning of the movement is sufficient to authorize us in drawing certain definite conclusions. The higher education of women naturally divides itself into college education designed primarily to train the mental faculties by means of a liberal education, and only secondarily, to equip the student for self-support, and professional or special education, directed primarily toward one of the money-making occupations.

COLLEGE EDUCATION

Women’s college education is carried on in three different classes of institutions: coeducational colleges, independent women’s colleges and women’s colleges connected more or less closely with some one of the colleges for men.

1. Coeducation—Coeducation is the prevailing system of college education in the United States for both men and women. In the western states and territories it is almost the only system of education, and it is rapidly becoming the prevailing system in the south, where the influence of the state universities is predominant. On the other hand, in the New England and middle states the great majority of the youth of both sexes are still receiving a separate college education. Coeducation was introduced into colleges in the west as a logical consequence of the so-called American system of free elementary and secondary schools. During the great school revival of 1830–45 and the ensuing years until the outbreak of the civil war in 1861, free elementary and secondary schools were established throughout New England and the middle states and such western states as existed in those days. It was a fortunate circumstance for girls that the country was at that time sparsely settled; in most neighborhoods it was so difficult to establish and secure pupils for even one grammar school and one high school that girls were admitted from the first to both [^[1]]. In the reorganization of lower and higher education that took place between 1865 and 1870 this same system, bringing with it the complete coeducation of the sexes, was introduced throughout the south both for whites and negroes, and was extended to every part of the west. In no part of the country, except in a few large eastern cities, was any distinction made in elementary or secondary education between boys and girls [^[2]]. The second fortunate and in like manner almost accidental factor in the education of American women was the occurrence of the civil war at the formative period of the public schools, with the result of placing the elementary and secondary education of both boys and girls overwhelmingly in the hands of women teachers. In no other country of the world has this ever been the case, and its influence upon women’s education has been very great. The five years of the civil war, which drained all the northern and western states of men, caused women teachers to be employed in the public and private schools in large numbers, and in the first reports of the national bureau of education, organized after the war, we see that there were already fewer men than women teaching in the public schools of the United States. This result proved not to be temporary, but permanent, and from 1865 until the present time not only the elementary teaching of boys and girls but the secondary education of both has been increasingly in the hands of women [^[3]]. When most of the state universities of the west were founded they were in reality scarcely more than secondary schools supplemented, in most cases, by large preparatory departments. Girls were already being educated with boys in all the high schools of the west, and not to admit them to the state universities would have been to break with tradition. Women were also firmly established as teachers in the secondary schools and it was patent to all thoughtful men that they must be given opportunities for higher education, if only for the sake of the secondary education of the boys of the country.[^[4]] The development of women’s education in the east has followed a different course because there were in the east no state universities, and the private colleges for men had been founded before women were suffered to become either pupils or teachers in schools. The admission of women to the existing eastern colleges was, therefore, as much an innovation as it would have been in Europe. The coeducation of men and women in colleges, and at the same time the college education of women, began in Ohio, the earliest settled of the western states. In 1833 Oberlin collegiate institute (not chartered as a college until 1850) was opened, admitting from the first both men and women. Oberlin was at that time, and is now, hampered by maintaining a secondary school as large as its college department, but it was the first institution for collegiate instruction in the United States where large numbers of men and women were educated together, and the uniformly favorable testimony of its faculty had great influence on the side of coeducation. In 1853 Antioch college, also in Ohio, was opened, and admitted from the beginning men and women on equal terms. Its first president, Horace Mann, was one of the most brilliant and energetic educational leaders in the United States, and his ardent advocacy of coeducation, based on his own practical experience, had great weight with the public.[^[5]] From this time on it became a custom, as state universities were opened in the far west, to admit women. Utah, opened in 1850, Iowa, opened in 1856, Washington, opened in 1862, Kansas, opened in 1866, Minnesota, opened in 1868, and Nebraska, opened in 1871, were coeducational from the outset. Indiana, opened as early as 1820, admitted women in 1868. The state University of Michigan was, at this time, the most important western university, and the only western university well known in the east before the war. When, in 1870, it opened its doors to women, they were for the first time in America admitted to instruction of true college grade. The step was taken in response to public sentiment, as shown by two requests of the state legislature, against the will of the faculty as a whole. The example of the University of Michigan was quickly followed by all the other state universities of the west. In the same year women were allowed to enter the state universities of Illinois and California; in 1873 the only remaining state university closed to women, that of Ohio, admitted them. Wisconsin which, since 1860, had given some instruction to women, became in 1874 unreservedly coeducational. All the state universities of the west, organized since 1871, have admitted women from the first. In the twenty states which, for convenience, I shall classify as western, there are now twenty state universities open to women, and, in four territories, Arizona, Oklahoma, Indiana and New Mexico, the one university of each territory is open to women. Of the eleven state universities of the southern states the two most western admitted women first, as was to be expected. Missouri became coeducational as early as 1870, and the University of Texas was opened in 1883 as a coeducational institution. Mississippi admitted women in 1882, Kentucky in 1889, Alabama in 1893, South Carolina in 1894, North Carolina in 1897, but only to women prepared to enter the junior and senior years, West Virginia in 1897.[^[6]] The state universities of Virginia, Georgia and Louisiana are still closed. The one state university existing outside the west and south, that of Maine, admitted women in 1872.