Woman's work in America

by Unknown

As girls have gained successive opportunities for advanced study, the aim of the opponents has always been to keep those only analogous to, not identical with, those of boys. They have, therefore, been steadily weighted with limiting conditions, as the educational history of Boston serves to illustrate.

We have seen that the experimental high school of 1825 was, in its feebleness, hampered by, if, indeed, it was not founded for the trial of the monitorial system, and was moribund from its inception.

When, a quarter of a century later, the demand for better education for girls again took form, those most active thought it discreet to avoid the controversy of the past, and, as a more feasible measure, a Normal School for teachers was projected, and was established in 1852.

It was soon found that girls fresh from the grammar schools were not fit candidates for normal training. To remedy this difficulty a few additional branches of study were introduced, a slight alteration made in the arrangement of the course, and the name changed to the Girls’ High and Normal School. Under this name it continued until 1872, when it was found that the normal element had been absorbed by the high school, and had almost lost its independent, distinctive, and professional character. The two courses were then separated and the normal department was restored to its original condition, for the instruction of young women who intended to become teachers in Boston.

Boston had now, at length, a school for girls, devoted, like that for boys, to general culture, though still without opportunity for full classical training, such as had been freely offered Boston boys for almost two and a half centuries. But to taste intellectually, as well as physically, is to stimulate appetite.

In 1877 a society of 200 thoughtful and influential women, incorporated as the “Massachusetts Society for the University Education of Women,” supported by men of equal dignity, and prominently associated with educational and kindred movements, petitioned the school committee “that a course of classical instruction may be offered to girls in the Boston Latin School, as is now offered to boys.”

This petition was reinforced by a similar one from the “Woman’s Educational Association,” which, later, instigated and supported the Harvard examination for women. The trustees of “Boston University” officially memorialized the school board in the same interest.

The claim was urged by distinguished divines, physicians, educators, presidents of colleges, a founder of a college, statesmen, and by mothers of girls. They argued a public advantage, a public demand, and a public right. They showed that almost every prominent city and town in the State gave to girls in its public high school,—which was usually co-educational,—a chance to fit for college; while the towns that had been annexed to Boston,—Charlestown, Dorchester, Brighton, and West Roxbury, had thereby lost such advantage, which their girls had previously enjoyed. The presidents of co-educational and female colleges testified that while no Boston high school girl was prepared to enter their institutions, they were receiving well-prepared young women from the more liberal West.

The ladies petitioning, called attention to the fact that the colonial law of 1647 required every township of 100 families “to provide for the instruction of youth so far as to fit them for the University,” and that in Massachusetts, from that time, there never has been a law passed concerning any public school which has authorized instruction to one sex not equally open to the other; that nowhere does the word “male” or “boy” occur, but always “children” or “youth.”

It appeared that one young woman, daughter of a master, had pursued a three years’ course of study in the Latin School, sitting and reciting with the other pupils, and winning the highest esteem for modesty and ability. From this course she had graduated with so solid a foundation of scholarship that at the age of twenty-two she had received the title of “Doctor of Philosophy” from “Boston University,” and was the first woman in this country to take such a degree.