Woman's work in America

by Unknown

The extent to which the higher education of women is in the West identified with co-education, can be seen by comparing the two statements above given. Of the total 212 higher institutions receiving women, and of the total 195 such institutions which confer the regular degrees in arts, science, and letters, upon their graduates, 165 are co-educational. Almost necessarily, therefore, the most important discussion in this article will be that of co-education.

Before approaching it, however, some space must be devoted to women’s colleges in the West. Almost without exception they include preparatory departments; very generally the attendance in the preparatory department exceeds that in the collegiate; frequently members of the faculty divide their attention between preparatory and collegiate classes; generally the courses of study offered are less numerous and less complete than those offered in colleges of liberal arts for men; most of these institutions have paltry or no endowments.

With all these limitations, some of them do much creditable work; but, at present, they occupy a rather vague, indefinite position between “the ladies’ seminary” of thirty years ago and the modern college. Quoting from the United States Commissioner of Education (Report for 1887–88): “The adjustment of studies is evidence of a double purpose in these institutions. On the one hand they have endeavored to meet the general demand with respect to woman’s education. On the other they have sought to maintain that higher ideal which would appropriate for women as well as for men the advantages of the kind of instruction and training approved, by wise effort and long experience, as the best for mental discipline and culture.”

A double purpose, when its parts are, as in this instance, to a degree contradictory, imposes impossible tasks. A process of sifting is now going on among these institutions. Some of the weaker will doubtless be absorbed by stronger ones having the same denominational support. Some, whose strength is chiefly in their preparatory departments, will find their ultimate place in the lists of secondary schools; and, ceasing to compete with colleges, will do an important and much needed work in preparing students to enter college. Others, already strongest in their collegiate departments, pledged by a noble past to achieve a corresponding future, will persist in emphasizing their real collegiate side until at last they secure an absolute separation between their preparatory and their collegiate work, and can take rank with genuine colleges of liberal arts.

In this sketch it is impossible to give the history of all these institutions; but among colleges characterized from birth by a liberal and progressive spirit may be mentioned “The Cincinnati Wesleyan Woman’s College.” This institution was chartered in 1842, and claims to be “the first liberal collegiate institution in the world for the exclusive education of women.” This claim sounds somewhat boastful, but a perusal of the discussions which were called forth by the establishment of this college, will convince one that its undertaking was novel and quite foreign to the thought of its public, if not, indeed, quite unprecedented in the world’s history. Dr. Charles Eliot, the editor of the Western Christian Advocate, heroically defended the project against the attacks of both the secular and the religious press. Rev. P. B. Wilber was elected president, and his wife, Mary Cole Wilber, was made principal.

The broad claim made by these enthusiastic educators was “that women need equal culture of mind and heart with men, in their homes, in the church, and in the state.” The enterprise was accused of “being counter to delicacy and to custom, as it was to orthodoxy.” Mrs. Wilber, who is still living (in 1890), writes that those who had upheld the college “were convinced that a higher intellectual and moral education for women was indispensable to the continued prosperity and existence of civilization, especially under our form of government. They believed it would be a powerful influence for good in the home, in social life, and in all benevolences and philanthropies. They believed in the elevation of women through education, which is development; through labor, which is salvation; and through legal rights, which should give freedom to serve and to save.” These sentiments do not seem antiquated in 1890, and must have seemed not merely advanced but dangerous in 1842.

Violations of precedent continued to keep the watchful eye of the public on the college. The college professed to give to women the same instruction which secured for young men the degree of A.B., and it obtained from the Legislature authority “to confer the degrees of A.B. and B.S.” The college held public commencement exercises, at which the graduates read their own productions, a performance that was the occasion of much scandal.

September 25, 1844, “The Young Ladies’ Lyceum” was organized in the college. This was a literary society, at the meetings of which debates upon current public questions were conducted and essays were read. Cuttings from contemporary newspapers show that this lyceum created no small stir.

In 1852 the graduates of the college organized an alumnæ association, which is claimed to be the first organization of the kind in this country. The preamble to the constitution adopted by this body begins thus:

“The undersigned, graduates of the Wesleyan Female College of Cincinnati, believing that as educated American women, society and the world at large have peculiar claims upon them, which they can neither gainsay nor resist,” etc.