Women were not only received as students at Antioch, but also, in the beginning, were included in the faculty. These facts, especially the latter, excited marked attention, and, notwithstanding the disasters which interrupted the work of Antioch, and the poverty which has kept it a small college, the fame of Horace Mann, inseparably connected with its history, has made its influence in behalf of co-education potent.
OPENING WEDGES.
The conditions of pioneer life are favorable to co-education. The exigencies incident to life in a new country destroy certain barriers between men and women which are fixed in old and settled communities. The women in a pioneer settlement not infrequently join in labors in which, under more settled conditions, they would never be called to participate. Many women in the West have assisted their husbands and fathers in the field, the office, and the shop, simply because hired male labor was unattainable. On the other hand, men in pioneer homes assist their wives in household labors, because domestic help cannot be found. In the organization of churches, schools, and Sunday-schools, the sparseness of the population compels men to divide the work with women. Thus, without intention on the part of either men or women, they become used to working together in many unaccustomed ways; and the idea of going to college together does not seem so unnatural as in older communities, where traditions of long standing have separated men and women in their occupations.
The almost universal connection of preparatory departments with colleges in the West is properly deplored; but the “preparatory” has been a stepping-stone to co-education. In their origin the Western colleges found it necessary to maintain preparatory schools in order to obtain any college classes. This is illustrated by the experience of Antioch. Out of 150 students who applied for admission to that college in 1853, but 8 were able to pass the examinations for admission to the freshman class, meager as were the requirements. These 8 included men and women, married and single. The older colleges in this new country have a similar chapter in their history. There were few high schools, and the course of study of those was narrow. To have students, each college was compelled to prepare them. The preparatory department in a college town did the work of the present high school; it was very natural that the residents of those towns should desire to send both their sons and daughters to the “preparatory,” which was usually, perhaps always, the best school accessible to them. This desire, however, gave no forecast of a desire to send both to the college later on. Sometimes the “preparatory” was not provided with a separate building, but its work was done in some room or rooms of the college building proper. The preparatory course finished, some bright girl would wish to go forward with her class into college work; she could not enter the class formally, but “if the professor was willing” she could attend lectures in this or the other subject; in many college towns there are middle-aged and elderly women who, as young girls, with the tacit consent of parents and college instructors, thus obtained the larger part of a college education. They had no formal recognition from any one; their names appeared in no catalogues, but they acquired substantial benefits. The present permitted but unacknowledged presence of women at Leipzig and other universities on the Continent, was thus antedated in the West.
Occasionally one of these students, spurred by what she considered the demands of her self-respect, made formal application for regular admission to the college; and not a few of our Western colleges became co-educational by these natural, easy, and noiseless approaches.
The manner in which the desire of one woman for a college education has transformed a men’s into a co-educational college, is illustrated in the history of the State University of Indiana. Miss Sarah P. Morrison wished to enter college, and began agitating the question of opening the State University to women. Mr. Isaac Jenkinson of Richmond, Ind., tells the whole pregnant story thus briefly. He writes me:
“I was a member of the board of trustees in 1866, when Miss Morrison’s appeal was made to the trustees. (Miss Morrison had for several years been agitating the question among her friends.) I at once offered a resolution admitting young women on equal terms with young men, but I had no support whatever in the board at that time; at a following session the same year, my resolution was adopted by a vote of 4 in favor, to 3 against it.”
Many colleges in the West had from the beginning a “female course” much like the “ladies’ course” at Oberlin. This course was, like the preparatory department, a way of approach for the more ambitious. The story of one is, with a change of names, the story of many such colleges. The following from “A Report on the Position of Women in Industries and Education in the State of Indiana,”[[12]] illustrates the function of the “ladies course” in facilitating co-education.
“Butler University at Irvington, Ind., founded in 1855, admitted women as students from the outset, but at first only into what was denominated its female course. In its laudable endeavor to adapt its requirements to an intermediate class of beings, the university, in its ‘female course’ substituted music for mathematics and French for Greek. Few young women availed themselves of this ‘course’ and it was utterly repudiated by Demia Butler, a daughter of Ovid Butler, the founder of the university, and a gentleman of most enlightened views concerning woman’s place in life. Miss Butler, upon her own petition, indorsed by her father, entered the university in 1858, and graduated from what was then known as the ‘male course’ in 1862. From that time the ‘female course’ became less popular, and in 1864 was formally discontinued.”
The normal class was another of the steps toward co-education. In the middle of this century it was not uncommon for special short terms of instruction for teachers to be held during the fall or spring vacations of the common schools. To secure the advantage of good lecture rooms and appliances, and also to secure the aid of distinguished professors, the State Superintendent of Public Instruction would obtain permission to hold his normal class at the State university; or for similar reasons a county Superintendent would hold such a school for the teachers within his jurisdiction, in a college town. In these “normal schools,” having no formal or permanent relation with the college at which they were held, one sees the origin in many colleges of their present “departments of the theory and practice of elementary instruction.”