“The general participation of all the people in the primary political functions of election, together with the almost complete localization of self-government by local administration, renders necessary the education of all, without distinction of sex, social rank, wealth, or natural abilities.” Farther: “The national government and the State government regard education as a proper subject for legislation, on the ground of the necessity of educated intelligence among a people that is to furnish law-abiding citizens, well versed in the laws they are to obey, and likewise law-making citizens, well versed in the social, historic, and political conditions which give occasion to new laws and shape their provisions.”
These statements are in perfect accord with the following words of Washington, quoted from his “Farewell Address to the American People”: “In proportion as the structure of a government gives force to public opinion, it is essential that public opinion should be enlightened.”
Here is the whole argument for the existence of State universities. In the West, these are destined to be the strongest, richest, and best equipped institutions for the higher learning; and are likewise clearly destined to have a determining influence upon the policy of other colleges in respect to co-education.
The “West” remains an indefinite term; and in that part of it which the word accurately describes, a people will be born who know nothing of distinctions in opportunity between men and women.
A people reared under such conditions will ultimately exhibit the influence of the “Higher Education of Women in the West.”
IV.
THE EDUCATION OF WOMAN IN THE SOUTHERN STATES.
BY
CHRISTINE LADD FRANKLIN.
The education of women in the South has suffered from the same cause which has kept back the education of women all over the world. Woman was looked upon as merely an adjunct to the real human being, man, and it was not considered desirable to give her any other education than what sufficed to make her a good housewife and an agreeable, but not too critical, companion for her husband. When Dr. Pierce traveled through Georgia, in 1836–37, to collect funds for establishing the Georgia Female College, he was met by such blunt refusals as these, from gentlemen of large means and liberal views as to the education of their sons: “No, I will not give you a dollar; all that a woman needs to know is how to read the New Testament, and to spin and weave clothing for her family”; “I would not have one of your graduates for a wife, and I will not give you a cent for any such object.” In an address delivered before the graduating class of the Greenboro Female College of North Carolina in 1856, the speaker said: “I would have you shun the one [too little learning] as the plague, and the other [too much] as the leprosy; I would have you intelligent, useful women ... yet never evincing a consciousness of superiority, never playing Sir Oracle, never showing that you supposed yourself born for any other destiny than to be a ‘helpmeet for man.’” An intelligent lady who was educated in the best schools in Richmond, just before the war, writes me: “If the principal of the school to which I went had any high views, or any views at all, about the education of women, I never heard her express them; and I fancy that, consciously or unconsciously, her object was to make the girls under her care charming women as far as possible, sufficiently well read to be responsive and appreciative companions to men.” And this view of the matter has not yet entirely disappeared, for, in the catalogue for 1889 of the Norfolk College for Young Ladies, the aims of the school are said to be molded in accordance with the principle that “a woman’s province in life is to throw herself heartily into the pursuits of others rather than to have pursuits of her own.” It is plain that so long as this view of the function of women prevails they will have little incentive and little opportunity for undertaking the severe labors which are the necessary condition of a solid education. The lighter graces which are supposed to result from a little training in French and music and from some study of English literature, have for a long time been accessible to Southern girls, both in schools of their own and in the numerous private and fashionable schools of Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York. When a girl was a member of a thoroughly cultivated family, she naturally became a cultivated woman; there was usually a tutor for her brothers, whose instruction she was allowed to share (the mother of Chancellor Wythe of Virginia taught her son Greek); and there was usually, either in her own house or in the parsonage, a large and carefully selected library of English books. If by the right kind of family influence a girl has been thoroughly penetrated with a love of books, something has been done for her which, of course, the regular means of education often fail to produce. The women of New Orleans, and Charleston, and Richmond were often cultivated women in the best sense of the word, but of the higher education, as the modern woman understands it, very little has hitherto existed in the Southern States.
In a long and exhaustive paper on “Colonial Education in South Carolina,”[[14]] by Edward McCrady, Jr., absolutely the only mention made of women is in the following sentences: “An education they prized beyond all price in their leaders and teachers, and craved its possession for their husbands and brothers and sons,” and, “These mothers gloried in the knowledge ... of their husbands and children, and would forego comforts and endure toil that their sons might be well instructed, enterprising men.”[[15]] But in this respect South Carolina was not behind Massachusetts. The public schools of Boston, established in 1642, were not open to girls until 1789, and then only to teach them spelling, reading, and composition for one half the year. The Boston High School for girls was only opened in 1852.[[16]]