“Until I began here in 1880, the thought of arresting the graduation of a girl was not entertained. If she went through the curriculum without preliminary tests or without any intermediate or final examinations, the diploma followed as a matter of implied contract. Pupils were received to be graduated within a specified time. This sounds incredible, I know, and yet I have the best proof of the fact. When I announced that no pupil would be graduated in my institution without sufficient tests of her scholarship, it was freely predicted that such an innovation would destroy the patronage of the school. I am glad to say that the vaticination was false, but I allude to the facts to throw light upon the status among us.”
THE OTHER FEMALE COLLEGES.
The schools for women which are of a higher grade than the ordinary high school, but not so high as the college, the Bureau of Education classifies under the head of Superior Instruction. It will be seen from Appendix C, Table III., that the State of Kentucky has nineteen of these female colleges, and that six of the Southern States have an average of fourteen each. They are of all possible degrees of excellence. Such schools as the Hollins Institute and the Norfolk College for Young Ladies in Virginia, and Caldwell College at Danville, Ky., have every mark of being thoroughly good schools. The difficulty with nearly all these schools is, of course, that they are private and money-making enterprises, and do not care to incur large expenses for teachers or for the proper appliances for instruction, nor to make the course of study so rigid as to drive away pupils. It is remarkable to see how soon the character of the course, and especially the character of the text-books, is changed as soon as the majority of the teachers are graduates of Northern colleges. On the other hand, it is the lack of intelligence and care on the part of parents that permits the poorest of these schools to continue to exist. If the worst half of these schools could be starved out of existence, and if their patronage could be transferred to the better half, the quality of the instruction which women receive in the South would be completely changed. It is a duty which parents owe to the public, no less than to their daughters, to discriminate carefully against the thoroughly worthless schools.[[28]]
In one of these so-called colleges no foreign language is taught; in another, the senior class takes a whole year to complete plane geometry; in very many of them Steele’s text-books in the sciences are used. In the Chickasaw Female College, Latin is optional, no other language and very little mathematics is taught, and the president says: “An experience of very many years proves to me that this course is not too far extended.” In many of these small colleges the subjects of study constitute separate schools, following the plan of the University of Virginia. In the Marion Female Seminary, “the schools being distinct, the student may become a candidate for graduation in one or all of them at once.” There are sometimes thirteen distinct schools; in the Huntsville Female Seminary there are ten, all carried out, as far as appears from the catalogue, by a single instructor, the president.
The rules and regulations in many of these colleges are extremely minute and harassing; they are largely copied from one catalogue to another; in several instances the pupils are not allowed to read any book nor any newspaper without the express permission of the president; in nearly all, the discipline will be “mild, but, if necessary, firm.” In one catalogue only, it is said that “there are no rules and but few regulations; ladylike conduct is the one thing required.”
A uniform dress must be worn in many of these colleges. The Sunday suit is frequently “of navy blue, made fashionably, but with no trimmings of either silk or satin, no ruffles, and no beads.” In one of these schools, a uniform dress was at first required only for Sundays, but the week day dressing was found to be so extravagant that it became necessary to restrict the material worn to a black and white check gingham. In the catalogue of the Suffolk Female Institute, it is stated that “the uniform dress usually prescribed by other institutions is not required here”; and, in that of another school, that “uniformity is not needful or wise.”
The cost of board and tuition in these schools (exclusive of music and painting and fancy work) is most frequently about two hundred dollars. Parents who can afford it usually send their daughters North, or at least as far North as to Virginia or Tennessee, as it is considered that a few years passed in a colder climate have a good effect in establishing their health. Only a small number have as yet taken the college courses that are offered in the North. The following table gives the results of my inquiries:
| Southern Graduates of Northern Colleges. | |
|---|---|
| Vassar College | 42 |
| Wellesley College | 16 |
| Smith College | 10 |
| Swarthmore College | 5 |
| Boston University | 5 |
| Bryn Mawr College | 2 |
| Cornell University | 1 |
| Syracuse University | 0 |
| Kansas University | 0 |
| Massachusetts Institute of Technology | 0 |
| Total | 81 |
The president of Michigan University is able to recall from six to ten women graduates from Southern States, and the number from the University of Wisconsin has been “not large.”