From the statistics for secondary instruction in the Southern States, it may be discovered that there are more than twice as many girls as boys in attendance upon public high schools. There are three times as many girls as boys throughout the whole country, it will be remembered, who complete the high school course. I do not find that a single Southern city provides a high school for boys without providing one for girls also, and usually it is the same school for both (though the recitation-rooms may be separate). Where the schools are distinct, the girls’ school is usually much inferior to the boys’. This is notably the case in Baltimore, where the boys’ high school (it is called the City College) fits admirably for the Johns Hopkins University, and where the two girls’ high schools are of an extremely low grade. Throughout the entire South there are only forty-one high schools, while there are seventy-six in Massachusetts alone, but it must be remembered that any system of public schools has hardly existed in the South previous to the war.
An important feature in secondary education in the South is the establishment of the Bryn Mawr Preparatory School in Baltimore. In 1884 five ladies formed themselves into a committee and appointed a secretary and six teachers (science, classics, mathematics, history, French, and German), all college graduates, and a drawing teacher. The school opened with forty pupils, and in the third year it met all its expenses. A very handsome building, containing a thoroughly well-equipped gymnasium, is now (1889) being erected by Miss Mary Garrett (one of the directors) for the future accommodation of the school. For this building the directors expect to pay a fair rent—if not on the actual cost, yet on the price of a building that would have met the needs of the school. They are anxious to prove that a school of this grade can be made to pay.[[29]] They intend, out of the earnings of the school, to pay the college expenses for four years of the two best students of each year’s graduating class. The distinguishing mark of the school is that it requires each child who enters to take the subjects required for entrance to college (the Bryn Mawr College entrance examinations are given in the sixth and seventh years) and at the same time a continuous course in drawing, science, and history, in order that a satisfactory course of study may be offered to girls who do not intend to go to college. The number of pupils is limited to 150.
NORMAL SCHOOLS AND INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION.
In the great advance which has been made in the South since the war in the establishment of systems of public schools, the managers of the Peabody Fund have played a very important part. It has been said, and without exaggeration, that no two millions of dollars ever did so much good to the cause of education. Normal schools, in particular, have been the object of their special care. In accordance with the express wishes of the founder, the fund has offered aid proportionate to what a State might do in order to secure the establishment of such schools; and the initiative steps in every State included in its administration have been taken under the suggestion and stimulus of its managers. There are now thirty-two normal schools in the South; Alabama has seven, Georgia and North Carolina have none. The Normal College at Nashville is not only a normal school for Tennessee, but for the whole South as well; the trustees of the Peabody Fund distribute 114 free scholarships annually among ten Southern States. They have also established recently the Winthrop Training School for white girls in South Carolina, and that State has for the first time made an appropriation especially for the higher education of girls.[[30]]
Industrial training on any important scale has existed throughout the country only since 1862. In that year Congress granted large bodies of public lands to each of the States for the establishment of agricultural and mechanical colleges. The law permitted the introduction of a moderate college curriculum into these institutions. Gradually the returning Southern States accepted this gift, and all of them have made some endeavor to utilize it, either by attaching a department to the existing State university, or, as in Virginia, Texas, Mississippi, Kentucky, and Alabama, by maintaining a separate agricultural and mechanical college.
Women ought, of course, to have had a share in these government grants, and the statistics for the whole country show that of the thirty-two colleges to which they have been given, no less than twenty report students of both sexes.[[31]] But in the Southern States, with the exception of Arkansas and Kentucky, none but colored women have received any benefit from these grants. The Arkansas Industrial University is an admirably administered institution; the literary course, which forms the ground-work for the industrial training, is only a year behind a good college course. The first class was graduated in 1875, and consisted of seven women and one man. The Kentucky Agricultural and Mechanical College has at present twenty-four women in the college course.
The Legislature of Georgia passed a bill last year (1889) appropriating $200,000 for the establishment of an industrial school for girls. In Mississippi an admirable industrial school for girls has been in existence since 1885,—the Industrial Institute and College, at Columbus. The entire income of this school is derived from State appropriations; tuition is free to all girls of Mississippi, and board is also free to 300 girls apportioned among the several counties of the State. Other pupils are furnished board at cost, usually about nine dollars a month, including washing. The industrial subjects taught are phonography, telegraphy, type-writing, decorative and industrial art, répoussé and art needlework, printing, dressmaking, designing, engraving, modeling, cooking, laundry-work, housekeeping (in a separate cottage), and book-keeping. There are 113 students in the collegiate course and 275 in the business course. The collegiate course shows a marked advance upon the usual course of study in girl’s colleges, especially in the elements of a solid education, in the mathematical and scientific studies. Analytical geometry, Juvenal, Livy, and Horace, Hamilton’s metaphysics, and political economy, are among the required studies, and the calculus, descriptive geometry, quantitative analysis, and Ueberweg’s History of Philosophy are among the subjects offered in post graduate courses. The standard of scholarship is high: 75 per cent. must be obtained in examinations in order to advance from one class to another. The laboratories are fitted up with the best modern appliances. The students in turn do the work of the dining-room and the sleeping apartments. Many of the former pupils are already earning good salaries in telegraphy, phonography, book-keeping, etc. It is plain that this industrial school of Mississippi presents a model which other States, both North and South, would do extremely well to copy.
CONCLUSION.
On the whole, the outlook for the education of women in the Southern States is not discouraging. The difficult first step has been taken,—there are women college graduates here and there, and it is no longer necessary to look upon them as monstrosities. In many a Southern family, the question whether a girl shall go to college or not has become, at least, a question to be discussed. It rests largely with existing college graduates to determine whether a sentiment in favor of the higher education for women shall grow rapidly or slowly, and whether schools for “superior instruction” shall be or shall not be improved in quality. It is not necessary that every girl should go to college, but it is necessary that some should go, for there is absolutely no other way of keeping up the standard of the lower schools except by making sure that they give such instruction as will stand the test of the college entrance examinations. No more important work could be done for women than to establish a dozen preparatory schools throughout the South, similar to the Bryn Mawr school in Baltimore, for the purpose of giving Southern mothers a standard of comparison, and enabling them to exterminate, by loss of patronage, those girls’ schools which are thoroughly unfitted for the performance of their work.