Part 11
“In 1884 women were admitted to the medical and scientific departments of this university, and in 1887 to the academic, except to the preparatory school. We have eleven ladies in the academic department, seven in the medical, and seven in the scientific. We admitted them simply because there seemed to be a demand for it, and because we could find no objection. The girls admitted have been, _without exception_, superior students. They have had no injurious effect, but the reverse, and we find no inconvenience from our course. We have had so far only two who finished the course in the Corcoran Scientific School, but they were very fine scholars. One of them excelled especially in mathematics, the other in mental philosophy and such subjects. I am rather proud of the girls.”
The italics are not mine. Professor Adison Hogue, of the University of Mississippi, writes me:
“Women are admitted here because the board of trustees gave them the privilege some years ago. I know of no other reason than that. Not many avail themselves of the opportunity, especially as the State for some years past has had, at Columbus, an industrial institute and college solely for women. This year we have eleven in attendance here; in each of my previous three years the number was five, Their standing averages above that of the boys, I think. In ’85 and ’87 the first honor was taken by young ladies; and in our present sophomore class a slender girl is spoken of as the ‘first honor man.’ Their social standing is in no way impaired by their coming here, although the plan of mixed education is not greatly in favor, as the small number shows.”
Professor Halsted, of the University of Texas, says, in his report to the Superintendent of Public Instruction: “Several young ladies have shown marked ability in the acquirement of the newer and more abstruse developments of mathematics, for example, quaternions.”
The president of the H. Sophie Newcomb College, which is a department of the Tulane University of Louisiana, has a larger number of students upon which to base his conclusions. He writes:
“When the college was inaugurated two years ago, it was discovered that very few of the applicants for admission were qualified to undertake a regular college course. The schools of this city (mostly private), which they had previously attended, had not hitherto arranged their courses of study with reference to advanced or college work, and had not therefore adopted any fixed standard of acquirement.... The grade of the present freshman class is fully a year and a half in advance of that which entered two years ago, and at the same time there has been a steady increase in numbers. The greatest gain has been shown in mathematics, science, and Latin. Our advanced classes are doing excellent work in calculus and analytical geometry, laboratory work in chemistry and biology, etc.... While I can testify from experience to the equal ability of the Louisiana young women with those in the East or elsewhere in mathematical, scientific, or other studies, yet on account of the social pressure, and long established customs which demand early graduations, we must be content to see our institution develop more slowly than it would otherwise do.”
I give in Appendix C, Table I., a list of the co-educational colleges in the Southern States, prepared for me by the Bureau of Education from the manuscript statistics for 1889–90. The following so-called colleges have in no sense a proper equipment nor a proper course of study for enabling them to deserve the name of college: Eminence, Classical and Business, South Kentucky, (Ky.); Keachie, (La.); Florida Conference and St. John’s River (Fla.); Western Maryland, (Md.); Kavanagh, (Miss.); Salado, Hope, (Tex.) That leaves the following number of students who are in the collegiate departments of real, white, co-educational colleges in the South:
Alabama │ 1 ────────────────────┼─── Arkansas │ 3 „ │ 22 ────────────────────┼─── District of Columbia│ 3 „ │ 25 ────────────────────┼─── Florida │ 1 „ │ 4 ────────────────────┼─── Georgia │ 30 Kentucky │ 24 Louisiana │ 77 Maryland │ 25 Mississippi │ 11 North Carolina │ 53 South Carolina │ 10 ────────────────────┼─── Tennessee │ 34 „ │ 16 „ │ 28 „ │ 10 ────────────────────┼─── Texas │ 40 „ │ 20 „ │ 70 „ │ 40 „ │175 ────────────────────┼─── West Virginia │ 32 „ │ 1 ────────────────────┴───
Texas │345 Louisiana │ 77 Other States │328 │——— Total │750
This table discloses the remarkable fact that there are 750 women studying in such men’s colleges in the South as have a decent claim to the name of college, and also that Virginia is the only State in the South that has not got at least some kind of a co-educational college.
The testimony in favor of co-education, by all those colleges which have tried it, is very emphatic. The president of Rutherford College (N.C.), says: “This school [established in 1853] is the first experiment in the South, of which we have any information, in which an attempt has been made to train the two sexes together in the course of a college education. Its results prove the experiment to be a _complete success_.” The president of Bethel College (Tenn.), says: “The mutual refining influences of co-education, socially, mentally, and morally, upon the sexes, is unquestionably good.”
The president of Vanderbilt University, which is the most important university in the South after the University of Virginia, writes me that, although co-education has not been formally adopted there, yet women have never been refused admission into classes, that degrees would always be conferred upon those who had taken the proper examinations, and that one young woman had actually completed the course and received the degree of A.M. What more can the women of the central Southern States desire? It is not necessary that every male college should be open to them; there may be parents who think that the conventual life is best suited to the moral and social development of their sons, and such parents should have an opportunity for carrying out the plan which commends itself to them. All that women ask is that they should have freedom of access to the _best_ men’s colleges. In that way a standard for a woman’s education will be fixed, and every woman will be able to reach that standard if she desires it; the second best colleges may then be allowed to be as exclusive as they please.
There is one more bright spot in the educational outlook for Southern women: it is announced that in the new Methodist university, which is about to be founded in Washington, on a large scale, every department will be open to women on exactly the same terms as to men.
It lies with Southern women to decide whether they shall accept the large privileges which are now open to them. It is hard for mothers who did not go to college themselves, and who have still lived what seemed to them to be happy lives, to feel that something different is desirable for their daughters; but may there not be fathers who, having tasted the pleasures of intellectual activity for themselves, will be minded to lead their daughters into the same fields which they have found to be attractive?
THE SEMI-COLLEGES.
I give in Appendix C, Table II., the list of semi-colleges, as determined from their catalogues. Of course, it cannot be inferred from the fact that the course is a good one that it is well carried out: but if the course is very limited, if the text-books used are poor, if there is no indication that the school has any library nor any scientific apparatus, it can be inferred that the school is not of a high grade; the above list may therefore be taken as a superior limit of the semi-colleges in the South. On the other hand, it may happen that the teachers of the classics and of English literature are persons of culture and of wide learning, and that a greater number of authors are read than the course laid down demands.
In the Mary Sharp College (Winchester, Tenn.), in 1887–88, four young ladies completed the following post graduate course in the first half year[26]: Seneca’s Essays, Œdipus Tyrannus, Dindorf’s Metres, Colloquia in Latin, etc.; in the second half year two of them read Lycias’ Orations,—against Eratosthenes, concerning the sacred olive, and the funeral oration,—the Panegyric of Isoscrates, Xenophon’s Symposium, Lucian’s Charon, and Plutarch’s Delay of the Deity; and one of them, Miss Ada Slaughter, read, in addition, the Ajax of Sophocles, Plato’s Apology and Crito, Iliad (three books), Lucian’s Dream, Seneca’s Epigrammatica, Seneca’s Letters, Ovid’s Metamorphoses (nine books), Cicero de Officiis, Pliny’s Letters, Sallust’s Jugurtha, and Eutropius. This college was founded in 1850, and for many years “it maintained a course of study, a method of instruction, and plan of government far in advance of any college in America for women.”[27] From the beginning it has required both Latin and Greek for graduation, and a very respectable amount of both; it thus deserves, more than the Georgia Female College, the name of the first college exclusively for women in the country. It has over three hundred graduates, and in 1887–88 it had 182 pupils.
The Nashville College for Young Ladies seems to be one of the most important of the colleges of this grade in the South. It has frequent lectures from the professors of Vanderbilt University, and students in the scientific department attend lectures in the laboratories and cabinets of that university. A teacher of the school is present, and examines the class afterward. The professor quizzes in the daily lecture course, but is not responsible for the examinations. The president of the school writes me:
“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.”
SECONDARY INSTRUCTION.
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.