Part 9

In reading current college history as presented in catalogues, college papers, and the general press, it is very interesting to observe how certain departures from ancient standards of college study have aided co-education. The cry for the “practical” and the answer which colleges have made to this cry, by offering their scientific courses, may be named as one of these. The average person thinks of practical as a synonym for _useful_. One opinion in which all men agree (the most conservative with the most radical) is, that women should be useful. In connection with education the average man thinks that “scientific” is also a synonym for “practical.” The conviction that such a scientific, practical course of study will enlarge a woman’s capacity for daily usefulness has sent many a young woman to a college where such courses of study were offered, who would not have been permitted to go to the college which offered only the inflexible course of classics and mathematics. The modern classical course, which permits the substitution of French and German for Greek is, on similar grounds, favorable to co-education.

The elective system has silenced a host of objectors to co-education. All people who entertain vague notions that women are intuitional creatures, that their perceptions are quicker, but their reflective powers less developed than those of men, and who hold the consequent conviction that women cannot so well conform to prescribed lines of study, all of this class are reconciled to co-education by the elective system. The following quotation supports this view. A father writes: “My daughter has entered Michigan University. Under the old régime I should not have permitted it, for I do not believe in a woman’s undertaking a man’s work; but under the elective system she can take what she likes, can take just what she would in a woman’s college, in short; and as all of the professors are men, the subjects will be much better taught.” This letter is written by an intelligent but rather old-fashioned gentleman, and the sentiments here expressed and implied concerning the elective system are entertained by a still numerous class.

The influence of the introduction of co-education at State universities upon the policy of smaller colleges has been irresistible.

Although, as has been shown, State universities did not take the initiative in co-education, the influence of the admission of women into such universities as those of Michigan and Wisconsin, has secured a similar change of policy in a large number of denominational and smaller non-sectarian colleges, founded for men only.

Appendix B., Table II., will show the relative number of colleges opened to women prior and subsequent to 1870, the year of the admission of women into Michigan University.

GENERAL ARGUMENT.

On the appearance of Dr. Clarke’s book, “Sex in Education,” in 1873, the controversy, which up to that time had been limited to the localities where co-education was being introduced, at once became general. For the next ten years this subject was discussed in the press, in the pulpit, in meetings of medical societies, and on the platform. In a large collection of old programs there is proof that every phase of the question was considered by all kinds of organizations of teachers, from national conventions to township institutes. Young teachers advanced their opinions, old teachers recited their experience, and the press everywhere gave the widest publicity to these discussions. At the end of a decade the public mind had fully expressed, and, through expressing, had gradually formed its opinion, which was in general favorable to co-education. In 1883 the whole question was opened in a new form by the attempt to exclude women from Adelbert College of Western Reserve University, which had already been open to them for twelve years.

Every reason which had formerly been urged against the admission of women was now offered for their exclusion. The peculiar origin of the discussion and the able and gallant defense of the rights of the women already enrolled in its classes which was made by Dr. Carroll Cutler, the president of Adelbert, attracted wide notice, and the arguments, pro and con, were reviewed by the press of the country.

Dr. Cutler wrote to the authorities of all the principal co-educational colleges, for the results of their experience. The courtesy of Dr. Cutler makes this voluminous correspondence available for this chapter.

Stated briefly and in the chronological order of their development, the arguments against co-education are as follows:

_a._ Women are mentally inferior to men, and therefore their presence in a college will inevitably lower the standard of its scholarship.

_b._ The physical constitution of women makes it impossible for them to endure the strain of severe mental effort. If admitted to college they will maintain their position and keep pace with men only at the sacrifice of their health.

_c._ The presence of women in college will result in vitiating the manners, if not the morals, of both men and women; the men will become effeminate and weak, the women coarse and masculine.

_d._ If women are admitted to college, their presence will arouse the emotional natures of the men, will distract the minds of the latter from college work, and will give opportunity for scandal.

_e._ The intimacies of college life will result in premature marriages.

_f._ Young men do not approve of the collegiate education of women; they dislike to enter into competition with women, and if the latter are admitted to our colleges it will result in the loss of male students, who will seek in colleges limited to their own sex, the social life which cannot be furnished by a co-educational institution.

_g._ A collegiate education not only does not prepare a woman for the domestic relations and duties for which she is designed, but actually unfits her for them.

_h._ Colleges were originally intended for men only, and the wills of their founders and benefactors will be violated by the admission of women.

_i._ Whatever the real mental capacity or physical ability of women, so fixed is the world’s conviction of their inferiority, that colleges admitting them will inevitably forfeit the world’s confidence and respect.

This chapter affords no space for the _à priori_ arguments which answer these objections; and indeed the best answer to all objections against co-education is found in its result. Let the following letters testify to the fruits of experience. Extract from a letter from James B. Angell, president of the University of Michigan, dated September 2, 1884:

“Women were admitted here (Michigan University) under the pressure of public sentiment, against the wishes of most of the professors; but I think no professor now regrets it, or would favor their exclusion. The way had been well prepared. Denominational colleges had for years admitted women; and in the high schools, which are our preparatory schools, it was the universal custom to teach both sexes. Most of the evils feared by those who opposed the admission of women have not been encountered.

“We made no solitary modification of our rules or requirements. The women did not become hoydenish; they did not fail in their studies; they did not break down in health; they have graduated in all departments; they have not been inferior in scholarship to the men; the careers of our women graduates have been, on the whole, very satisfactory. They are teachers in many of our best high schools; six or seven are in the Wellesley College faculty.”[13]

Extract from a letter from Moses Coit Tyler, dated at Cornell University, September 30, 1884:

“I was connected with the University of Michigan before the advent of women there; was present during the process of their introduction; for several years afterward watched the results; and am now entering on my fourth year here at a co-educational university. And now, after all these years, upon my word, I cannot recall a fact which furnishes a single valid objection to the system; while the real utility, convenience, and wholesomeness of it have so long been before my eyes, that I am startled by your letter as implying that anybody still has any doubt about it.... I do not know a member of the faculty either at Michigan or here who would favor a return to the old plan, although, before the adoption of the new one, many were anxiously opposed to it. My observation has been that under the joint system the tone of college life has grown more earnest, more courteous and refined, less flippant and cynical. The women are usually among the very best scholars, and lead instead of drag; and their lapses from good health are rather (yes, decidedly) less numerous than those alleged by men. There is a sort of young man who thinks it is not quite the thing, you know, to be in college where women are, and he goes away, if he can, and I am glad to have him do so. The vacuum he causes by his departure is not a large one, and is more than made up by the arrival, in his stead, of a more robust and a manlier sort.”

Extracts from two letters written by the Hon. Andrew D. White while president of Cornell University, and bearing dates respectively of August 5, 1884, and October 25, 1884:

“My own opinion is that all the good results we anticipated, and some we did not anticipate, have followed the admission of young women; on the other hand, not one of the prophesied evils, unless possibly some young men may have imbibed a prejudice against the university from the presence of young women, and so have gone elsewhere. This, of course, we can hardly determine. I have never thought the admission of women injured us to any appreciable extent, even in this matter. Scholarship has certainly not been injured in the slightest degree, while order has been improved.... There have been no scandals. Hardly any attachments have ever grown up between the students of the two sexes.... The best scholars are, almost without exception, men; but there is a far larger proportion of young women than of young men who become good scholars. Having now gone through one more year, making twelve in all since women were admitted, I do not hesitate to say that I believe their presence here good for us in every respect. There has not been a particle of scandal of any sort. As to the relations between the sexes, they give us no uneasiness.”

Extract from a letter written by John Bascom, then president of the University of Wisconsin, dated August 20, 1884:

“Co-education is with us wholly successful. There is no difference of opinion concerning it, either in our faculty or our board. We find no additional difficulty in discipline; our young women do good work, and the progress of our young men is in no way impeded. It does not seem to us to be any longer an open question.

“I believe the character of both young men and women is helped, though the results in this particular are difficult of proof. The advantages of the system are manifold; the evils are none. We have ceased to think about its fitness save as questions from abroad redirect our attention to it.”

Extract from a letter by Joseph Cummings, president of Northwestern University:

“The effect of co-education in this institution, upon the manners and morals of both men and women, is only good. The history of co-education shows that men and women trained under its influence are less open to temptations of the passions than are those trained in separate institutions.

“Women are less inclined to pursue long courses of study, but the average scholarship of those who do persevere and graduate is higher than that of the men; and women here do not retard the progress of men.”

In more than 200 letters from presidents and professors in co-educational colleges, a part of which were written during the Adelbert College controversy, and a larger part of which have been received by the writer of this chapter within the last three months, there is not one which does not give testimony to the value of the system, similar to that above quoted.

I have chosen to quote from letters written in 1884 because the controversy then pending impelled the writers to a fuller and more specific statement of their experience than would be elicited by a series of questions propounded at this date. It is only necessary to add that in every instance letters dated in 1889 or 1890 fully accord with those written in 1883 and 1884.

Presidents Angell, White, Bascom, and Cummings, and Professor Tyler are quoted because of their distinguished reputation as educators, because their experience has been in institutions universally acknowledged to rank among the highest in our country, and because, as no one of them has ever taken the position of an apostle of co-education, their words will be received as the testimony of witnesses, and not as the pleadings of advocates.

THE SOCIAL EFFECTS AND TENDENCIES OF CO-EDUCATION.

But few of all the 165 colleges in the West now open to men and women have compiled statistics which present the records of their graduates, prior or subsequent to the admission of women, in reference to health, domestic state, occupation, social position, official place, financial or other form of success. Perhaps the most important and successful attempt to obtain such statistics is that made by the Association of Collegiate Alumnæ, whose inquiries were limited to the women who had graduated from the small number of institutions for either separate or joint education, admitted to that association.

These statistics, of course, relate to women only; and, moreover, they are too incomplete to establish any general law; but they do permit the inference that college life confirms and improves the health of women; and that it does not disincline them to matrimony, or render them averse to or incapable of maternity and its consequent duties. In the absence of statistical data one can only consider the probabilities.

That a general impression that women were intellectually inferior to men formerly prevailed cannot be disputed.

If their work in co-educational colleges has (as, according to the testimony of their instructors, is the case) been, on an average, better than that of their male classmates, the young men who for four years have witnessed daily this exhibition of an intellectual vigor and interest equal to their own, will not be likely to entertain the doctrine of women’s natural and therefore necessary inferiority. The minds of the women in these colleges will be correspondingly affected; they will acquire a respect for themselves and for their sex greater than was formerly characteristic of women.

The intellectual association of men and women on a plane of accepted equality, begun in college, will continue after leaving it, and will modify the social life of every circle into which graduates of co-educational colleges enter.

These inferred effects of co-education are already visible in Western communities. Visitors from the Eastern States, and from over the sea, comment upon the relative absence of prudery among women and of false gallantry among men; they notice that sentimentality and condescension on the one hand, and affectation and soft flatteries on the other, are, to a degree, superseded by a mutual good understanding and respect.

Literary clubs, associations for the promotion of art and science, and committees engaged in philanthropy, are frequently composed of men and women; and the offices in these organizations are distributed between the two sexes in proportion to their respective representation in the membership. In communities where there are many graduates from co-educational colleges, one finds that societies of the kind above referred to have passed that transition state of mixed clubs, in which men always held the offices of president, secretary, and treasurer, while women held those of vice-president and corresponding secretary.

Men who have studied with women in college, almost invariably favor their admission to county and State, medical, legal, and editorial associations; and thus we already see that co-education prepares society to give women welcome and patronage in business and professional life.

The growth of this cordial recognition of equality, this _bonhomie_, has not, as it was feared would be the case, been accompanied by the decadence of man’s reverence for womanhood and woman’s admiration for manliness. Shrewd observers testify that both these sentiments apparently survive intellectual acquaintance, competition, and partnership; and that the former is expressed with more simplicity and the latter with more frankness than formerly, or than is still usual in sections of the country where co-education does not so generally exist.

But it is too soon for the final word on this subject to be spoken. Statisticians, sociologists, and novelists have much new work to do in recording the social consequences of co-education.

DEFECTS AND LIMITATIONS IN THE SYSTEM OF HIGHER EDUCATION FOR WOMEN IN THE WEST.

The ideal of higher education in the West suffers from an habitual exaggeration of speech. Nothing is more conducive to clear and accurate thinking than a strictly accurate vocabulary. The custom of calling institutions which do only secondary work—some of which offer a limited course of even this work—colleges, and of naming colleges universities, tends to mislead and confuse the public mind as to the distinctions between the different kinds of institutions and as to the essential character of each. The inhabitants of the West find their defense for this custom of giving things disproportionate names in the general vastness of their surroundings and in the consequent vastness of their plans and hopes. One of the simplest and surest remedies for the vague and contradictory notions now suggested in the phrase higher education, may be found in giving to every institution of learning a name that frankly implies the limit of its work; and every institution would gain in dignity through this nomenclature.

Nominal honors are too easy in Western institutions; and the conditions upon which different institutions confer them are so various that they have ceased to convey any fixed notion of the kind and amount of intellectual discipline which those bearing them have received.

The remedies for this are to be found in some concerted action among the colleges by which they will agree upon minimum requirements for admission to any one of them. The minimum adopted by the Association of Collegiate Alumnæ might answer this purpose. This would tend, not only to unify but also to raise the average requirements for admission to college, and this in turn would enable secondary schools to maintain a higher standard than is at present common.

As almost all colleges arrange their courses of study to occupy four years, unifying and raising the conditions of entrance would result in unifying and raising the requirements for graduation in the various courses; and this would tend to give to B.A., B.S., and B.L. an intelligible and honorable significance, long since lost. Legislative action could be taken in the different States, at least with reference to new colleges as they shall be founded, limiting the authority to confer degrees to those institutions adopting these improved minimum requirements; this would elevate the public ideal of the higher education and tend to save our young people from being betrayed by words and alphabetical combinations.

The defects above indicated should be frankly admitted to exist, but they are less universal and less disastrous than people living in the Eastern States are disposed to consider them.

A large number of the professorships in Western colleges are filled by men educated in Eastern institutions, who, after graduating from Harvard, Yale, Princeton or some other college which receives only young men, taught in Eastern colleges for either men or women separately before entering into their present connection with some one of our co-educational colleges. The experience of such men and their natural prejudice in behalf of early associations makes their favorable testimony to the merit of Western colleges particularly valuable.

The following extract from a letter from J. W. Bashford, of the Ohio Wesleyan University, is a very moderate statement of views expressed by many of my correspondents. He says: “Four women came to our university during the last two weeks of the term last spring, and afterward visited the leading colleges for women in New England. After personally inspecting the advantages for education for their daughters in the East and in the West, each of the four women decided in favor of co-education and of our university; each came with her daughter and entered her among our students at the opening of our university this year. Belonging to the East myself, I have a very high idea of the work done in our Eastern colleges, and personally do not hold that we can give students superior scholastic advantages, or in some respects equal scholastic advantages to those enjoyed in our best Eastern colleges. There is, however, a greater spirit of earnestness, and possibly a more strongly developed type of manhood and womanhood among our Western students than can be found in our Eastern colleges.”

The cause of higher education for women suffers from the fact that life offers fewer incentives to young women than to young men.

Dr. Smart, the President of Purdue University, and Dr. Jordan, the President of the Indiana State University, men of distinction in their profession, and well acquainted with educational questions, both say that the need of the young women in their respective institutions is that of sufficient incentive. The highest of all incentives, self-development and the possession of culture, appeals as directly to young women as to young men, and not less strongly; but this highest of incentives is sufficient for only the highest order of minds; and in the case of the average young person of either sex, must be reinforced by incentives more immediate and tangible. In this connection the need of improving the normal schools may be legitimately discussed. The normal school has done much to lift the occupation of teaching into the rank of the professions; but teaching can never be accounted one of the learned professions until the learning which is generally considered requisite in the doctor, the lawyer, and the clergyman is demanded in the teacher. It is quite true that the education implied by a full college course is not made a condition of entrance to schools of medicine, law, and theology; but if such preliminary culture is not demanded by these schools, it is expected by them. On the contrary, it is not only not demanded, but not expected, that applicants for admission to a normal school shall present a degree from some reputable college of liberal arts.

The professions which a majority of ambitious young men with intellectual tastes expect to enter, offer incentives to do preliminary college work; the one profession into which young women may enter with undisputed propriety not only does not offer incentives for taking a preliminary college course, but by its entrance requirements and its curriculum implies that such a course is not requisite.

Now that State universities are the direct continuance of the high schools, it would seem desirable that at least those teachers who expect to engage in high school work should have taken the courses of study implied by a college degree. Could the standard of normal school instruction and of high school preparation be thus lifted, it would act as a powerful incentive to young women.