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Page 15
[22] HELEN R. OLIN, _The Women of a State University_, G.P. Putnam's
Sons, 1909.
[23] MARION TALBOT, _The Education of Women_, University of Chicago
Press, 1910.
[24] _Report of the United States Commissioner of Education_, p. 132,
1910.
The movement in European universities, while not so uniform as in
America, has been in the same direction. Miss Buss, Miss Beal and Miss
Emily Sheriff led an early movement for higher secondary education of
girls similar to that which gathered around Miss Willard in America. In
1871, Miss Clough started in England the lectures for women which led
to the establishment of Newnham and Girton at Cambridge, and opened
Oxford to women. Now women can study almost any subject they like at
these universities and take the same examinations as the men. They do
not receive degrees, but they have most of the other advantages of men,
and for forty years they have carried off many honors. In the newer
universities of London, Manchester, Leeds, Liverpool and in the Welsh
University they have every advantage open to men.
In Germany, the opportunities for higher education of women have changed
from year to year; but in 1910, there were 1,856 women in the
universities as compared with 1,108 in 1909, and this notwithstanding
the Emperor's well known belief that woman's sphere should be limited to
domestic activities.
The claims advanced in opposition to the higher education of women have
largely broken down to-day. It was long maintained that her mind was
inferior to man's mind in kind and quality, and that she could not do
the work required. In the presence of thousands of young women carrying
all kinds of university work with credit and honor such charges become
absurd. The belief that woman's health could not stand the strain fails
for the same reason. The fear that she would be less likely to marry; or
marrying, would be less likely to have children, has been seen to have
some body of fact behind it; but we have seen also that university
students are recruited from groups that are not the most fecund, and
that the same danger applies to men students as to women.[25] Women in
higher education are now accepted as a regular part of our modern life.
[25] Eight hundred and eighty-one Harvard graduates, twenty-five years
after graduation, had but 1,226 children. If half were boys, we have but
613 sons for 881 Harvard graduates. HUGO M�NSTERBERG, _The Americans_,
p. 582. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1901.
And yet there is one objection that still remains unanswered in very
many minds. It has always been feared that women would lower the
standard of scholarship; and there is much in the quality of the present
generation of women students that may strengthen this belief. In the
seventies and eighties, the fear of being thought peculiar still kept
many ordinary women away from colleges. Now it has become fashionable,
and a woman who has been to college stands better in a community than
one who has not. Add to this the freedom and romance of "going to
college" and it follows that many young women, with increasing economic
freedom, are tempted to go up to the universities just as well-placed
young Englishmen go to Cambridge or Oxford as passmen. They have no
special interest in scholarship; but they like the life. This large body
of young women, and of men under similar conditions, will doubtless
lower the scholarship of modern college and university life as a whole.
But possibly the need of the world for all-around men and women is even
greater than its need for scholars; and in that case we may find
justification for both passmen and passwomen.
With the opening of knowledge to women it became possible for them to
instruct children in matters intellectual; and since our school learning
was almost entirely a matter of information and mental training, they
early became an important part of the teaching profession in America.
Once started, all our conditions favored the rapid increase of women
teachers. There were industrial openings for men on every side; and with
our rapid increase in population, an army of teachers was required.
Since the calling had in the past been filled by inferior members of the
clergy, broken-down soldiers, or old women, there was a tradition of
constant change, and young men on their way to permanent professions
were steadily supplanted by young women on their way to the altar.
Co-education very materially assisted this substitution. Social,
religious and economic reasons early combined to establish co-education
in elementary schools in America, and now it has become a national
custom. In cities like Philadelphia and Brooklyn there are some separate
schools; but in 1910, only 4 per cent. of all the elementary children
and only 5 per cent. of the children in public high schools were in
separate classes. In private schools, which care for less than 10 per
cent. of the children of the country, the percentage of children in
separate schools is greater.
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