|
Main
- books.jibble.org
My Books
- IRC Hacks
Misc. Articles
- Meaning of Jibble
- M4 Su Doku
- Computer Scrapbooking
- Setting up Java
- Bootable Java
- Cookies in Java
- Dynamic Graphs
- Social Shakespeare
External Links
- Paul Mutton
- Jibble Photo Gallery
- Jibble Forums
- Google Landmarks
- Jibble Shop
- Free Books
- Intershot Ltd
|
books.jibble.org
Previous Page
| Next Page
Page 18
[27] RHETA CHILDE DORR, _What Eight Million Women Want,_ Boston: Small,
Maynard & Co., 1910.
And this movement was not confined to the rich, for those who were not
yet economically free were still deeply influenced by the changes which
were taking place. The Goulds, Stanfords, Vanderbilts, Floods, Carnegies
and Schwabs had all been lifted from the level of the masses to
financial grandeur before the eyes of the multitude, and democratic
ambitions drove parents who thought themselves in the line of financial
advancement to secure culture for their girls in time. If the daughter
was destined to live on Fifth Avenue, or to marry a duke, it was best to
get her ready while young. In all our industrial democracies, armies of
American parents have devoted themselves to labor, and even sacrificed
comforts and necessities, that the daughters might get ready to live
easier and fuller lives than the parents had known. If the choice had to
be made between the girl and her brother, the chivalry of the father and
the ambition of the mother very often gave the opportunity to the girl.
And so an emancipated army of leisure has been formed which has
transformed the very nature of the culture with which it has busied
itself. Books, periodicals, musical instruments, travel became cheaper
and cheaper as the demand increased. Wholesale production makes almost
any luxury accessible to every one. It is also possible to find modern
and agreeable forms for older academic exercises. If Greek and Latin
were too full or too difficult, courses in Romanic and Germanic
philology would do as well. Anglo-Saxon gave way to Old English; and
Chaucer to the Lake Poets. Philosophy struggled for favor with the
English novel on equal terms. The works of Raphael were photographed and
lithographed until the Sistine Madonna became as commonly known as the
face of any strenuous and popular statesman of the day. With the aid of
these art productions, and John Addington Symonds, every woman with
leisure became an art critic. If economics was not interesting,
sociology was available; and it could be democratized to any degree
desired. If travel was troublesome, one could leave it to Cook; buy a
ticket and he would do the rest.
If these awakening hungers and corresponding opportunities had affected
only the period of life formerly thought available for education, these
changes would have come about much more slowly than they have. But the
genetic conception of life, steadily popularized since 1870, has led us
to see that education is coterminous with life. It seems strange that we
should have ever thought that mental activity belongs alone to youth.
Dorland's study shows that in a list of four hundred fairly
representative great men, only 10.25% ceased their mental activity
between the ages of forty and fifty; 20.75% between fifty and sixty; 35%
between sixty and seventy; 22.5% between seventy and eighty; and 6%
after eighty.[28]
[28] W.A. NEWMAN DORLAND, _The Age of Mental Virility_. New York: The
Century Company, 1908.
The recognition of such facts as these has given us a new genetic sense
of life, under the influence of which mothers and grandmothers have
joined the younger women in the pursuit of culture. They have formed
clubs--study clubs, current events clubs, camera clubs, art clubs,
literary clubs, civic clubs. They have organized courses of university
extension lectures; enrolled in Chicago University correspondence
courses; and have flocked to Chautauqua by the thousand in the summer,
when not abroad. It is not through the generosity of men that liberal
culture has come into the possession of women; they have carried it by
storm and have compelled capitulation.
Judging by the facts presented in the last chapter, women are pretty
fully in possession of formal education. If we examine this monopoly a
little more carefully, we shall find that while in the kindergarten and
in the elementary schools boys furnish 51% of the enrollment, simply
because more boys are born in civilized communities than girls, as soon
as we reach the high schools, girls increasingly take the lead. In 1910,
the girls formed 56.45% of the enrollment in high schools--or there were
110,249 more girls than boys. The proportion of girls increased through
each of the four years of the course, and of the graduates, 60.8% were
girls. In the public normal schools, 64.45% of the students were girls.
The universities, colleges and technical schools, which are massed
together in our government reports, had hardly any women students in
1870; in 1880, 19.3% of the students were women; in 1890, 27%; in 1910,
30.4%. In all these institutions we had enrolled in 1910, 17,707 women.
Of 602 institutions reported in 1910, 142 were for men only; 108 were
for women only; and 352 were open to both sexes. But here again the
influence of women increases during each of the four years for, as we
have seen, the women took 41.1% of the A.B. degrees granted in 1910. It
is surely not too much to say that, if present conditions continue,
women will soon be in an overwhelming majority in all secondary and
higher education in the United States.
Previous Page
| Next Page
|
|