Woman's Work in America

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.

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. 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.

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. 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.

Continue reading Woman's Work in America free in the Wunder reader →