The Story of Wellesley [42]
higher education of women can know how exciting and romantic it was to be a professor in a woman's college during the last half-century. To be a teacher was no new thing for a woman; the dame school is an ancient institution; all down the centuries, in classic villas, in the convents of the Middle Ages, in the salons of the eighteenth century, learned ladies with a pedagogic instinct have left their impress upon the intellectual life of their times. But the possibility that women might be intellectually and physically capable of sharing equally with men the burdens and the joys of developing and directing the scholarship of the race had never been seriously considered until the nineteenth century. The women who came to teach in the women's colleges in the '70's and '80's and '90's knew themselves on trial in the eyes of the world as never women had been before. And they brought to that trial the heady enthusiasm and radiant exhilaration and fiery persistence which possess all those who rediscover learning and drink deep. They knew the kind of selfless inspiration Wyclif knew when he was translating the Bible into the language of England's common people. They shared the elation and devotion of Erasmus and his fellows.
To plan a curriculum in which the humanities and the sciences should every one be given a fair chance; to distinguish intelligently between the advantages of the elective system and its disadvantages; to decide, without prejudice, at what points the education of the girl should differ or diverge from the education of the boy; to try out the pedagogic methods of the men's colleges and discover which were antiquated and should be abolished, which were susceptible of reform, which were sound; to invent new methods,--these were the romantic quests to which these enamored devotees were vowed, and to which, through more than half a century, they have been faithful.
Wellesley's student laboratory for experimental work in physics, established 1878, was preceded in New England only by the student laboratory of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her laboratory for work in experimental psychology, established by Professor Calkins in 1891, was the first in any women's college in the country, and one of the first in any college. In 1886, the American School of Classical Studies at Athens invited Wellesley to become one of the cooperating colleges to sustain this school and to enjoy its advantages. The invitation came quite unsolicited, and was the first extended to a woman's college.
The schoolmen developing and expanding their Trivium and Quadrivium at Oxford, Paris, Bologna, experienced no keener intellectual delights than did their belated sisters of Vassar, Smith, Bryn Mawr, Wellesley.
But in order to understand the passion of their point of view, we must remember that the higher education for which the women of the nineteenth century were enthusiastic was distinctly an education along scholarly and intellectual lines; this early and original meaning of the term "higher education", this original and distinguishing function of the woman's college, are in danger of being blurred and lost sight of to-day by a generation that knew not Joseph. The zeal with which the advocates of educational and domestic training are trying to force into the curricula of women's colleges courses on housekeeping, home-making, dressmaking, dairy farming, to say nothing of stenography, typewriting, double entry, and the musical glasses minus Shakespeare, is for the most part unintelligible to the women who have given their lives to the upbuilding of such colleges as Bryn Mawr, Smith, Mt. Holyoke, Vassar, and Wellesley,--not because they minimize the civilizing value of either homemakers or business women in a community, or fail to recognize their needs, but simply because women's colleges were never intended to meet those needs.
When we go to the Metropolitan Museum of Fine Arts, we do not complain because it lacks the characteristics of the Smithsonian Institute, or of the Boston Horticultural Show. We are content
To plan a curriculum in which the humanities and the sciences should every one be given a fair chance; to distinguish intelligently between the advantages of the elective system and its disadvantages; to decide, without prejudice, at what points the education of the girl should differ or diverge from the education of the boy; to try out the pedagogic methods of the men's colleges and discover which were antiquated and should be abolished, which were susceptible of reform, which were sound; to invent new methods,--these were the romantic quests to which these enamored devotees were vowed, and to which, through more than half a century, they have been faithful.
Wellesley's student laboratory for experimental work in physics, established 1878, was preceded in New England only by the student laboratory of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her laboratory for work in experimental psychology, established by Professor Calkins in 1891, was the first in any women's college in the country, and one of the first in any college. In 1886, the American School of Classical Studies at Athens invited Wellesley to become one of the cooperating colleges to sustain this school and to enjoy its advantages. The invitation came quite unsolicited, and was the first extended to a woman's college.
The schoolmen developing and expanding their Trivium and Quadrivium at Oxford, Paris, Bologna, experienced no keener intellectual delights than did their belated sisters of Vassar, Smith, Bryn Mawr, Wellesley.
But in order to understand the passion of their point of view, we must remember that the higher education for which the women of the nineteenth century were enthusiastic was distinctly an education along scholarly and intellectual lines; this early and original meaning of the term "higher education", this original and distinguishing function of the woman's college, are in danger of being blurred and lost sight of to-day by a generation that knew not Joseph. The zeal with which the advocates of educational and domestic training are trying to force into the curricula of women's colleges courses on housekeeping, home-making, dressmaking, dairy farming, to say nothing of stenography, typewriting, double entry, and the musical glasses minus Shakespeare, is for the most part unintelligible to the women who have given their lives to the upbuilding of such colleges as Bryn Mawr, Smith, Mt. Holyoke, Vassar, and Wellesley,--not because they minimize the civilizing value of either homemakers or business women in a community, or fail to recognize their needs, but simply because women's colleges were never intended to meet those needs.
When we go to the Metropolitan Museum of Fine Arts, we do not complain because it lacks the characteristics of the Smithsonian Institute, or of the Boston Horticultural Show. We are content