The Perrysburg journal. [volume] (Perrysburg, Ohio) 1853-1861, 1857-03-05
EnnnnnIn Lhmcnfinn

The Michigan Legislature appointed com
mittee to inquire into Che prOpriety of open
ing the Hilsdale College to all, regardless
of sex. ''A =
President Fairfield, OF Hillsdale College,
the Senator from Hillsdale District, chairman
of the committee to which was referred the
subject, has reported a resolution in favor oi
such course.
From the report accompanying the resOu-
ton we extract the following.
The old doctrine of the inferiority of wo.
mans intellect is rapidly finding its place
among the exploded dogmas of the middle
ages. 1t were only necessary to mark the
trial of the experiment for successive years
through all the course Of college study, to be
fully dispossessed Of the last remanent of SC
groundless an assumption.
And your committee believe that the plan
of educating the sexes jointly, would secure
to woman much more thorough and scholar
ly training than is likely to be furnished
upon any other system. Female seminaries
are too often, not to say generally, much less
rigid in their system of mental discipline and
much less attended in their course of study,
than colleges, which are established upon the
ordinary basis
We give TO weman her full credit for the
softening and harmoniking influence which her
presence exerts. But the influence in truth
is reciprocal. And not unfrequently there is
a rudeness in female Seminaries, or in those
circles where young ladies gather alone, thai
disappears entirely in the presence OF vel
bred men. The influence of the association
is, in this respect, equally happy upon both
According to the theory of some upon this
subject of education, it were a manifest mis-
take of the author of human society, that al
families were not arranged upon the judicioul
plan of separating entirely the different sexes
But it is not the moral effect Of the pro
posed arrangement ground of objection tc
it? Exactly the opposite. The daily meeting
of noble and true minded young ladies. en-
gagged in tie elevated and elevating pursuits
Of science, is a stronger defence to any young
man against the temptations to seduction anc
to vice and immortality, than all the didactiC
treatise on moral reform thai were ever penn
ed That the separation of the sexes is no
conducive to the highest degree OF sOcia
morality, is abundantly demonstrated by the
entire history of oriental society. y
There are some young men that are fated
to be the victims of impulse-that are mad
for a settlement before their beard is grown
and even the braying of which Solomon
speaks would not cure them of their folly
Let them haste to their goal-there is no de-
livering them. If they did not meet some
"Dulcina del Toboso" in College they woulC
elsewhere.
1t is the young man that shut out from fe
male society confined within the college walls
n but now and then, Aladdin like, gets {
glympse OF the half-covered face though thi
oriental figure does not very well apply t.
modern American fashions) of some bewitch
ing daughter of Eve, that is smitten anC
forthwith deems himself ruined man,
something is not done; and the partnership i
closed up with the utmost dispatch. Blu
were this same young mana fresh man, o
a sophomore perhaps-to meet this sam
young lady and dozen others from week t.
week in the recitation room, it would becom
a more matter-of-fact sort of thing; and b
would, in all probability, take more sobe
view of life andits relations. Experience ha
abundantly proved that there are fewer hast.
settlements-fewer premature and troublsom
engagements-fewer runaway matches-few
rr crazy young men-fewer headlong plum
ges into the matrimonial sea, in college
where the joint education Of the sexes pre-
walls, than elsewhere.