The Redwood gazette. [volume] (Redwood Falls, Minn.) 1873-1940, 1873-08-14
The Education Of Women.

Mount Holyoke Mass. Seminary
The founder of Williston Seminary,
who is at the same time one of the found
ers of Mt. Holyoke Seminary and the
second founder of Amherst College, pro.
vided with no little care and expense for
the education of young women in the
same classes and studies, by the same
teachers and in just the same way
with young men, in that richly en-.
dowed and we'll appointed institution; but
the experiment failed and the woman's
department was relinquished, simply be-
cause young women preferred to 20 to
Mount Holyoke and other seminaries
where the training was expressly intended
for them, adapted to their nature and
suited to meet their wants. In Oberlin,
where the experiment has been tried under
the most favorable circumstances, it has
proved failure so far as the regular col.
lege course is concerned. The number of
young women in that course, instead OF
increasing with the prosperity of the in.
stitution, has diminished, so that it now
averages at most only two or three. The
rest pursue a different curriculum, live in
q separate dormitory and study by them
selves in q course Of their own, recitine
indeed partly with the young men, and by
way Of reciprocity and in true womanly
compassion allowing some of them to ST
at their table in the dining hall, hut ye,
constituting substantially female semi
nary, or, if you please, a woman's college
in the university. So that if Oberlin had
been only q college with its four collegiate
classes, without any preparatory depart.
ment, female seminary or professional
schools, the experiment would have turned
out just as 1t did at Williston Seminary
and would have been failure even there.
1t could have been made successful at
Amherst, or any other New England
college only by turning it into univer.
sity-in other words, only by enlarging
the accommodations, changing the entire
system, and thus nearly doubling the ex.
pense, and then it would not have been
the ideal woman's college. There would
have been no economy-which is the
great American argument for coeduca-
ti0n-there would have been little or no
advantage for young women in such an
institutiOn-the course established for
young men would have been complicated,
rev0lutionized, and exposed to new
hazards, and after all there would still
have been more excellent way.
The higher education of woman, if it is
to deserve the name, must develop the
powers and faculties of women, especially
her higher faculties and those in which
she excels; if it is to answer the ends OF
education, it must qualify her for the
sphere in which she is fitted to move. Let
us, then, take rapid survey, first, of the
peculiar nature of woman, and, secondly
Of her proper sphere, that we may thus in
fer what should be the characteristic fea
lures of her education. The most obvious
peculiarly of her nature, which none
will question, because it is patent to the
senses. is her comparatively slender, deli.
cate and feeble bodily constitution. There
are individual exceptions. But as gen
eral rule, which is only proved and made
palpable by these exceptions, woman is NO
more capable of enduring the same severe
and protracted study with the other sex,
by day and by night, through all the
months and years of her early fife, than
she is able to perform the same labors on
the farm or in the shop, in the mine or al
the anvil, or to brave the same dangers,
and bear the same hardships and expos.
ures on the tented field. This fact alone
goes far to settle the question of co-educa.
ton. Sooner or later, In the long run, co
education will, for this reason alone, inev-
itably either break down the health and
constitution of woman, or change the cur
riculum, and lower the standard of college
education. A system ofhigher education for
young women should, first of all, and /
had almost said above all, guard her
health, invigorate her constitution, develop
her form, animate and irradiatc her fea-
lures, give color to her cheek, light to her