The Anderson intelligencer. [volume] (Anderson Court House, S.C.) 1860-1914, 1873-01-09

to spring up over the land under somewhat
broader and healthier views of the whole sub
ject The powerful influence of female educa-
ton in reforming public manners, in relaxing
the rigor of penal laws, in promoting the NOR
ais, and thus the prosperity of the country, and
especially its power in shaping character in
that earlier period, when childhood is reared
beneath its influence, gave to Female Colleges
great popularity. 1t was very natural sug-
gestion, that as there were colleges for boys
alone, there should now be colleges for girls
alone, and the separation soon grew into almost
complete isolation. For the effect of inter-
rupting the natural intercourse of the young,
such as they enjoyed under the parental roof
and in the neighborhood of relatives, was to
beget an impatience of restraint and relish
for the romantic such as made it necessary to
isolate the sexes yet more rigidly; and female
seminaries began to be surrounded with such
munitions of caution and watchfulness as to
awaken a feeling of Quixotic chivalry, and to
tempt and encourage feats of romance. 1t was
like the wall of Romulus, over which the spir-
tied Remus was tempted to leap. The very
means which were employed to prevent roman
tic attachments greatly fostered and encouraged
them. 1t was perfectly natural that it should
be SO. The separation of the sexes was an un-
natural condition Of social existence. For our
ideas of the honorable, the chaste, the elegant,
are bred and cultured in the family where
Providence has, in almost all instances, min
gled brothers and sisters together. The higher
and noblcr impulses of man are thus evoked
and cultured by their social intercourse. Man
ly virtue and womanly selfpossession come to
their perfect development, only under the mu-
tual support which they give to each other.
Separated from each other, these finer threads
in the web of virtuous character are wanting,
and each party becomes, the one unnaturally
sensitive, the other unnaturally reckless.
More recently in the history of schools and
seminaries, the minds of teachers have been
turned to this abnormal condition of things in
the training of youth. They have observed
the injurious effect of this unnatural separation
of the sexes, and are about to return to nature.
1t is very common to notice in the school cir
culars of the country, the announcement of
professors and teachers, that pupils committed
to their care, shall be surrounded by safe
home influence, l. e., that the domestic circle is
safe model The discipline of schools, both
male and female, had become impotent, to meet
the necessities of the case under the system of
separate schools, and a serious want is now felt
for an influence that will relieve teachers from
a resort to measures felt to be demoralizing.
Under the pressure of this want, mixed schools
of high order in various parts of the land
have been inaugurated, and the reports from
those schools furnish the experience of their
teachers, that both discipline and scholarship
have been greatly improved 1t is in fact,
what might have been expected from return
to those salutary influences, which spring from
the regulated intercourse of the sexes in all
stages of human life. If they are power in
childhood to call up and develop our ideas of
the polite and honorable, they are less needful
in the educational period of life to develop
manliness and scholarship.