The daily morning journal and courier., 1895-05-07
FEMALE C0LLEGES.
What Dr. Parkhurst Has to Say of These
 Institutions.

What Dr. Parkhurst Has to Say of These
 Institutions.
 There has been quite a sudden devel- opment In this generation of what are
 known as felale colleges, writes Rev
 Charles IT. Parkhurst, D. D., in May
 Ladies Home Journal, This move
 ment is. in part, considerate and reas-
 onable, and In part 1t is c fad" A
 great many girls are going to Vassar,
 Smith, Wellesley and Barnard, because they want to be educated; and others are going because young men go to col lege and 1t is nice to do what young
 men do-what might be called "Andro- mainia" in the green. There is another contingent of young women who are motlved in this by their desire to get on l to an independent footing and to be in a situation to make their owII ~5ay in the world, with something like an eX- pectation that they will earn their living by their brains, and that husband and children will be to them always terra incognita-using the college in that way as a means of helping them escape the proper des tiny of their sex.
 The institutions referred to are known as female colleges, and there IS some thing in that mode of distinction that involves an amount of wisdom that is not always suspected nor intended by those who use the designation.
 Let if once be settled that women- liness is the finest product which fe- male college can yield, with all that tendency wifeward and ntotherward which Is the instinctive outcome of womanliness-I say, let this once be settled and a large beginning will all ready have been made toward deciding the methods and machinery by which the college will do it's work and com pass it's ends.
 With all this well in mind, it is easy to wonder whether it quite comports with the situation that so much of the discipline and instruction of semale col leges, as is commonly the case, should be in the hands of men. The question at any rate is worth asking. Such schools are so largely an innovation that it is reasonable to suppose that the best methods of administering them have not yet been hit upon. The male president of such college and such male professors as are on it's staff of in- struction may all believe that woman's chief end on earth is to be a wife and mother and to cultivate the best pessi- bilities of her offspring; and these male functionaries may all teach this dcc- Urine with emphatic reiteration, but is it presumable that masculine influence will produce feminine effects? The gem t1emen members of the faculty may be so thoroughly persuaded of the truth of what have here been urging that they will be able to convince their lady pu- pills of the same truth; but it is one thing to persuade a class of young wo- men that womanliness is the greatest accomplishment possible to them, and quite a distinct thing to secure and ma ture in them that womanliness.
 never expect to see the teaching force of a male college made up in part of women.
 Why does it any more comport with the fitness of things that the teaching force of female college should be made up, in whole or in part, of men? Is there any doubt but that if women for the position were attain able they would meet the requirements of the case in way that men can- not?
 Is it not pretty clear, without argu- ment, that a thoroughly womanly wo- man can do more toward helping col Iege girl to become a woman than a l manly man can do? We may become so wonted to an infelicit- |