The Cook County herald. [volume] (Grand Marais, Minn.) 1893-1909, 1907-09-14

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strenuous: they, too, needed to do-t'
do the simple tasks of daily living, t.
cook, to brew, to wash, to spin, t.
weave, to knit, to manage with carr
and economy affairs within the house
while the men were conQuering ad
verse conditions without. The schoo
was supplemented by the training IL
the house which the girls got at thei>
mothers side. Meager and inadequate
as the provision for their education
seems to us, it was not so entirely in
adequate. At no time more than to
day have we realized that home an6
schools must combine-must AGAR
combine to make the highest type Of
woman; to-day, when we have addict
amply and more amply to schooling
and when home training has faller
more and more into disuse. They
erred on the one side, perhaps, in the
past; we, on the other, and now that
100 years experience has proved that
pure mental training is inadequate tc
make the men and women pictured by
| those who advocated it as the panacea
for the woes of the world, we are max
ing increasing and unceasing efforts
to give back to the girls something OF
the healthful sturdiness which comes
from doing-doing with the hands
which seem to have lost their useful
ness, doing the common, necessary
things Of daily life-the cooking, wash:
n with
which they were done by the old colo
NAL danes.
When the first danes school was
opened in New England a woman was
hired to take children on her knee to
teach them the alphabet, the New Eng
and manners. No provision was made
for girls over nine years old. From
another report we CLEAN that girls
were sent to school to learn proper
decency Of behavior, spelling and read
ing sufficient to read the Bible and, if
parents deemed it necessary, needle
work and knitting: to which was
sometimes added music and drawing
to complete liberal education.
Toward the end of the eighteenth
century girls over nine years old were
given some little instruction in the
boys school by the masters during va
cation, which was the wedge opening
the way for the entrance of women
to the higher schools and colleges.
And there has been no time since
when back of those who secured the
new privileges there was not an ever<
increasing number clamoring for these
privileges themselves.
In the endowment, encouragement
and establishment of higher schools
for women men have seemed to play
the greater part; they have been in
the forefront of the movement; but it
has gained force and momentum, as
alone it could, from the awakened de-
sire in the women themselves to get
all they could of education. The lead
ers worked for women, but until wo-
men worked for themselves no great
advance could be made.
One who saw the possibilities for
women in the broader education was
the Rev. Joseph Emerson of Byfield,
Mass, whose influence was epoch
making and whose pupils became pio-
neers in the higher education of wo-
men. Notable was Mary Lyon, founder
of Mount Holyoke seminary, estab-
lished that those of moderate means
might have within their reach a more
liberal education" The personality of
the founder made it a center of wide
and beneficent influence and it be-
came the model for many schools, An
other whose work was Of signal i'm
portance was Mrs. Emma Willard,
whose address to the New York legis-
lature was farreaching in it's results;
sane, comprehensive, full of high CON-
mon sense, it deserves careful atten-
ton to-day. In it Mrs. Willard asks
that institutions for girls be endowed
by the state as well as for boys, =.
to keep the daughters Of the rich from
being frivolous and the daughters of
the poor from being drudges." She Ia
ments that "the education OF one sex
has been to please the other" "Reli-
gion and morality teach that we are
primary existences," she says, that
it is for us to move in the orbit of our
duty around the lonely center of per
lection; the companions, not the sat
elites of men," Her school estab-
lished IN Troy, N. Y, was the first of
it's kind to receive state aid, thus es-
tablishing the principle of the duty of
the state to educate it's girls as we'll
as its boys and making a precedent
which was to be largely followed. It
became the model of a large number
Of institutions north and south, with a
curriculum the most comprehensive of
its time.
Experimenting as was the establish
ment of these schools, they were but
milestones on the road, though to
many they seemed the very end. Their
followers created the finishing
school," which In some parts of the
country still drags on weary exist
ence, but on the whole may be said to
be almost dead. Do we realize, won