The times dispatch. [volume] (Richmond, Va.) 1903-1914, 1913-07-20
18th Number of
the Ten School
Sections of 1913
BY DIR. DOUGLAS S. FREEMAN.

VIII De IOunQ large number from
schools and colleges for girls, which
represent in their present organization
the climax of one of the most interest
ing chapters in the romance of Southern
education.
To understand what these great
institutions of learning are doing for
Southern womanhood, and to appre-
ciate the part they are playing in
bringing about new and wonderful
era, one must trace their development
and see how, through the years, the
South has come to new appreciation
OF the part woman can play in the life
and culture of the race
In early Colonial days the education
of girls was largely accidental and
incidental. A new people cleaving an
empire from the forest and battling
with stubborn soil found less time for
educating their daughters than for
training their sons. Of what use would
education be in social organism which
was warning for existence? Of what
value was culture when life was at
stake? If the Colonial fathers ever
thought enough about this question to
even ask it, the answer was obvious
the education Of young women was a
social luxury with which they could
readily dispense.
The Girls Taught at Home.
Hence it was that for almost 200
years the girls of the South were
taught at home Mothers, busy with a
hundred duties and charged with the
care of many servants, snatched time
from their household care to teach their
daughters little Of learning and much
of honor. In those communities where
were located the home schools, already
described in The Times-Dispatch, the
girls were taught with the neighbour
hood boys until they reached the age of
about fifteen. Then they were taken
from the schoolroom to the parlor, and
were prepared for their introduction to
the world.
The Virtues of This System.
Inadequate as was this training, and
unjust as was a social economy which
denied to girls education which they
were qualified to receive, the old plan
was not without its virtues, and was, in
fact, not lily suited to the needs Of the
day 1t could not, of course, produce
a Southern Margaret Fuller, master of
six languages; but, then, that was not
an age when Margaret Fullers were
needed in the life of the South. Women
were needed-Women of courage, of
practical experience, of fortitude and
of strength. This system produced
women who We're suited to their day,
as the splendid achievements and the
unfaltering worth Of anteRevolu-
tiOnarv WOmanhOOd atteStS.
Education Of Revolutionary Times.
Surviving until the days of the
Revolution, this educational system
underwent notable changes about the
time the Federal Constitution was
adopted. These changes were primarily
those consequent to the social trans
formation which then occurred. The
Revolution, it must be remembered,
marked an epoch in industry scarcely
less significant than that in govern
ment. The old planters who had
sprung into prominence with the begin
ming of the eighteenth century were, in
the main, ruined by the Revolution the
business which they had conducted
stagnated during the long years of the
war, the English shipping laws and the
hostility to the new nation rendered
recuperation slow and painful. Besides
all this, the abolition of entails made
possible the division among the many
children Of the old planters the vast
property they had accumulated. Within
decade the magnificent old estates
were in the hands of dozen different
owners, and the old social regime was
dead. Wise and far-seeing men like
T opJo,o 20 y+o,. bod coon tho cirpc of
this decay before the Revolution, and
L. Il l. :. l.