The Teacher: Essays and Addresses on EducationPalmer, Alice Freeman
Philosophy
The Teacher: Essays and Addresses on Education
Palmer, Alice Freeman
Education; Education, Higher; Women -- Education
The first endowment of the higher education of women in this country was
made by the Moravians in the seminary for girls which they founded at
Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, in 1749. They founded another girls' seminary
at Lititz in 1794. Though both of these honorable foundations continue
in effective operation to-day, their influence has been for the most
part confined to the religious communion of their founders. In 1804 an
academy with wider connections was founded at Bradford, Massachusetts,
at first open to boys and girls, since 1836 limited to girls. From that
time academies and seminaries for girls increased rapidly. One of the
most notable was Troy Seminary, founded by Emma Hart Willard and
chartered in 1819. Miss Willard drew up broad and original plans for the
higher education of girls, laid them before President Monroe, appealed
to the New York Legislature for aid, and dreamed of establishing
something like collegiate training. More than three hundred students
entered her famous seminary, and for seventeen years she carried it on
with growing reputation. Her address to the President in 1819 is still a
strong statement of the importance to the republic of an enlightened and
disciplined womanhood.
Even more influential was the life and work of Mary Lyon, who in 1837
founded Mount Holyoke Seminary, and labored for the education of women
until her death, in 1849. Of strong religious nature, great courage and
resource, she went up and down New England securing funds and pupils.
Her rare gift of inspiring both men and women induced wide acceptance
of her ideals of character and intelligence. Seminaries patterned after
Mount Holyoke sprang up all over the land, and still remain as centres
of powerful influence, particularly in the Middle West and on the
Pacific Coast.
With this development, through the endowment of many excellent
seminaries, of the primary education of girls into something like
secondary or high-school opportunities, the period of quiescence comes
to an end. There follows a period of agitation when the full privilege
of college training side by side with men was demanded for women. This
agitation was closely connected on the one hand with the antislavery
movement and the general passion for moral reform at that time current;
and, on the other, with the interest in teaching and that study of its
methods which Horace Mann fostered. From 1830 to 1865 it was becoming
evident that women were destined to have a large share in the
instruction of children. For this work they sought to fit themselves,
and the reformers aided them. Oberlin College, which began as a
collegiate institute in 1833, was in 1850 chartered as a college. From
the beginning it admitted women, and in 1841 three women took its
diploma. Antioch College, under Horace Mann's leadership, opened in
1853, admitting women on equal terms with men. In 1855 Elmira College
was founded, the first institution chartered as a separate college for
women.
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