Women -- Employment -- United States; Women -- Social and moral questions
I give in Appendix C, Table II., the list of semi-colleges, as
determined from their catalogues. Of course, it cannot be inferred from
the fact that the course is a good one that it is well carried out: but
if the course is very limited, if the text-books used are poor, if there
is no indication that the school has any library nor any scientific
apparatus, it can be inferred that the school is not of a high grade;
the above list may therefore be taken as a superior limit of the
semi-colleges in the South. On the other hand, it may happen that the
teachers of the classics and of English literature are persons of
culture and of wide learning, and that a greater number of authors are
read than the course laid down demands.
In the Mary Sharp College (Winchester, Tenn.), in 1887–88, four young
ladies completed the following post graduate course in the first half
year[26]: Seneca’s Essays, Œdipus Tyrannus, Dindorf’s Metres, Colloquia
in Latin, etc.; in the second half year two of them read Lycias’
Orations,—against Eratosthenes, concerning the sacred olive, and the
funeral oration,—the Panegyric of Isoscrates, Xenophon’s Symposium,
Lucian’s Charon, and Plutarch’s Delay of the Deity; and one of them,
Miss Ada Slaughter, read, in addition, the Ajax of Sophocles, Plato’s
Apology and Crito, Iliad (three books), Lucian’s Dream, Seneca’s
Epigrammatica, Seneca’s Letters, Ovid’s Metamorphoses (nine books),
Cicero de Officiis, Pliny’s Letters, Sallust’s Jugurtha, and Eutropius.
This college was founded in 1850, and for many years “it maintained a
course of study, a method of instruction, and plan of government far in
advance of any college in America for women.”[27] From the beginning it
has required both Latin and Greek for graduation, and a very respectable
amount of both; it thus deserves, more than the Georgia Female College,
the name of the first college exclusively for women in the country. It
has over three hundred graduates, and in 1887–88 it had 182 pupils.
The Nashville College for Young Ladies seems to be one of the most
important of the colleges of this grade in the South. It has frequent
lectures from the professors of Vanderbilt University, and students in
the scientific department attend lectures in the laboratories and
cabinets of that university. A teacher of the school is present, and
examines the class afterward. The professor quizzes in the daily lecture
course, but is not responsible for the examinations. The president of
the school writes me:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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