The Science Education of American Girls by Tolley Kim;

Author:Tolley, Kim;
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 1666982
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Group

Some educators in northern and southern female schools promoted the study of Latin for its presumed ability to develop the mind or to develop habits of patience and perseverance. “How much patience is needed to get one lesson in Latin,” asserted educator John Todd in 1854, “or to make a single good recitation in algebra!”12

The founders of academies and their boards of trustees also viewed the classics as a vehicle for increasing their schools' status and prestige and as a means of making their institutions more comparable to male academies. For example, in 1838, the well-known educator Almira Hart Lincoln Phelps proclaimed that the object of her school at West Chester, Pennsylvania, was “to furnish females with the means of acquiring a liberal education, coinciding, as far as the varying conditions of the two sexes will admit, with a collegiate course for the other sex.”13 Almost by definition during this era, pursuing a so-called collegiate course involved some study of the classics.

Another important social development fueling the rise of Latin in female higher schools was the opening of new institutions for women bearing the designation of “college.” Some scholars have dismissed these early attempts at postsecondary education, viewing them as colleges in name only.14 Nevertheless, these institutions had an important influence on the curricula of higher schools aiming to prepare students to meet the new collegiate entrance requirements.

The first experiment in women's collegiate education in the United States took place in the South, with the chartering of Georgia Female College in 1836, an institution authorized to “confer all such honors, degrees, and licenses as are usually conferred in colleges or universities.”15 The college opened on 7 January 1839- As a new educational experiment, the college was the subject of some criticism, not only from those who ridiculed the notion of higher education for women, but from others who questioned the rigor and quality of its studies. Traditionally, the presence of the classics in the entrance requirements served as a marker of an institution's relative quality. Because Georgia Female College did not require a demonstration of classical knowledge for admission, contemporaries judged its academic standards to be relatively low. In the context of defending the college's admission policy, the college president admitted that “the standard of admission especially is reduced so low as to present an incongruity between the high character of a college … and the requisitions laid down in our plan, as published in the catalog.” Low standards were a financial necessity, he argued, because elevating them would potentially “diminish the number of scholars, and consequently, the receipts from tuition.”16

Despite fears that high admission standards might limit the number of qualified scholars, it was not long before other newly organized institutions designated as women's colleges began adding the classics to their entrance requirements. For example, in 1842, Wesleyan Female College at Cincinnati, Ohio, required Latin grammar, Latin reader, the Commentaries of Caesar, and Greek grammar and reader. Established in 1853, the Wesleyan Female College at Delaware, Ohio, offered students the choice of either a scientific or classical four-year course.

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