SYSTEM OF INSTRUCTION 
 
 AT 
 
 RUTGERS FEMALE COLLEGE.* 
 
 (proposed 1872 ; ESTABLISHED 1886.) 
 
 The very statement of the subject here announced takes for granted that Col- 
 leges are requisite for young women ; that they are to be distinct from those for 
 young men ; and that in them special modifications of the established curriculum 
 will be both requisite and legitimate. These postulates demand passing review 
 that the modifications proposed may be rightly appreciated. 
 
 The demand for higher and truly collegiate education has been awakened with- 
 in the last twenty years in our own country and in Europe, just in proportion as the 
 recognition of increased popular representation in government has prevailed. In 
 England simultaneously with increased extension of suffrage the voice of public 
 sentiment called for the establishment of a University Course of Lectures for 
 Women. At Hitchin, a location midway between London and Cambridge, an insti- 
 tution was established at which the professors from both centers met to give courses 
 of lectures. During the past year, the professors at London have resolved to furnish 
 in the city itself a course of lectures for young women ; the ladies providing for 
 themselves board, lodging, and other means of support. This London movement 
 has determined the professors at Cambridge to remove the institution at Hitchin to 
 a location within two miles of that seat of learning, so that it can be under their 
 immediate supervision. Turning to Russia, we observe that, only a few years after 
 the emancipation of the serfs, not only elementary schools, but also fully organized 
 Colleges for female education began to be provided. Returning thence westward 
 to Germany and France, the careful observer notes that some of the ablest writers 
 are urging the establishment of collegiate instruction for young women ; and are 
 arguing its necessity from the advancement which the common people are making 
 in the control they exert over political affairs. 
 
 It is needless to dwell on the fact now so palpable that, in our country, there is 
 
 * Author’s Note. — The following paper, read at the Convocation of the Regents of the 
 University of the State of New York, Aug. 6th to 8th, 1872, and published both in their proceed- 
 ings, in the N. Y. State Educational 'Journal, and in a separate pamphlet by the Regents, is now, 
 on the writer’s resumed connection with the College, republished by request. While the order of 
 studies proposed must be that pursued if College degrees are given, in Colleges for young women as 
 for young men the most thorough training for partial and special students is provided. 
 
 Regents’ Note.— In introducing the following paper the writer stated that several con- 
 siderations had prompted its preparation. A careful study of the progress of collegiate instruction 
 in Europe and America, during the last twenty-five years, had led to the conviction that female 
 education was to receive greater attention than even that now given to our best Colleges. Again, 
 after performing a personal duty to all his sons, now men, at Columbia College, D. C., he had been 
 called to the same responsibility as to his daughters, yet young, at Rutgers Female College, New 
 York City. Yet more, his careful observation as an instructor had revealed the fact that, while 
 the aspiration of female college pupils for high attainments is even more controlling than in young 
 men, scarcely one is to be met who does not rejoice at the wisdom which led the New York State 
 Legislature to restrict Rutgers College from conferring “ professional degrees.” 
 
2 
 
 SYSTEM OF INSTRUCTION AT EUTGEES FEMALE COLLEGE. 
 
 a demand not simply on the part of young women, but also of their parents, for a 
 thorough collegiate education as the “ right ” to which females are unquestionably 
 entitled. The questions incidentally associated with this demand, especially the 
 suggestion that w^omen should receive the right of franchise, add to, if they do not 
 in one sense originate this demand ; since the question whether this demand is 
 legitimate must be determined by educated women themselves, in order to be safely 
 and legitimately settled. This association of two ideas is an intimation of two 
 principles, whose relation should be carefully considered. 
 
 In the first place, it is a recognition of the fallacy so current, and yet never con- 
 trolling, that an elementary education is all that is required for the fulfillment of 
 life’s mission, both by men and women. Surely this suggestion overlooks the fact, so 
 palpable to every one who thinks the subject through, that the mission of society 
 as a whole requires the higher education which furnishes’ men of science, art, and 
 letters ; without whom none of the industrial enterprises of a community could be 
 kept up, and without whom, too, any State would soon be an anarchy. Equally 
 apparent is it that, unless a people are to put themselves in the power of an edu- 
 cated class separate from their families and community and strangers to their 
 sympathies, they must provide this higher education for their own sons. This fact 
 becomes so palpable to thinking men that colleges for young men abound ; and 
 parents have sufficient ambition to secure it for their sons. The new and persistent 
 call for female colleges recognizes another principle. The culture of women, and 
 that alone, secures and makes available the culture of men. Search where we will, 
 analyze the social influences that rule in a Turkish or English community, open 
 history at any page, and we find the truth as permanent as human nature, that all 
 efforts to secure true culture among men have succeeded only so far as female 
 culture has prevailed. The rise of an Aspasia, the inspirer of Socrates, as he himself 
 avowed, is not an exception in human history ; it is the rule. All studious observers 
 know that men, associated with women of high position in European society, have 
 been made in childhood or manhood what they are by the moulding power of 
 cultured women. The sojourner in the mansions of families who for generations 
 maintain their ascendency anywhere in Europe, has learned that the daughters 
 receive as thorough an education as the sons, who graduate from the university. 
 While the idea of higher education is restricted to a class, this will ever remain true. 
 But when the sons and daughters of the people generally claim their title to sit 
 among the princes, when a Russian emperor seeks to have an emancipated people 
 prove worthy of freedom, when in America any young woman may be called to 
 sustain the reputation of a husband occupying official station, parents will aspire to 
 give a higher education to their daughters, and statesmen will appreciate their per- 
 sistent demand. The neglect which has led to the endowments of hundreds of 
 colleges for young men in our country, while scarcely one man has thought 
 practically of the manifest truth just stated, is one of those wondrous oversights 
 from which men often suddenly awake, wondering that they should have been so 
 long blinded. 
 
 The demand for collegiate education we may then regard a legitimate one ; and 
 colleges for young women will certainly be furnished by Americans, when Japanese 
 sagacity is discerning their necessity. The question then next arises whether any 
 
SYSTEM OF INSTRUCTION A T RUTGERS FEMALE COLLEGE. 
 
 3 
 
 modification in the curriculum is requisite in such colleges. These two palpable 
 facts meet the comprehensive observer : the peculiar cast of woman’s intellect as 
 compared with man’s, and her sphere of intellectual influence as separate from his, 
 demand an education parallel to, yet the counterpart of the established college 
 curriculum. 
 
 Recent discussion in England as to increased facilities for female culture have 
 led able writers to search the annals of the past, in order to trace the distinction 
 always recognized between the intellectual cast of woman and that of man. From 
 the days of our first mother, the more earnest spirit of inquiry and the quick intui- 
 tions have been characteristic of woman’s mind as contrasted with man’s. Napoleon 
 said, after he had learned to speak frankly, “ that in his divorce from Josephine he 
 lost his best counselor ; that her instincts were truer than his reasonings ; and that 
 her first-glance impressions of men and measures were both more clear and more 
 impartial than those of his cabinet.” That man of large success in business is an 
 exception who has not found his wife’s intuitions the happy supplement, the per- 
 fect complement of his less impartial estimates and of his more tardy calcula- 
 tions. Yet, again, strength is the general characteristic of intellect in man and 
 grace in woman. The cimeter of the light-horse Saladin cuts hairs in argument 
 when the claymore of Coeur-de-Leon does not break a casque. The ox-like drag of 
 man’s heavy-moving mental machinery is outrun by the careering sally and dash 
 that sparkle in woman’s debate. No one fails to admit that from the day when our 
 first father yielded to his companion aspiring to be wise, woman has in all history 
 carried her point in differences with man. Assuredly, then, this positive power, so 
 controlling, should be guided by thorough culture. 
 
 This leads naturally to the consideration of woman’s sphere, as it is now dis- 
 cussed. That sphere, fixed by nature, never has been, and, from the necessity of the 
 case, never can be materially changed. The family is and ever must be the founda- 
 tion of all human society. If the family be regarded as an association for industrial 
 provision, we are met by the fact that every successful business copartnership has 
 its indoor and outdoor head. If the family be viewed as the school for the wider 
 relation of political association, we know that government must have its appointed 
 official representative. If yet, again, the family be considered in its higher aspect as 
 the divinely established agency for the perpetuation and moulding of a race pre- 
 pared to accomplish his special purposes, then there can be no question which one 
 of the partners is called to the indoor and which to the outdoor duties of home and 
 country ; which to the rough exposure and which to quiet moulding. It is wonder- 
 ful, now, to remark how comprehensive thinkers have brought harmony into dis- 
 cussions as to woman’s sphere, which have at times created an unnatural aspiring, 
 sure to meet disappointment. When Plato, by his Republic, had inaugurated at 
 Athens the same partial philosophy now rife as to female suffrage and official pre- 
 cedence, Aristotle called attention to the facts which always have decided and 
 always will decide. The Greeks had always, unlike the Asiatics, maintained monog- 
 amy ; because there were about the same number of each sex born into the world, 
 and because the Greeks thought every man as an equal, entitled to one companion. 
 The relation of husband and wife he regarded as always subject to voluntary choice ; 
 and the position of each in the family that of joint office ; woman, because of man’s 
 
4 
 
 SYSTEM OF INSTRUCTION AT RUTGERS FEMALE COLLEGE. 
 
 constant public occupation away from his home, being the virtual head of the 
 family, while man’s rule was only occasional at home but constant in society at 
 large. As to political relations, the same profound thinker distinguished between 
 civic right which entitles every individual to protection by law, and political right 
 which gives to the portion of the community fitted for its exercise a voice in making 
 and maintaining government. The latter demands three qualifications : the capac- 
 ity to decide by practical intercourse with men what should be law ; the habit of 
 association with men which gives discriminating judgment as to acts in violation of 
 law ; and the physical ability to bear arms in the forcible execution of law. 
 Woman’s sphere in the family manifestly unfits her for all these three offices : the 
 legislative, judicial, and executive functions of government. All history indicates 
 that woman, by her moral influence, may privately control the counsels of men in 
 their associations for public ends ; and that same history equally shows that it is 
 women who are women indeed, filling their positions as heads of families, who most 
 instinctively condemn the few unsexed advocates of female suffrage, who, from 
 personal ambition, misrepresent their sex. All discussions as to the modifications 
 of collegiate education for young women must proceed on the supposition that her 
 sphere of influence is the old established realm fixed by her nature, that of family 
 and social control, which has always most ruled the action of parliaments and of 
 courts, of armies and of nations. 
 
 Directing now our attention to our main topic — the ends and means of higher 
 education employed in past and in present times — we find a striking likeness in 
 the practice of civilized nations. Education, as the word implies, is the drawing 
 out, rather than the storing of the mind. It is like the training of the mechanic, 
 of the artist, and of the engineer, which develops, directs, and energizes natural 
 power. The mind’s powers, which require practical drawing out, are those of 
 thought and of expression ; the one that truth may be attained, the other that it 
 may be successfully imparted. The fundamental studies employed as means for 
 this development have been in all historic ages, in ancient Egypt and India, in 
 Greece and Rome, and they are now in modern Asiatic and European colleges, these 
 two as primary : mathematics and the classic languages. In mathematical reason- 
 ing, the most youthful pupil knows whether the process is correct or not ; and he 
 can point directly to any error and to its result. The merest child that, by its own 
 effort, seeks the sentiment of another’s mind through a foreign language, and is 
 daily called in translation to express that thought readily in its own tongue, is 
 employing a means of culturing both thought and expression for which human 
 wisdom has never been able to devise a substitute. The discussions in England 
 during Arnold’s day, in Russia within the past year, and of our American educators 
 during recent changes in collegiate instruction, have confirmed the philosophic con- 
 clusion that the study of the cultured classic tongues, from which all the languages 
 of Europe have derived their terms of science, of art, and of philosophy, are abso- 
 lutely essential in three respects to true mental development : first, as the structural 
 foundation of all modern cultured tongues ; second, as the storehouse of scientific 
 nomenclature ; third, and mainly, as a developer of the power of thought and of 
 expression, which can receive no substitute. Young women must either remain 
 wanting in the very elements of mental development, or these first lessons in intel- 
 
I 
 
 SYSTEM OF TNSTFUCTION AT RUTGERS FEMALE COLLEGE. 
 
 lectual gymnasia, the mathematics and the classic tongues, must be fundamental in 
 female colleges. 
 
 In all ages, however, the mere gymnasium, or provision for simple development 
 of the mind’s powers, has been made but the preparation for university studies, 
 which are to store the mind ; and these have been pursued with more or less of 
 completeness in our colleges as time and facilities have allowed. These may, per- 
 haps, in higher departments of collegiate education, be grouped under these seven 
 schools : mechanics and natural philosophy, embracing applications of the mathe- 
 matics; natural history, including plant, animal, and human anatomy and physiology, 
 with geology ; language and literature, embracing all those studies designed to give 
 practical skill in the use of foreign tongues ; rhetoric and logic, which afford 
 power in the use of one’s native language ; aesthetics and criticism, embracing prac- 
 tical as well as theoretical acquaintance with the fine arts ; civil history, political 
 science, and economics ; and moral and intellectual philosophy. In each of these 
 departments of collegiate study, not only the demands of general culture, but the 
 practical demands of her sphere, require that a young woman become proficient. 
 
 Young men devoted to any pursuit, industrial or intellectual, are trained in 
 mechanics, astronomy, and natural philosoph)' as an essential part of general culture. 
 To young women the principles of mechanical laws will be directly practical in 
 the varied oversight of the household, which are always either directly or indirectly 
 woman’s care. Very few young men are called to any practical application of their 
 knowledge of anatomy, physiology, and hygiene ; but every physician, knowing that 
 sickness and its cure are to be met in all households, and are always woman’s 
 responsible charge, feels that his prescriptions will be sure of efficiency only where 
 an intelligent nurse presides. A man of collegiate training, engrossed in profes- 
 sional pursuits, feels no hesitation in avowing at home and abroad that he has no 
 time to keep up with the current literature of the day, or to acquire facility in the 
 use of a foreign language ; but his companion, educated or not in the school, would 
 be mortified to make a similar avowal. Young men, who design to devote them- 
 selves to business rather than professional life, are urged in college to train them- 
 selves to proficiency in logic, rhetoric, and elocution, since not onl}?’ in public but in 
 private circles this acquisition is absolutely essential to meet with ease and grace the 
 tax of cultured association ; and in this the women of our day are and must be 
 leaders. For, in all history, theory might anticipate, and experience confirms as the 
 fact, that a literary atmosphere never pervades society, unless women of culture compel 
 the conversation of the social circle where men and women meet, into a common 
 channel, as they cannot in conversation as to the business pursuits that occupy 
 them ; and even here elocutionary training is found indispensable to facility, grace, 
 and attractiveness in literary conversation. In the fine arts, especially in music and 
 drawing, practically if not theoretically, it is the exception when the educated man 
 is proficient ; but with young women the exception in such attainment is always 
 marked as a defect in natural gifts or in early training. In the practical application 
 of the lessons of history, in the philosophy that underlies especially politics and 
 economics, woman is more practically interested than man ; for if man gathers 
 wealth, she controls its expenditure ; if business-men seek fragments of time for 
 consideration of the means which keep up the physical and moral health of the 
 
6 
 
 SYSTEM OF INSTRUCTION A T RUTGERS FEMALE COLLEGE. 
 
 body-politic, woman is expected to share most largely in correcting the evils which 
 unwise legislation and violations of law entail. Yet, again, who knows not that it is 
 the wife, the sister, whose intellectual and moral influence is expected to give law 
 to men trained even in the college ; and how is this possible unless man's knowl- 
 edge in these departments be woman’s also ? In each department of collegiate 
 instruction, if women be considered merely as the companions of men, woman’s 
 need is if anything greater than man’s; and the college should be as much for 
 the one as for the other. 
 
 But how enhanced this demand when we consider that woman’s culture is to 
 give shape to succeeding generations. While the wife and sister by their culture 
 give character to the social circle and thus to the real spirit of a nation and-an age, 
 it is pre-eminently the mother’s culture, not the father’s, that gives the first spring, 
 the early shape, the mature moulding to the intellectual and moral cast of the age 
 next succeeding, and thus to generations still to arise. The impressive fact that 
 while under European institutions, religious, political, and educational, families are 
 built up which for generations maintain an elevated position and a superior culture, 
 scarcely a single American family has survived the decline of the second generation, 
 is beginning to awaken the attention of men who seek for themselves, their family, 
 and their country something more than an ephemeral fame. Children of our great 
 and princely men drag down to oblivion the worthiest name, because the generation 
 that next wears it shows a lack of fidelity most vital in the educational training of 
 heirs who should prove worthy of their parents. Where are our princely families in 
 the land, whose princes in wealth and wisdom of the first generation, nevertheless, 
 so greatly abound ? Which of our noble statesmen, generals, merchants has left 
 descendants that gave increased lustre to his name? So rare is the exception to the 
 fact that the very children trained in the household of the noblest specimens of 
 American manhood disgrace the parents who should have made them worthy — so 
 rare is the exception, that the causes of this anomaly begin to awaken earnest in- 
 quiry. It is worthy an hour’s thought ; but to one, mainly, of these two causes it 
 must be referred : either the father has too much to do to gain and to maintain 
 his own high position, and therefore neglects the training of his children, or the 
 mother lacks that practical wisdom which thorough collegiate training affords. This 
 latter, as history attests, is the main error. The mere material, superficial, artificial 
 show of her family absorbs the thought and labor of its head ; which, if directed by 
 the counsels and control of an educated mind, would make her children derive 
 from their increased facilities an advance on their parents and their generation at 
 large, that would secure perpetuated families of growing power in every department 
 of life. 
 
 This double demand, then, for higher female education, the controlling in- 
 fluence it will certainly have on the existing age and its forming and growing power 
 over the next, calls back our thought to the leading point of our proposed con- 
 sideration : The Modifications of the established Curriculum requisite and legitimate in 
 Female Colleges. Our previous survey of the cast of woman’s mind as the comple- 
 ment of man’s, of her sphere as the supplement of his, and of the direct tendency of 
 the college curriculum to develop and direct the mental energies of a young woman 
 as well as of a young man, while at the same time they are more generally practical 
 
SYSTEM OF INSTRUCTION A T RUTGERS FEMALE COLLEGE. 
 
 7 
 
 in woman’s than in man’s lifelong vocation, restricts this final survey to a narrow 
 limit. 
 
 Every one of the seven departments of university, as distinct from gymnasia 
 studies, is as important in female as in male education. Within the last few years 
 the increasing importance of special training for lucrative industrial pursuits has 
 called for modifications of the curriculum to meet the wants of our young men 
 destined to different professions. A careful discrimination, directed to the special 
 vocation of woman as distinct from man’s, fixed as this her vocation is by her 
 peculiar cast of mind, may suggest modifications perhaps even more legitimate 
 than those made for different classes of young men. 
 
 To woman, grace, rather than strength, is the natural divine gift ; she is to 
 rule by gentle yet effectual persuasion, rather than by stern close-linked and hard- 
 pressed conviction ; and her domain is more purely aesthetic and moral than it is 
 logical and intellectual. This calls for another glance at the several departments 
 of collegiate study, to see in what schools woman’s culture must be more extended 
 and in what it may be less labored, than in colleges for young men. 
 
 Commencing with the classic languages, it is manifest that young women must 
 make greater attainments in modern languages than young men ; especially in 
 French as the language of common intercourse, in German as the language of 
 literary research, and in the Italian as the language of art. This demands a more 
 restricted study of the classic tongues. Here our attention is called to the fact 
 that in former times special selections were made from classic authors, as Caesar, 
 Virgil, and Cicero, required for entrance into college ; while now whole books of 
 these authors are to be passed in review. Practical teachers now find, that, for a 
 few weeks, a new author will be carefully studied until his peculiar style is mastered; 
 when the rest of the entire volume is carelessly run through, either from the attrac- 
 tion of the narrative, or as a drudgery that must be undergone. Much of the time 
 thus devoted to classic authors, many thoughtful teachers cannot but regard a 
 waste ; while some will come to the forced conclusion that, by cultivating habits 
 of careless study, this undigested storing is worse than useless for all purposes of 
 genuine culture. The female college may certainly take the position that the 
 thorough mastery of the general structure of the Latin and Greek tongues at- 
 tained in the grammar of these languages, a practical power to employ their 
 etymology and syntax by the drilling of prose composition, and a familiarity with 
 the vocabulary and idioms of the best historical, poetical, and philosophical writers 
 attained in choice selections from a few works, as a modification of the curriculum 
 of classic study, may give time for added lessons in modern languages, while 
 attended with no real loss of true culture in the classic tongues. 
 
 Turning, again, to the second department of gymnasia studies, the mathematics, 
 these two facts are to be observed. The end of this study is twofold ; to train the 
 mind to detect errors in the process of thought, and to give an understanding of 
 the principles of mechanism framed by man and established by the Maker of all 
 in the material universe. These ends are indispensable in female mental develop- 
 ment. But the practical teacher has learned that full one-half of the labored 
 demonstrations of propositions in geometry, two-thirds of the problems in algebra, 
 and like proportions of the treatises on trigonometry, algebraic geometry, and calcu- 
 
SYSTEM OF INSTRUCTION A T RUTGERS FEMALE COLLEGE. 
 
 lus are repetitions both in principle and detail ; and that they occasion, as do repeti- 
 tions in classic readings, either a listless or a careless habit of study ; securing, 
 indeed, facility from review to practical mathematicians, but giving no new employ- 
 ment to the mental powers, and furnishing no new principle for future use in terres- 
 trial and celestial mechanics. The same reduction may here be made in the mathe- 
 matical as in the classical curriculum ; and this may afford the time requisite for 
 aesthetic and art studies, specially demanded in female as distinct from male 
 collegiate education. The naturalness and hence the legitimacy of these sugges- 
 tions will appear on a moment’s reflection. As the study of the ancient languages 
 is directly subsidiary to that of the modern languages, whose words, if not their 
 idioms, are largely derived from the former, so the study of the mathematics, as 
 the ancient Greeks had learned, have a bearing on the fine arts quite as important 
 as on the mechanic arts. 
 
 It is needless to dwell on the minor modifications that the good sense and 
 observation of every educator will suggest as appropriate for female culture in the 
 other departments of college study. As already intimated, the amount of time 
 given to modern languages in female colleges must be greater than in colleges for 
 young men. It follows necessarily from this fact, also, that a different method of 
 instruction must be pursued, since the end to be attained is practical facility in 
 speaking at least French and German ; which cannot be secured without direct use 
 of these languages in certain parts of collegiate instruction, or by the employment 
 of them in certain hours devoted to college pursuits. It will be naturally suggested, 
 too, that instruction in elocution has a different end and must take a different 
 character from that given to it in young men’s training. It is not, however, for that 
 reason to be neglected ; since the elocutionary training of the college is deemed 
 essential even for those who do not intend to be public speakers ; who need, how- 
 ever, to acquire confidence, ease, and grace in communicating their thoughts in 
 private and social circles. As this is pre-eminently woman’s sphere of intellectual 
 and moral influence, while none of the special styles of elocution, as the dramatic 
 for the stage, the oratorical for the platform, or the didactic for the desk, are 
 demanded, that other general style properly called the conversational, which can 
 take on, upon occasion and for the moment, either of the features of the three 
 special styles, that which gives special vivacity and effectiveness to every popular 
 speaker in public or private, — this is to be a part of an educated young woman’s 
 training. 
 
 In closing this cursory survey, it must be apparent that the special form which 
 is to be given to female colleges, now becoming a reality in the State of New York, 
 demands the attention of our very ablest men devoted to the subject of educa- 
 tion ; not simply that of those who are giving their energies directly to it. It is 
 certain that colleges specially devoted to female education must be furnished for 
 young women. If trustees are brought to think it proper that existing colleges 
 be opened for young women, those who most long for such education will not 
 overcome that delicacy of sensibility which forbids their entrance. Yet more, if 
 admitted, and if accepting the proffer, the curriculum specially prepared for young 
 men will prove quite unadapted to the intellectual development of true women.