FEMALE EDUCATION. PRELIMINARY REPORT. Circular of Commissioner of Education, Female Education at Home and Abroad,.. SUGGESTIONS BY VARIOUS AUTHORS,.. Letter of St. Jerome to Laeta on the Education of her Daughter,. German Authorities,.. PAGE. 369 379 381 391 377 4. Social Culture,.. 2. Convenience to Parents wishing to educate Sons and Daughters,.. 5. Female Influence on the Discipline of Studies,.. 6. Coöperation of the College with the Town in respect to order,. 389 389 390 391 391 Information has been received respecting the institutions, and teachers and benefactors of Schools for Girls, named below: 1. Boarding School for Young Misses at Bethlehem, Penn., 1786 to 1868. 2. Rev. William Woodbridge and his labors in behalf of Female Education in Massachusetts and Connecticut, from 1779. 3. Caleb Bingham (in 1789) and Ebenezer Bailey (1825,) and the Education of Girls in the Public Schools of Boston, Mass. 4. Rise and Progress of the Female Academy (1787 to 1796,) with Notes on Schools (public and private) for Girls, in Philadelphia. 5. Miss Alice Lalor, and the Schools of the Visitation nuns at Georgetown, D. C., and other places, from 1801. 6. Mrs. Elizabeth Bayley Seton, and St. Joseph's Academy at Emmetsburg, Md., and other Schools of the Sisters of Charity, from 1809. 7. Mrs. Emma Willard, and the Feniale Seminary at Troy, N. Y. 8. Miss Catharine E. Beecher, and the Female Seminary at Hartford, Conn. 9. Miss Mary Lyon, and the Mt. Holyoke Female Seminary at South Hadley, Mass. 10. Mrs. A. Lincoln Phelps, and the Patapsco Female Institute at Ellicott's Mills, Md. 11. Packer Female Institute at Brooklyn, N. Y. 12. John Kingsbury, and the Young Ladies' High School, Providence, R. I. 13. George B. Emerson, and a select School for Girls in Boston, Mass. 14. Rutgers Female College, New York City. 15. Mathew Vassar and Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, N. Y. 16. Lake Erie Female Seminary at Painesville, Ohio. 17. Academy of the Visitation, near Wheeling, West Virginia. CIRCULAR RESPECTING FEMALE EDUCATION. U. S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION, Washington, D. C., 1867. The undersigned desires to obtain in response to this Circular, First, (A.) Information on the system and condition of Female Education generally in your State, or such portion of the same (county, city, or district) as you feel authorized from your knowledge of institutions, and of the subject in the same, to speak; Second, (B.) A particular account of a few Schools for Girls, which are regarded as the best of their class-public, denominational, or incorporated, and whether for both sexes, or for girls exclusively, and for resident or non-resident pupils ; Third, (C.) Copies of any printed documents-address, report, catalogue, circular, &c., relating to the general subject, or to any institution. HENRY BARNARD, Commissioner of Education. A. FEMALE EDUCATION GENERALLY. 1. Name and general condition of the State, or portion of the same to which the Return refers-as to number, occupation, property, valuation and popu. lation. 2. Any historical data respecting the home or school instruction of girlsthe date and peculiarities of the first school avowedly or exclusively for themwhen they were for the first time admitted to Academies and public High Schools date of the first Boarding School for girls-present number of institutions especially for them-any facts illustrative of their home instruction and training. 3. Citation of any law of the State which recognises any distinction of sex in the general provision for schools and education, and of any law conferring on any institution special privileges respecting female education. 4. Citation of any Regulations of the local Public School authorities, making special provision for girls, or excluding girls, to any extent, from participation in the school privileges of boys. 5. The practice in your Public Schools (naming the locality of the school) so far as it is exceptional to girls, viz.: (a) in the conditions of admission; (b) seating and classification in the house; (c) studies, books and teachers; (d) extent to which instruction in all or certain studies is given; (e) kind, and conditions of diploma, or certificate of graduation. 6. Your experience, and the testimony of any teacher who has had such experience as entitles his or her opinion to special respect, as to (1) the relative mental powers of male and female students, and their relative aptitudes and success (for example) in language (our own or foreign, ancient or modern,), mathematics, logic, mental, moral, and political philosophy, the natural sciences, &c.; and (2) the modifications and limitations which such experience has suggested in a course of school instruction for girls, having regard to general culture, and not to special training for teaching or other occupation. 7. Your experience, or the results of your observation and inquiries of institutions within your own knowledge, as to the co-education of the sexesin respect to the (a) health; (b) intellectual vigor; (b) moral susceptibility and power; (c) manners and tastes; (d) character and influence of the female pupils in after life. 8. Your experience, and the results of similar observation, as to the separate education of girls in Boarding Schools, or other Seminaries, in the particulars specified in the foregoing paragraph. 9. Your experience, or the results of your observation and inquiries, as to Special Institutions and Courses of Instruction for girls, having reference to external circumstances, such as wealth and social position, or to the future occupation, such as teaching, heads of families, &c. 10. Any suggestions on the great subject of the right education of woman. B. PARTICULAR INSTITUTIONS. Any information, as to the origin and objects-denominational control-endowments-grounds, buildings and material equipment-studies-instructors— students-domestic and sanitary arrangements-daily routine-tuition, following in general the order of topics given in the Circular respecting Academies. C. PRINTED DOCUMENTS. All documents forwarded in response to this Circular, will be preserved in the Library of the Department of Education. I. SUGGESTIONS ON THE EDUCATION OF GIRLS. BY VARIOUS AUTHORS. In addition to elaborate articles, new and old, on the subject of Female Education, we propose to bring together, in successive numbers, the best suggestions we have taken note of in our reading, by different authors in different ages and countries, as to the instruction and practical training of girls. ST. JEROME. JEROME or Eusebius Hieronymus Sophronius—and better known from his canonical title as St. Jerome, was born of Christian parents, at Stridon, a town in Pannonia, on the confines of Italy, about the year 331. Gifted with fine natural powers, he enjoyed and improved all the opportunities of learning which the best schools and the most erudite teachers in Rome and Gaul could afford, and to the acquisitions from books and living teachers, he added the fruits of the widest travel, and of profound meditation for years in the solitudes of the East. He wrote on almost every subject-defending the doctrines of the church as held at Rome, preaching religious abstinence and mortification, and obtaining a remarkable influence over the women of his time. Under his eloquent exhortations, many of the wealthy and noble ladies of Rome devoted themselves to perpetual chastity, distributed their possessions among the poor, and spent their time in attendance on the sick. Among these converts was Paula, a descendant of the Scipios and the Gracchi, who, on the death of her husband, having provided for her family, visited the holy places of the East and finally established herself at Bethlehem-building three monasteries for devout women, all under one rule, and a house for St. Jerome and his brethren. Her son, Toxotius, married Læta, a daughter of a Pagan priest, who became a convert under Jerome's preaching. For the education of their daughter, St. Jerome wrote a letter, which has been the highest authority in regard to female training with devout Catholics ever since. This daughter resided for a time with her grandmother at Bethlehem, and succeeded her in the government of the monasteries which St. Paula founded. St. Jerome is best known to the general scholar for his translation and edition of the Scriptures, styled the “Latin Vulgate," and for his "Catalogue of Ecclesiastical History." Incidents in his life and representations of his character are favorite subjects in pictures, prints, and sculpture. The "Last Communion of St. Jerome," by Domenichino, in the Vatican at Rome, is one of the most celebrated pictures of the world. |