THE

OHIO

EDUCATIONAL MONTHLY,

Journal of School and Home Education.

NOVEMBER, 1860.

Old Series Vol. 9, No 11.

New Series, Vol. 1, No. 11.

FEMALE EDUCATION-PRESIDENT WILBER.

BY REV. D. W. CLARK, D. D.

Till within a comparatively recent period, very few had thought of employing the rigid discipline of science in the education of woman. The elegant departments of literature, the fine arts, the embellishments of culture were all that was deemed requisite in the accomplishment of the most thoroughly educated of the sex. "The pursuit of all knowledge" was regarded as a misnomer in any such connection. And the idea of a woman's grappling with the problems of Euclid, threading the intricacies of logic, exploring the mysteries of Greek and Hebrew, or becoming familiar with the master intellects of antiquity, was as little in accordance with the notions then prevalent concerning the proper sphere of woman as that of felling trees or heading a troop of horse. To this idea the schools for female education were conformed. As the idea failed to recognize the strength of character there is in woman, so the school failed to develop it.

Few reasons can be urged in vindication of this mistaken system. It is already demonstrated that woman is capable of grappling with the same problems of science as the sterner sex, and that she rises from the struggle with intellectual powers invigorated and sharpened in the same way. If, then, the object of *Editor of the Ladies' Repository, Cincinnati.

education is to discipline the intellect, to give it power, why should that discipline be denied to woman? We are not objecting to what are sometimes called "the accomplishments" of education. They have their place in the education of the youth of both sexes. They are needed to give refinement to what otherwise would be a strong but roughly developed intellect. But the strength is just as much needed to precede the accomplishment, or at least to go along with it, as the underpinning is to a house. In fact, no course of training deserves the name of education unless it starts the mind into activity, develops its powers, promotes its growth, and produces thought. There may be, indeed, specific studies which may lie without the line of a young lady's pursuits. It is the same with the young man. We can not all study every thing. All we contend for, and what we think must be patent to all, is, that in whatever relates to mental discipline there should be the same breadth and comprehensiveness in the system of female education as in that designed for the other sex.

This truth, which has so recently come into recognition, is already working wonders in the cause of education. Not only have female colleges come to be recognized as a fundamental feature of our grand educational system, but they are also something more than mere shadow. They stand forth equipped for work. The actual college armament-suitable buildings, apparatus, libraries, a comprehensive educational course, and able teachers-is demanded.

The portrait of one whose whole life was devoted to the practical solution of this problem, and that, too, with grand success, can not be unwelcome to our readers. While others were theorizing, discussing the abstract principles involved, the late President Wilber, by the patient labor of seventeen years, gave to the world a practical illustration of what may be accomplished in the education of woman. The Cincinnati Wesleyan Female College is said to have been the first chartered institution of the kind-not merely in the west, but in our country. It was the forerunner of an almost countless number which now honor every state and almost every great city of the west.

But while we honor the work, let us not forget the man.

The Rev. Perlee B. Wilber was born December 21, 1806, in Duchess county, state of New York. At the age of seven he