Goucher College - Donnybrook Fair Yearbook (Baltimore, MD)

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The English College Woman. 97' From time to time there have appeared in the magazines, articles descriptive of life in the women's colleges at Oxtord and Cambridge: but in most of these the emphasis has been laid chiefly upon the social side of student life. In response to many inquiries about the ditlerence between the intellectual standards of English and American colleges, l shall try to describe the aims and methods ot' scholarship as I have observed them in the two university centres of England. For American girls, going to college is the result of the action of certain stimuli which may be regarded as fairly constant factors in the decision of the young women or their legal guardians. First in the order of importance may be mentioned the necessity or expediency of preparation for the prolession of teaching as a means of livelihood. Another strong motive is the craving of the modern woman for a broader intellectual training, to nt her to grapple with the knotty problems which are bound to confront every serious woman, whatever her so-called station, who recognizes her responsibilities and obligations to society: and again, the eagerness of the daughters to share their brothers' opportunites to enter into that fascinating, coveted Paradise called 'cthe college litef' to cultivate that spirit of corporate unity, of solidarity which men value so highly and which women have been slower to comprehend and appreciate. Nor must one itil to include among the motives for entering college the instinct of the isolated woman already past her teens, it may be, whose taste for study leads her to seek conditions where her aspirations may best be satisfied in the midst of a body of kindred spirits bent upon the same quest of wisdom. ln a few cases, doubtless, emulation of their neighbors, whose doings they are wont to imitate, induces parents to send their daughters to college in pursuit of the latest fashion in education: in short, it has become the proper thing to go to college. In England as in America most of these motives hold good. Miss Davies, who was largely influential in promoting the higher education of women in England, wrote in 1366: Accurate habits of thought, and the intellectual polish by which the scholar is distinguished, ought to be no less carefully sought in the training of women than in that of men. This would be true even it only for the sake of the charm which high culture gives to social intercourse-a charm attainable in no other way. Apart from this consideration, the duties of women of the higher class are such as to demand varied knowledge, as well as disciplined mind and character. it it it tt it A large and liberal culture is probably also the best corrective ofthe tendency to take petty views of things, and on this account is especially to be desired for women on whom it devolves to give the tone to society. 9

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Cam,-,KW X215

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Wfhile, however, an earl's daughter occasionally goes up to Oxford or Cambridge, it is not yet fashionable for the women of the English aristocracy to become intellectual. ln tact, the very term college education, as used in this country, has no place in the English woman's vocabularyg and when we have analysed the English system of education we shall find why it is so difficult for the English to comprehend the standards of our colleges, and, conversely, why Americans are commonly ignorant of English scholastic ideals. Taking Oxford and Cambridge as types of the highest development of university education in Great Britain, it must be observed at the outset that the object of the average man who goes up, unless he aspires to honors, is the acquisition of social standing and Hintellectual polish, which the mere act of residence on the one hand, and, on the other, a speaking acquaintance with the humanities Qstill termed Literze Humanioresi are supposed to impart. But if he be a man with scholarly as well as merely gentlemanly instincts, he will read for honors, that is. he will select one subject, or group of subjects, in which definite, rigid requirements must be met, he must attain a place above the pass mark i11 a long series of examinations set at the end of two or even three years of residence, and so severe as to tax to the utmost the analytic and synthetic powers of the mind and the control of nerve forces. Moreover, candidacy for these honor examina- tions pre-supposes certain previous examinations. At Oxford, an honor in classics, iorexample, would cover Virgil's fEneid and Georgics, Horace, Cicero, Pliny, twelve books of the Odyssey, passages from Sophocles and Euripides, Demosthenes de Corona, etc.g sight translation from Latin and Greek, and papers on Grammar, Composition and Philology. At Cambridge, the arrangements are somewhat different in detail, and honor men read for what is known as a Tripos, in allusion either to a traditional three-legged stool, or to three brackets formerly printed on the back of the paper. Subjects are announced two or three years in advance, and the final examinations, covering a period of nine or ten days, are set by a special board of examiners, which, by the way, does not include those who have lectured on the subjects announced for a given Tripos. For each paper three hours is allowed. The following list is a sample of the requirements for the classical Tripos : 1. Discussion in Greek of Plato's Republic 2. Translation from Terence, Lucretius, Ovid, Lucian, juvenal. 3. Discussion in Greek of Aristotlels Politics 4. Translation from Pindar, Aristophanes, Sophocles, etc. 5. Composition of Greek lambics. 6. Translation from Quintilian, etc. 7. Paper on Classical Philology. S. Composition of Latix Hexameter. 9. Translation from Herodotus, Thucydides, etc. io. Paper on Ancient History. 11. Greek Prose Composition. 12. Translation from Virgil, Horace, Tacitus, etc. 13. Latin Prose Composition, 14. Translation from Homer, flischylus, Euripides and Polybius. 10