The Winnowing of Womanhood
Shuster, George N.
October 28, 1925 THE COMMONWEAL 6IX of continental Europe, which will gradually impress opinion with the results of the growing Catholic strength. Just as those old-fashioned Protestants, who...
...And no aspect of that college is more difficult to deal with than the circumstances and aims of feminine intellectual training...
...The initial nominations by the Dail and Seanad contained far too many names undistinguished by that record of public service which the constitution requires...
...Such prejudice is generally founded upon ignorance rather than malice, and might be overborne were a frank, s~ncere, and open-minded campaign urged against it...
...not by direct and sufficient state...
...But no one will gainsay that the methods and objects of education have changed swiftly and radically in this age...
...With the in- creased demand for improved equipment and more thoroughly prepared teaching--not to mention the craving for more fastidious housing and social regalia --the sisterhoods found themselves able to muster only very limited resources...
...mitted only in vulgar and degraded surroundings in some "yellow" paper as an occasional sensation...
...There was this further practical difficulty that no purely political organization went into the field in support of any group of can-didates, and the ordinary agents of publicity had to be worked not by a party machine but by the individual candidate backed by whatever business interest he could command...
...Difficult as this choice was to an electorate accus-tomed to vote upon the violently contrasted views of two or three familiar candidates, the difficulty was small compared with that of the candidate who had to make his claims apparent to a constituency of almost 1,25o,ooo voters...
...The movement for segregation of the sexes during high school years will inevitably be extended to the under- graduate years in college...
...the Republicans abstained from putting forward any candidates and presumably from voting, and the field was left open to individual ambitions and to business interests...
...And so the percentage of votes was absurdly small ranging from 40 percent in the larger urban areas, to IO percent in the rural districts...
...and since religious communities must provide for the long and arduous education of their selected members, must reckon with old age and sickness, and must bear the loss of those whom in, firmity Or other causes remove from the scene, they are likely to find that "living endowment" is largely a fallacy...
...OF WOMANHOOD N. SHUSTER T HERE is a beautiful old Marian title--"stella feminarum"--that comes appropriately to the head of a paper which, like this, would have something to say about the higher education of women...
...The first Seanad was nominated by the Irish government on a broadly representative basis, and in accordance with the constitution, one-fourth of its sixty members retire every three years together with any co6pted members...
...If, here at the end, I may be pardoned a personal reflection, it is pleasant to state that years of familiar- ity with sisters preparing for higher degrees has wholly convinced me--who probably needed more than a little proofmof their supreme generosity of spirit and es-sential loftiness of mind...
...for such would either not be admitted, or ad...
...Yet I prefer to pass the finan- cial problem by, for the sake of a few other considera- tions which seem paramount...
...Finally the infectious enthusiasm generated by public meetings, party loyalties and poli- tical appeal was wholly absent...
...That such professions are now open to women is an indisputable fact...
...For that education, as conducted under reli- gious auspices, is by no means a novelty...
...Within these small figures it cannot be said that discrimination was finely exercised or that the pious hope of the constitution-makers was justified in anticipating a choice based mainly upon an honorable record of public service...
...First, the Catholic University of America was established to superintend Catholic scholarship and maintain appropriate stand-ards...
...It should have three or four, founded in various sec-tions of the country, and manned in a fashion that would leave nothing to be desired of excellence or authority...
...October 28, 1925 THE COMMONWEAL 6IX of continental Europe, which will gradually impress opinion with the results of the growing Catholic strength...
...Who but the scholar can guide the work...
...some, and these attempts to deal with it, made by brave sisterhoods, are among the most encouraging things on the horizon...
...Manchester, New Hampshire, has what is probably the most successful institution of this kind...
...That seems to me relatively un- importantmI wonder what we can honestly think of ourselves I What has been said indicates some reasons why the public may have confidence in the energy and ability of the sisterhoods...
...The university now has one sisters' college...
...And in practice many of the convent schools, for want of adequate endowments, have been driven to the expedient of raising fees to a height which makes 6tz THE COMMONWEAL October 28, I925 it impossible for any but daughters of the wealthy to be in attendance...
...To carry on the training of many minds, you must have money...
...Secondly, there can be a very salutary effort to remove from the public mind outside the Church prejudice against Catholic can-didates for professional positions...
...Centuries ago the example of Mary established both the great communities of feminine teachers, and the standards to which they would keep in their task...
...But it remains true that the fundamental need of every college system is scholarship of the highest pos- sible grade...
...To that education, in our time, Benedetto Croce and many another man aloof from religious convictions, con-fides his daughters, knowing that they will be watched over by immaculate honor...
...Cumann na Gaedheal, the government party or-ganization, satisfied that all the candidates were sup-porters in one degree or another of the treaty, stood apart from the elections...
...True, they had what is termed a "living endowment...
...In this connection it is worth noting that generous and far- sighted religious women have opened, here and there, self-supporting schools for girls that wish to learn trades...
...If one name appeared on the panel fulfilling this condition it was that of Dr...
...and ~t good instance of their success may be seen in the rise .and growth of Saint Joseph's College, Brooklyn, which ~--~fter a very humble beginning--has been obliged to Curtail its enrolment and can insist upon a very high grade of scholastic efficiency...
...as it seems to me, nothing can be done through the press, save long-repeated challenge, letter, protest, and query...
...For the most part they have appeared in response to a call from the heirarchy, but as a rule no attempt is made to keep them purely diocesan in character...
...This period having elapsed, a panel was formed consisting of three times as many qualified persons as there are members to be elected, of whom two-thirds were nominated by Dail Eireann voting on the principle of proportionate representation, and one-third by Seanad Eireann voting on the same prin- ciple...
...Who else can dictate standards, uphold the tradition of emancipated mind, and promote the spirit of re-search...
...Glenn Frank has re-minded the citizens of Wisconsin, is one of the great contemporary puzzles...
...IRELAND'S SENATE ELECTION By CONSTANTINE P. CURRAN T HE recent election for Seanad Eireann, the first ever held, has in addition to the interest in its result the interest of a political experiment...
...For in this extraordinary election the whole country is a single constituency, probably the biggest in existence, in which every adult over thirty years of age may vote...
...The world's respect for convent education is based upon the world's experience...
...High and fine scholarly achievement, the revivification of Christian civilization in its noblest forms, seems to me the supreme educa- tional concern of today...
...Has co-education carried of[ a victory...
...That such daughters are entitled to education in their own way, no one will deny...
...Tangible, sectional interests carried the day against disinterested...
...The spirit in which this new endeavor has been carried on is extraordinary...
...But though the sisters could not multiply themselves, they managed by dint of well-directed activity to raise sufficient funds to equip the department with a library vastly superior to what can be found in long-established men's colleges--a library of which Toledo ought to be proud...
...If I select here one or another illustrative example, it is obviously only be- cause they are well known to me...
...Just as those old-fashioned Protestants, who disliked and feared the advance of physical science in our time have been compelled, however ignorant, to accept its results, so this provincial ignorance of what the Catho- lic Church is, of its increasing power, and of its politi- cal significance, may at least be impressed through the discovery that its culture is making certain great and unmistakable advance upon the continent of Europe, that its birth-rate is not in peril--that it out-breeds-- that it thinks more strongly and more clearly, and that its opponents in thought and in international action-- such as Prussia---have weakened, while its exemplars-THE WINNOWING By GEORGE such as Poland and Italy--have, in the process of time, grown stronger...
...Perhaps--at least many think so-- the best work now being done in research under Cath- olic auspices bears the signature of women...
...But most will be done, not by us here in England, but by the logic of facts in Europe...
...The moral, social, temper- amental and educational losses of the present system are palpable...
...Douglas Hyde, the founder of the deepest cultural movement m modern Ireland...
...It is merely taken for granted that the bulk of the enrolment shall consist of gifts who reside with their parents, who have certain practical ends in common, and who do not impose upon the teaching sisters the added duties of supervision, housing, and So forth...
...Over a thousand letters have come to me from teaching sisters, many of whom I have never seen...
...A thou- sand other names are testimonials, with Teresa and Hilda at their head...
...and in every letter there was a light...
...Indeed not...
...When the Sisters of Notre Dame began their college in Cleveland, they were for the most part engaged in elementary teaching...
...While it is correct to say that parochial education is operated very cheaply, we must bear in mind that the cost of preparing and equipping a grade---or even a high school---teacher is comparatively small...
...First there was (and, of course, is) the matter of economic support...
...But after an effort, the story of which is sublime with minute and continuous heroism, the sisters gathered a faculty in which every degree is a stamp of valor, en-terprise and honest intellectual achievement...
...A good deal may be said for a non-political record chamber framed on exclusively vocational lines, but the idea of vocational councils finding place elsewhere in the Irish Constitu- tion, the present cumbrous system was adopted with, it would appear, not wholly satisfactory results...
...It owes to the business of feminine higher education a very real spirit of co-6peration...
...ment...
...Everything about these colleges is not yet perfect...
...But neither America nor the sisterhoods could forget the othersmthe girls who, coming out of moderately circumstanced homes, must learn a useful profession and practise it, nor those girls who are included in that great throng we have in mind when speaking of "mass education...
...It also seems that they need time to develop the purpose which, it seems to me, has been sponsored especially by the day college--liberal professional training...
...And therefore there has come to the front a new and highly significant development of convent education...
...Such col- leges have been established in New York, Brooklyn, Cleveland, Toledo, Chicago, and elsewhere...
...The ballot paper, measuring, twenty-eight inches by twenty-two, and standing four columns deep, appeared to him only one degree less intimidating than his income tax form...
...And if the woman's college wishes to re-main of service, it must cordially and squarely meet the new demands, knowing that older graces have given way to newer sciences...
...The average active life of a person adequately trained for college instruction is probably twenty years...
...To this were added the names of retiring senators, and the country was therefore confronted with a panel of seventy-six names from which it had to choose nineteen senators voting by proportionate representation...
...Wishing to prepare for one of the numerous pro-fessions now open to their sex, they have sought it where it is obtainable, on the same level and footing with men...
...And here again, in spite of multitudinous de-mands for energy, the sisterhoods have struggled to meet the occasion...
...When Mary Manse was founded in Toledo, the department of romance languages consisted of something like two sisters and about two books...
...But that public cannot be com-placent or merely critical...
...but in many respects this term is a genuine delusion...
...To sum up...
...And I sincerely hope the time will come when we shall have, in one or two places at least, similar colleges to prepare for law, medicine and possibly journalism...
...When, in the dusk of the Merovingian era, Queen Redegonde fled from a brutal husband to found a convent of her own in the blossomy south--a convent for the opening of which Fortunatus wrote his magnificent hymn--she carried with her a knowledge of those arts which, then, "it was meet a gentle damsel should know...
...It is something which, particularly in the case of higher education, is paid for by the public with solid cash...
...Much may be done through that very slow process of pamphlet, speech, and book by which in the course of a whole generation the theory of Socialism (for example) was gradually extended tO millions, where at first it appeared as the eccentricity of a very few...
...Nevertheless coeducation is the neces-sary result of certain stern demands which have been levied by our time...
...The college, as Mr...
...and the present tend- ency to concentrate upon teachers' training can, in the very nature of things, be merely temporary...
...Whatever people may say, educa- tion is not a freely dispensed gift...
...The great majority of women who now go to school are not sprung from a gilded stratum in which there need be no thought of a career...
...The respectable college of today has only one answer to make: the selection of its best personal- ities, at whatever cost, for the difficult discipline of self-advancement and productive intellectual leader-ship...
...Mass education" will not disappear round the corner because we think it trouble...
...All this, coming so suddenly, threw upon the shoulders of convent teachers a tremendous burden...
...The sisters themselves are quite conscious of what re-mains to be done before the ideal can have been at- tained...
...and one may venture the assertion that Sister Madeleva and Sister Mary, among others, have exemplified, with signal merit, the ideal of quality which will be of great importance in the future...
...For their purposemsurely the goal of all honest education under the auspices of Christian civilization--is, as was said by a poet who once served in a class-room, "to guide the flowering of minds in the spirit of God...
...The average lay about 2o percent...
...I have seen them toil as only they can...
...Such colleges are attended by ever increasing numbers...
...I wonder sometimes," says Sister Madeleva herself, "what non-Catholic scholars think of our apathy...
...and the Sister of Mercy who supervises it might, if she cared to, have much of value to tell the world about a big educational problem...
...to know that, under different circumstances, you are joining hands with Bede and Thomas and the myriad masters of our sacred civilizationmthese are aspects of an ideal which towers above all other visions of earth, which can intoxicate, strengthen and humble...
...to realize that you are teaching, not mere personal opinion but, in so far as your ability reaches, a portion of the supreme tradition of the human race...
...The single constituency of 1,25o,ooo voters is too big for candidates to cover, and a panel of seventy-slx names presents a difficult task in discrimination to the average voter...
...The girls' day college is not a complete solution of the contemporary educational problem, but it is a step--a magnificent step--in the right direction...
...To hold in your fingers the eager and plastic ambition of youth...
...It is distressing to know that religious women, already vastly overburdened, must wander October 28, I925 THE COMMONWEAL 6x3 hither and thither, searching under most adverse con-ditions for the requisite training...
...But Douglas Hyde went down before the interested votes of farmers' and trades' unions, cattle-men and publicans...
...Electioneering was tacitly and expensively conducted through the post and by newspaper advertisement, and met the response which the printed circular usually encounters...
Vol. 2 • October 1925 • No. 25
