me of the family have cake and pudding?
Something less than a hundred years ago, similar questions were vexing
the American public. Those were the days when Mary Lyon fought her
winning battle against the champions of the slogan "The home is woman's
sphere," the days in which the pioneers of women's education
foregathered from the rocky farmslopes of New England, and Mt. Holyoke
came into being. Mary Smith, who is duly born, baptized, vaccinated, and
registered for Vassar, the last requiring no more volition on her part
than the first, realizes little of the ancient struggle that has made
her privilege a matter of course.
They are much the same old arguments that must be gone over again to
justify college education for our sisters of the East. Rather say
argument, in the singular, for there is just one that holds, and that is
the possibilities for service that such education opens up.
High schools there must be in India, but who will teach them? American
and English women have never yet gone out to India in such numbers as to
staff the schools they have founded, nor would there be funds to support
them if they did. Travel through India to-day and you will find girls'
schools staffed either with under-qualified women teachers, or else with
men whose academic qualifications are satisfactory, but who, being men,
cannot fill the place where a woman is obviously needed. What could be
more contradictory than to find a Christian girls' school, supported
largely by American money, but staffed by Hindu men, just because no
Christian women with necessary qualifications are available?
Hospitals there must be, but where are the doctors to conduct them? Here
again, foreign doctors can fill the need of the merest fraction of
India's suffering womankind. But the American doctor can multiply
herself in just one way. Give her a Medical College, well equipped and
staffed, and a body of Indian girls with a sufficient background of
general education, and instead of one doctor and one hospital you will
find countless centres of healing springing up in city and small town
and along the roadside where the doctor passes by.
Leadership there must be among the women of the New India. Where will it
be found but among those women whose powers of initiative have been
developed by the four years of life in a Christian college? Church
workers, pastors' wives, social workers, child welfare promoters, where
can you find them in India? Here and
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