Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 61, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 March 1917 — Woman and Higher Education. [ARTICLE]

Woman and Higher Education.

A student In Columbia university, delving into ancient lore, has unearthed the fact that one Mary Astell, an Englishwoman. hitherto unknown to fame, figured in the latter part of the seventeenth century as a writer on religious topics and also as a promotor of at least one educational Idea far ahead of her tithe. In 1694 she published “A Serious Proposal to Ladies,” in which she urged the formation of a kind of Anglican woman’s college. Nothing came of It and the London Times Literary supplement speaks rather slightingly of the Columbia student researches as set forth In the monograph as a thing not worth the labor. But Mary Astell was sowing the seed that in time grew and flowered Into great college for women in both England and America. It fell upon stony ground for the harvest did not ripen for more than 150 years, but it is something to know that women thought upon the subject of higher education that long agb.