Where Coeds Were Coeducated: Normal Schools in Wisconsin, 1870-1920

Abstract

More than two decades of interest in the history of American women as college students have recently culminated in a trio of notable books. Bar bara Miller Solomon's In the Company of Educated Women: A History of Women and Higher Education in America, Helen Lefkowitz Horo witz's Campus Life: Undergraduate Cultures from the End of the Eigh teenth Century to the Present, and Lynn D. Gordon's Gender and Higher Education in the Progressive Era all use a rich variety of sources to bring to life the experiences of generations of women undergraduate students, mainly at prestigious colleges and large state universities. While the authors have different emphases, they share a commitment to making sense of college experiences through alumnae memoirs, letters, yearbooks, and works of fiction, as well as more conventional sources. Their inquiries intersect in their analyses of life for women on coeducational campuses during the Progressive Era and earlier years. Together, Solomon, Horowitz, and Gordon present a cohesive picture of "coeds" whose lives were entire ly controlled by the Victorian notion of separate gender spheres. The "outsiders" of the first generation espoused traditional values, studied hard, and remained on the sidelines during extracurricular activities. Beginning in the 1890s, women of the second generation proclaimed that, like men, they could devote themselves to "college" life; adhering to a separate spheres ideology, they created student government, clubs, and activ ity groups for women only. Solomon, Horowitz, and Gordon portray a form of education in which male and female students stayed entirely apart-education that did not warrant the prefix "co." 1 While this widespread image of female exclusion and subordina tion is no doubt accurate for elite colleges and large, highly visible state Christine Ogren is a doctoral candidate in Educational Policy Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She would like to thank Jurgen Herbst, Clif Conrad, Bill Reese, HEQ's anonymous reviewers, and David Brandt for their helpful comments on drafts of this essay.

Book Review: Going Coed: Women's Experiences in Formerly Mens Colleges and Universities, 1950–2000

“…Miller-Bernal and Poulson are in the company of other notable scholars such as Patricia Graham (1978), Florence Howe (19H4), Carol Lasser (1987), Geraldine Clifford (1989), Lynn D. Gordon (1990), Christine A. Ogren (1995), and Andrea Walton (2002) who have each added important aspects to what we collectively know about "coeducation. "…”

The idea of a normal university in the 21st century

“…The formation of teachers for mass systems of education responsible for educating all children to be loyal and productive citizens, called for a different set of values than those which had dominated the traditional university. Interestingly, also, these were the first public higher institutions that enrolled large numbers of women students in Europe and North America (Ogren, 1995). The following table (Hayhoe, 2002) lays out some of the contrasts: One further contrast that could be added would relate to the fundamentally international orientation of the university, as against the orientation towards nation and local community of the normal college.…”