Educational Journey of Women: Home and Abroad

TITLE: EDUCATIONAL JOURNEY OF WOMEN: HOME AND ABROAD

INTRODUCTION

Education is the emancipation of human soul, which transcends him from all the mortal shortcomings and uplifts him from other species. There are various philosophies regarding the aims, objectives and forms of education, but each of them recognizes its expanding nature. Education is a gift--one that each generation offers to its offspring. We see in the education of the young the only gift we have that properly expresses our unconditional love. However, this 'gift' is not just received passively. The receptor has to earn it through willful activities. Indian philosophy views education with a spiritual connotation where it is regarded as a means to get united with Supreme 'Being'-- Brahma, and a way to achieve immortality. Viewed more materialistically, it is the path for social, moral emotional and intellectual development of an individual, economic and cultural advancement of a society and flourishing of a whole civilization.

WOMEN AND EDUCATION: ANCIENT PERIOD

In both ancient western and Indian civilization there were references of women's education. Yet they have different flavours, as the philosophies of two civilizations have. India and Orient as a whole, account strongly for spiritual transcendence and uplifting of soul as the sole objective of education, whereas West emphasized on more materialistic achievement of personality development, development of society, economy and culture as the aims. It is also followed in the educational journey of women of both the civilizations.

Vedic civilization of ancient India witnessed a more advanced practice of women's education than their western counterparts. Maitreyi, the enlightened lady demanded the highest spiritual knowledge from her husband-- the sage, Yagnavalka in exchange of worldly pleasure, and mouthed the eternal quest: " Yenahanamrita syam tenaham kim kuryam?"Ї "What shall I do with the things which will not lead me to the path of immortality?"

On the other hand, in ancient Greece women were educated at home except for music and dance lessons. Often they were educated by their husbands, brothers, or fathers and some Greek women were very well educated. There were special schools where they learned entertaining, conversation, and rhetoric. The purpose was mainly to sophisticate a lady so that she could maintain her family well and contribute to the early education of her children, though in ancient Greece the separation of women emphasized a separate women's culture with special religious holidays and festivals.

WOMEN AND EDUCATION: MEDIEVAL PERIOD

Victorian ideology in medieval Europe expected women to be " pure, pious, domestic and submissive". Education for women was thought to disrupt the social balance of the time. Up to nineteenth century almost in every culture and society, women did not have the right to vote. Victorian society was no exception.

In India also, too much religious and social inscriptions crowded post-Vedic period. The origin of the later Indian idea of appropriate female behavior can be traced to the rules laid down by Manu in 200 B.C.: "by a young girl, by a young woman, or even by an aged one, nothing must be done independently, even in her own house". "In childhood a female must be subject to her father, in youth to her husband, when her lord is dead to her sons; a woman must never be independent." The bold and unheeded self-quest and realization by the women were lost in those inscriptions. During the period from about 300 B.C. there was practically no education for women. Few women of the upper castes and upper classes had some education at their homes. The Dharam Sastra writers made women along with shudras ineligible for Vedic studies.

Then came the Muslim rulers with passion, lust and luxury, which hindered the development of finer qualities in common people including women. A "Purdah" system developed in existing Hindu society to keep sanctity of their womenfolk from these outsiders and their cultures and further imposed limitations on free expressions and of women and on realization of their potentialities. Buddhism, Sikhism, Vaishnavism and other parallel religions and cultures, which grew at that time, suggested some liberation but without much effect.

WOMEN AND EDUCATION: ONWARDS NINETEENTH CENTURY

Nineteenth century Europe led a pathway to higher education of women, which was eagerly followed by the stalwarts of then Indian society. Rulers of the country was also changed by that timeЇ Britain was then the pivot of power.

The European movement toward the higher education of women drew on a tradition of educational emancipation, which went back at least to the effective and respectable schools of the Moravians at Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, in 1749, and to other early schools in such places as Boston, Philadelphia, and Ipswich, New Hampshire. Female seminaries such as those founded by Emma Willard at Troy in 1821, by Catherine Beecher at Hartford in 1828, and by Mary Lyon in South Hadley in 1836 set precedents for the education of women; the woman's college movement was an extension upward of the female-seminary idea. Many of the academies, recognizing the conditions that had impressed themselves on the mind of Benjamin Rush, had turned to coeducation or had been founded as coeducational institutions; the coeducational-college movement was an extension upward of the coeducational-academy idea.'

The agitation for collegiate education for women shared the same inspiration as many of the humanitarian movements of the first half of the nineteenth century. In a world where everything and everyone was progressing, where the sacredness of the human personality and inherent rights of the individual in society were advanced as fundamental truths, in such a world higher education for women received the attention of mankind along with such causes as prison reform, education for the blind, the care of the insane, the rights of children, and the emancipation of slaves.

In 1837 Oberlin College in Ohio enrolled four female freshmen and thus inaugurated coeducational higher education for women, offering its young women not only the traditional B.A. course but also a special Ladies Course the completion of which was recognized by a diploma.' "Women are to be educated because we choose civilization rather than barbarism," one young man at Oberlin asserted.' Before the Civil War, however, fewer than a half dozen other American