The Superior Instruction of Women November 24 2014
If you google "superior instruction of women," the top two hits are our Education print and the same print over at our sister site, Handsome Atlas.
This is bad news if you want to find out more about what the makers of this map ("Charles Scribner's sons," evidently) meant, as I did. But it is very good news for anyone who'd like to start her very own School for the Superior Instruction of Women: the name is up for grabs!
Meanwhile, if you dig a little deeper, you can find a Congressional report that expands a bit on what this map shows. The institutions in question (schools for the superior instruction of women) were colleges and universities that accepted women. The Congressional report includes some hopeful notes. For example:
Every year shows a slight increase in the number of young women pursing superior courses of study, a due proportion of this increase being in the leading coeducation colleges and in the colleges for women that maintain the highest standards. For example, Boston University reported in 1880-'81 108 women students out of a total of 507; in 1883-'84 the number of women is 154 out of a total attendance of 614.
