LETTER: At Port High 125 years ago, a young woman’s prescient call for gender equality

By SUE MROZ

My maternal grandmother Katie (Gengler) Adam was the valedictorian of the Port Washington High School Class of 1895. Katie’s husband, my grandfather George H. Adam, was mayor of Port Washington. Katie’s valedictory address at the Port High commencement 125 years ago was an inspiring call for equality by a young woman who was decades ahead of her time. Here are some excerpts:

“We must educate, or we must perish by our own prosperity. If we do not, short will be our race from the cradle to the grave. And why should not women be educated as well as men?

“Time was when no such interest existed. The women were busy at home. The knitting and cooking made seven days of every week busy ones. In addition to these labors, they were bakers, butter makers, cheese makers, spinners, lace makers and embroiderers.

“Today, very few of our public services are in the hands of women. It seems idle to argue that in this day of progress, woman is not to play a part and have a share.

“Anxiety is often expressed about women who are striving for education. What is the education for? What will they do with it? What will they become? The professions are already full. Even that of teaching will be overcrowded.

“Why urge so many into the higher education if the world goes on marrying and baking and sweeping and keeping domestic establishments running? So little use!

“The question might briefly be answered—to make them women. But it is not only this. Knowledge gives us vigor, activity and the beauty to the frame correctness and acuteness to the senses, power and truthfulness to the intellect and virtue to the heart.

“It might yet be added—to make them more interesting women, better company for themselves and others, fuller of resources for a life alone or a family life with knowledge of what is going on in the world. And can it be doubted that if all the mothers of this generation were educated, capable of rightly directing the development of young minds, the next generation would show a marked improvement over the present one?

“The disappointment about this education arises from misplaced expectations. It isn’t the office of education to upset society, but to make it better. If girls received the same training as boys, and were it clearly understood in all families that it is not a credit but a discredit for women to be idle, to hang helpless on the men, instead of doing their own work, and if necessary, earning their own living, society would not be the worse, but the better, for the change.     

“Men would find that the more they elevate women, the greater use they would get out of them.

“I think Benjamin Franklin meant women also when he said, ‘If a man empties his purse into his head, no man can take it from him. An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest.’”