Alexander Palace Forum
Discussions about Russian History => Their World and Culture => Topic started by: Finelly on August 09, 2005, 11:46:56 PM
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My great-grandmother was admitted to dental school in St. Petersburg and attended there until she graduated sometime around 1998.
I've always been curious about this fact. Was it common for a woman to be permitted to attend such a school? Was it difficult to get in? Were there many female professionals?
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oops, I meant 1898. Sorry.
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The staus of women attending institutes for higher learning was debated by Pirogov who argued that girls should be educated if only to be future mothers.
Not until 1860 was the trend for educating women initiated in St. Petersburg University. Special permission had to be sought to attend lectures in history and literature. However they had no right to participate in examinations and consequentially, were unable to graduate.
Courses were conducted in private residences, whereby prominent scholars of the day such as Mendeleev would read to their charges. To succeed beyond these limitations one had to marry and go abroad.
Russia was not alone in not recognizing women as having the same rights to education.
Only Zurich University during the 1870's accepted women as students. A few Russian graduates returned to Russia and were unable to find appropriate work because of their gender.
Sonya Kovalevskaya became the first female professor of mathematics, not in her home country, but in Sweden during the 1880's. Despite gaining membership to the Stockholm Academy of Science, such status in Russia was not open to her.
Sonya Kovalevskaya was one of the very first Russian women to obtain a European Doctorate of Science.
During the 1880's government policy prevented women who had gained their doctorates abroad, from participating in teaching in higher institutes of learning in Russia.
Bestuzhev courses were run and disbanded between 1886-9, by command of the Tsaritsa who considered that it was inappropriate for women to study, for it was better to look after the spouse, children and home.
1889 a number of women did graduate from the Bestuzhev courses and were finally given the opportunity to teach.
This is a fascinating topic. Thank you for introducing it! ;D
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The view that women were to be educated solely as mothers was also prevalent in England. The worst part about it was that when they were admitted to universities, they were severely hindered in following their studies by work. They could, for example, study law but were not allowed to practise law....so I guess it kind of made it seem rather pointless in many cases.
Wasn't Queen Victoria opposed to the idea of women doctors...or am I mistaken?
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This is so interesting! Thank you, both of you, for contributing your knowledge.
I know that my great grandmother was admitted to and attended dental school and I have a photo of her with another woman from her class. I must assume that she graduated and got a degree, because when she came to the US she was permitted to immediately open her own dental office......
She was a Jew from the Ukraine, and I have always thought that her religion in addition to her gender SHOULD have prevented her from getting in to University....I wonder how she did it?
I know that Victoria did NOT approve of women in the medical profession, yet I believe she actually met Flo Nightengale. In those times, of course, motherhood was the "only real" job of a woman. (My great grandmother raised 4 children in addition to having her dental practice....) Anything that would threaten that role would have been "just not done". And yet.....slowly but surely, it happened. There were hardly any female dentists in the US in those days, but obviously women in Russia could study.
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There were hardly any female dentists in the US in those days, but obviously women in Russia could study.
In 1897 a Medical Institute for women was inaugurated in St. Petersburg. No doubt a dental faculty would have been included.
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WHat about Smolyny Institute and others institute like this?
Education there was of high level one.
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Belochka - can you pm me or post some more info on the medical school for women? My family would like to investigate and see if there is any listing of my ggrandmother......
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After 70 years of equal rights between women and men, we , in Russia, now are
going back - a lot of people prefer let their men to work and educate themselves. :P
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lol, Hikaru.
If one can afford it, that is fine. As long as the woman has a choice.
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Why is this topic so neglected?
This is an excellent topic that deserves a lot more attention from our readers.
What was the status of educaton for women in the preRevolutionary years? It is an excellent question, and frankly, one that I have never addressed.
Hikaru is right in commenting about Smolny, but Hikarushka, there was ONE Smolny in all of Imperial Russia (yes, there were similar institutes in Kazan and in Kiev and in Odessa, but nothing like Smolny).
How many professors at the Imperial Universities were women? Were there any? How many women served in ambassadorial positions overseas...None to my knowledge, but I am not sure if Alexandra Kollantai, who later served Stalin in Sweden, was also no t in the diplomatic corps in the immediate prewar years (maybe it was her husband).
Now the Dental Faculty raises a question as to what level it was : what it a "uchilistchii" or was it of the Faculty, etc. And what about all of the "cioctri milocerdii" who worked as nurses? Surely they were trained, albeit cursorily, somewhere? Were there even tramway workers who were female, or did that occur after the Revolution? And were there any well-known medical doctoresses in Petersburg before the Revolution. Folks, I just don't know.
My own grandmother and her sisters were educated at home. They were taught French, Italian, Russian, German, geography, dancing, "comportement", etiquette, music, history of arts, "les arts domestiques" (meaning how to arrange a proper table), religious instruction and the like. At about the age of 18, they were sent to Paris for one year, to Florence for one year and to Berlin for one year to be "polished". Everything had to be "tres comme il faut"...
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Good questions.
I woudl have thought that for the first 10 years or so of women in higher education, the only possibility woudl have been to train to be a teacher. Yet it seems that medicine/dentistry arrived within the first 5 years.....
The dental college must have been more than a place to train females as dental hygienists. I know that my grandmother, when she arrived in NY, was not even required to take an examination, but was granted a license to practice dentistry based on her credentials from Russia. If women were allowed to train but not practice a profession, this seems to be a bit odd.
That is a specific situation. A more general one is "what caused the government to begin to allow women to enter into a profession"
(Another personal question for me is "why on EARTH did an orthodox Jewish couple in business in Romny, Ukraine allow their only daughter to move to St. Petersburg to go to DENTAL school? While the community, unlike your family, did not routinely send their daughters to florence and paris for training to be a "lady", middle class families up until that time certainly never considered women in careers. My great grandmother could sew, bake, train and supervise servants, read, write in french, english and russian (perhaps German, too) and yiddish. That was "normal". Drilling teeth was NOT. <grin>)
So.......where can we learn more about women in higher education and how this trend developed?
Belochka?
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Belochka - post some more info on the medical school for women? My family would like to investigate and see if there is any listing of my ggrandmother......
The Medical Institute for Women underwent a couple of name changes and is now refered to as the Pavlov State Medical University of Saint Petersburg. .
It is located on:
197022 filial 1, Lev Tolstoy Ulitsa 6/8,
St. Petersburg, Russia
Perhaps your search should commence with the faculty:
e-mail: Rector@spmu.rssi.ru
Good luck with your search ... I hope it meets with some success. :)
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WHat about Smolyny Institute and others institute like this?
I will address the Smolny Institute a little later. I have researched women's scientific education in Imperial Russia fairly extensively with a view to publishing.
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I will address the Smolny Institute a little later. I have researched women's scientific education in Imperial Russia fairly extensively with a view to publishing.
This is wonderful, Belochka, truly "obrazovanaya". "Maladetz".
But I wouldn't put forth too much of what you will publish. Publish it first and then put it forward on the site. Vot adin moi covyet. That's all.
In any case, I look forward to this.
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The dental college must have been more than a place to train females as dental hygienists.
I forgot to mention Finelly -
... the St. P Medical Institute for women has an interesting claim - it was the world's first school to formally train women in medicine.
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This is wonderful, Belochka, truly "obrazovanaya". "Maladetz".
Publish it first and then put it forward on the site. Vot adin moi covyet.
I respectfully accept your advice spasibo Alex! :)
Only fragments will appear for the time being ...
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I thought that there were other institute of noble virgins ( Blagorodny Devits) except Smolny, like an Ekaterininsky Institute etc.
Of course , Smolny was the best and the most , but there were other models of Smolny too.
( Maybe I am wrong?)
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I thought that there were other institute of noble virgins ( Blagorodny Devits) except Smolny, like an Ekaterininsky Institute etc.
Of course , Smolny was the best and the most , but there were other models of Smolny too.
( Maybe I am wrong?)
Dear Hikarushka,
No, you are not wrong. Perhaps my English wasn't clear. I apologize. I thought that I had had said that. But none, as I wrote, were on the level of Smolny, and the "blagarodnii devitsii" who attended Smolny invariably came from the very highest ranks of Petersburg families, or background, as opposed to the others.
With all of the best,
A.A.
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Please forgive my ignorance but I thought that the Smolny Institute was more of a finishing school....languages yes, but more in the line of what rich young ladies would have to know to be a success in society.
Would someone please tell us exactly what it was?
..Arleen
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(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v676/sadbear/ImperialSmolnyInstitute.jpg)
Smol'nii Institut as it appeared in the first decade of the 20th century.
Giacomo Quarenghi was commissioned by Alexander I to erect this building in 1806 - 8.
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This is so interesting! Thank you, both of you, for contributing your knowledge.
I know that my great grandmother was admitted to and attended dental school and I have a photo of her with another woman from her class. I must assume that she graduated and got a degree, because when she came to the US she was permitted to immediately open her own dental office......
She was a Jew from the Ukraine, and I have always thought that her religion in addition to her gender SHOULD have prevented her from getting in to University....I wonder how she did it?
I know that Victoria did NOT approve of women in the medical profession, yet I believe she actually met Flo Nightengale. In those times, of course, motherhood was the "only real" job of a woman. (My great grandmother raised 4 children in addition to having her dental practice....) Anything that would threaten that role would have been "just not done". And yet.....slowly but surely, it happened. There were hardly any female dentists in the US in those days, but obviously women in Russia could study.
I have been thinking about this posting since it was first listed. It raises some interesting questions, so let's have a look at them, in this case the situation in particular.
1. I believe that the poster has indicated that her family came from Romy, Ukraine. Romy, Ukraine would have been in what was called the "Pale of Settlement" of old Imperial Russia.
The Pale of Settlement was a special part of Russia (essentially occupied Poland and parts of the Ukraine) that were designed by the Tsars as areas in which Jews could live and exercise certain professions. After the partition and annexation of Poland, the actual number of Jews in Russia increased considerably. I have heard as much as ten-fold.
The exericise of the liberal and salaried professions in these areas was extremely limited, and it did not include farming the land, or in any way touching the land directly. The daily occupations were permitted -- butcher, baker, candle stick maker, etc. Entrance into into the liberal profession was so limited as to be non-existant. It was control and discrimination in the extreme, particularly in the Pale. A prospicka was needed to move from one shettl to the another. Poor families, without the means to bribe the corrupt and often drunken local officials, could not afford prospickas and the choice was either lifelong poverty or immigration, often clandestine, at night, or over-the-border.
2. The poster was kind enough to tell us that her grandmother spoke several foreign languages and that she had a mastery of the domestic arts. This would indicate that the grandmother's family was definitely a rural middle-class familiy of a certain standing. I am curious as what the profession of her great-grandfather might have been.
Thus, since it was the parents' wish that their daugther study in St. Petersburg, it would have required graciously oiling the hand of the local Okhrana for all the requisite permits and then again oiling all the requisite hands in Petersburg. But it was a door to a better world because in spite of all of the official Tsarist restrictions on what Jews could and could not do, and there were so many that my head spins, once a Jew from the countryside made it to Moscow or to Petersburg, he or she attained an almost emancipated status. Papers could be bought, a change of status could be sought and obtained, and particularly in Petersburg where there were hundreds of thousands of persons with German-sounding last name, one more German-sounding last name didn't mean much. For example, there were Jewish Rosens and there were very noble and very Orthodox Rosens. Identities became blurred in old Petersburg with time and money.
What was the catch all, however, was what is called the "kartavitz". For many reasons, the Jews in the countryside learned and heard the Russian of the noble famlies that surrounded them. These Russian nobles, approximately 200 years ago, and for approximately 100 years thereafter, spoke Russian with a gutteral French "r" as everyone what to appeared as if they had spent long periods of time in France. Ce fut la mode. The Jewish population followed in their stead. However, for whatever reason, the "kartaviz" remained embedded in the village pronuncation of Russian-speaking Jews, long after it had passed out of the pronunciation of the Russian-speaking upper classes, and in Petersburg and in Moscow, even well assimilated Jews (those who had managed to make the jump from the Pale to the big cities) with all the right spurious papers and the right and legally-exercised liberal professions, if they made the mistake of "kartavil" in front of the wrong persons, it would raise eyebrows at the least and perhaps even cause a visit by the police, and a subsequent "chat" which was never pleasant. Anyne could be banished from Petersburg or Moscow at any time and it is truly unfortunate to note that this happened all too frequently. There was no official droit de cite -- just the supposed largess of the Emperor. It was a litmus test. Lenin, for one, was never able to get over his "kartavitz" nod did Dzhersinky nor did Trotsky nor did Beria nor Sverdlov nor did Zinoviev.
3. That the poster's grandmother entered Dental School in St. Petersburg in 1896 is both a testimony to a financially-stable family, a hard-working person and someone who was decidedly upwardly mobile. She would have been able to open her own clinic and eventually draw her own series of patients. And all of this from beginning-to-end would have cost the family "gramadnii denghii". By the time 1906 arrived, she should have been by all means a stable middle-class member of Petersburg society.
BUT
4. The poster was kind enough also to tell us that her grandmother immigrated in 1906, that is after all of the disasterous events of 1905 in Russia and the subsequent pogroms that ensued. The pograms in Moscow in 1905 were horrific and under the aegis of Sergei Alexandrovitch. In his personal writings, the Grand Sergie Alexandrovitch very disgustingly refers to them as "la chasse aux juifs". No one buy no onr did anything to stop them and not even a world-wide outcry would move the Emperor to put an end to them. However, I am not aware that there were specifically pogroms in St. Petersburg that year, and frankly, please assist me, because I know, factually speaking that the Metropolitan of Petersburg, Metropolitan Antony in those years, was not part of the antisemitic wing of the extreme right wing of the Church. He protested and was rebuked by the Emperor in quite a scene that eventually led to his disgrace. But yes, the Pale of Settlement was awash with the blood of innocent people, very awash. There is no question about it. Perhaps the grandmother emigrated with these events in mind.
OR
5. The poster has been kind enough to tell us in another series of postings, right after I joined this Board, that her grandmother became involved with the Trotskyites and was invovled in some other activities thereto associated. I know nothing of the Troskyites movement in the years 1905/1906 but I was unaware that they were up-and-terrorizing as early as then. But as I said, I know nothing about these kind of disgusting elemetns. Can the others help me here?
What a path this distinguished and educated person took, from a village in the Pale of Settlement, to a Petersburg resident, to a Faculty-educated dentist in St. Petersburg to a member of such a violent group and then to a solid life in America. There is a whole interesting book to be written here. She seems to have gotten around many of the prohibitions and interdictions of her time. Maladetz!
Thank you for sharing this with us.
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A lot to respond to, Alex! I'll do a little at a time.
1. My grandmother's last name was not at all German and was VERY Russian-sounding.
2. The pogroms in Romny and Poltava took place in 1905.
3. I think that my great grandmother and grandfather's revolutionary activities mostly took place in the countryside, and I'm guessing, since some of their children were born in Romny, that they went there after she finished school, but I'm not sure........
4. I don't know what business my great great grandparents were in. She said they were "bourgeoisie" so I assume merchants of some sort. Our family has not yet located someone credible to do research into the archives in that oblast yet.
5. Given what you know about education in Russia at that time, and given what I said about my great grandmother's languages, do you think it is safe to assume that she attended Jewish schools?
6. One of her brothers served in the army but was not allowed to become an officer because he was a Jew. The other brother became a lawyer and lived in Odessa, so I assume that, he, too, attended a university. If the family could afford to send two of three children to a college,then they must have had money. And possibly influence with someone in St. Petersburg.
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A lot to respond to, Alex! I'll do a little at a time.
1. My grandmother's last name was not at all German and was VERY Russian-sounding.
2. The pogroms in Romny and Poltava took place in 1905.
3. I think that my great grandmother and grandfather's revolutionary activities mostly took place in the countryside, and I'm guessing, since some of their children were born in Romny, that they went there after she finished school, but I'm not sure........
4. I don't know what business my great great grandparents were in. She said they were "bourgeoisie" so I assume merchants of some sort. Our family has not yet located someone credible to do research into the archives in that oblast yet.
5. Given what you know about education in Russia at that time, and given what I said about my great grandmother's languages, do you think it is safe to assume that she attended Jewish schools?
6. One of her brothers served in the army but was not allowed to become an officer because he was a Jew. The other brother became a lawyer and lived in Odessa, so I assume that, he, too, attended a university. If the family could afford to send two of three children to a college,then they must have had money. And possibly influence with someone in St. Petersburg.
1. Regarding a Russian-sounding name, there are Russian-sounding names that in St. Petersburg would easily have been identifiable as "rycckii-gavariaschii" as opposed to "chistii rycckii" (meaning the names of those who speak Russian but are clearly not Russian as opposed to the names of those who speak Russian and are clearly Russian).
2. Additionally, in that part of the Pale of Settlement, particularly in Poltava, in addition to the "kartavitz" with which most likely your grandmother spoke, as most likely did all of the Jews of the area, there would have been another deficiency of the language, but this one would have been on an entire regional level : the Russian "g" would have been pronounced as a Polish "h", i.e., Gocpod would have been pronounced "h" or "hospod". This, plus the "kartavitz" would have tipped off the police in St. Petersburg to a non-ethnic Russian speaker within minutes. There would have only been issues with syntax and morphology would have automatically identified the speaker..
3. I write this only to show you additional difficulties in moving from the Pale of Settlement to the metropolitan areas. It was not as easy and transparent as moving today from Los Angeles to San Francisco.
4. Regarding your statement that an Officer could not become an Officer of the Imperial Army, that is both true and false. All Officers were required to subscribe a personal oath to the Emperor, with one hand upon a Christian Bible and then were required to venerate (to kiss) an icon of the Blessed Mother of God. These practices were instituted long, long before Russia inherited its masses of Polish Jews after the partition of Poland and at a time when Russia itself was 95% Christian. There were indeed Jewish officers but I can only assume that they must have come from non-religious families or simply they did what it took to further their careers. I refer you to the Grand Duke Nicholas's memoires in this regard. You need to remember that in Imperial Russia Church and State were not separated and the State was one with the Church and the Church was one with the State.
5. Forgive me but I know nothing of Jewish schools at all in Imperial Russia, and even less so in the Pale of Settlement.
6. As for being a lawyer in Odessa, in Odessa itself regulations only went into place in 1910 requiring that all lawyers in Odessa possess a university or faculty education and that additionally such lawyers swear a specific oath to the Emperor, not to the Empire but to the Emperor himself. It was an vain attempt at controlling the revolutionaries in Odessa, of which there were legion. Prior to that time, a lawyer could become a lawyer through training, work, or a combination of the both. So I cannot confirm nor infirm your assertion that about your granduncles attended university prior to becoming lawyers but I will say that the slots for Jewish students in a law faculty in Imperial Russia were extremely few and would have required a great deal of money and that after 1910 they would have also had to subscribe to the same processes as an Officer. Remember, please, that the law in Russia was essentially the Emperor himself.
7. The influence in St. Petersburg of which you speak would have been a most likely an influence of money, meaning, you pay enough, we deliver. Unfortunate but true -- it was the way that the ultimate Governments of the Emperor did business. And it was an easy way for the corrupt Petersburg officials to make money -- they knew perfectly well that they were legitimizing the arrival in of City of, say, in this particular case, Ukrainian Jews, and that all of this was a violation of Russian Imperial Law, but their hands went out and the money went in. It is something that most of the great writers have written about.
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From my great uncle's memoirs (unpublished): He states that he was enlisted into the Czar's army and excelled at sharp-shooting. He was also a talented musician, which apparently had some meaning in his military division. At any rate, an officer from another division, approached my great-uncle's commander and suggested that he be made a candidate for officer training.
"You can't be serious!" exclaimed the commander. "That dirty Jew?"
"Oh", said the visitor. "Well, of course not, then."
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The comments about accents reminds me so much of the situation in Sweden, where the people in the south have horrible pronounciation.......
Of course, they claim that WE in the north do!!!!!!!
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From my great uncle's memoirs (unpublished): He states that he was enlisted into the Czar's army and excelled at sharp-shooting. He was also a talented musician, which apparently had some meaning in his military division. At any rate, an officer from another division, approached my great-uncle's commander and suggested that he be made a candidate for officer training.
"You can't be serious!" exclaimed the commander. "That dirty Jew?"
"Oh", said the visitor. "Well, of course not, then."
By all Imperial millitary standards of protocol, an officer from another division would not have suggested that subordinate in another division be made a candidate for officer training. Additionally, candidates for officer training were decided on a much higher level than that and would have depended upon other factors.
In any case, this thread is NOT about antisemitism in the Russia nor is it about the treatment of Jews in the Imperial Russian Army. The topic of the discussion is "Women and Higher Education" and perhaps we might return to this topic.
This particular poster has a habit in every single posting of somehow managing to return the discussion to antisemitism in Russia and should he/she wish to discuss this matter perhaps it might be done so in the appropriate forum.
Forum Administrator, your kind comments here please?
To wit:
Antisemitism in the Orthodox Church discussion.
Antisemitism in the Role of the Russian Orthodox Church discussion
Antisemitism in Education in Imperial Russia discussion.
Antisemitism in Women and High Education discussion.
Antisemitism in Required Reading in Russian Literature discussion.
And God knows elsewhere.
Ad Infinitum. Please! Enough!
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Oh AlexP, you are the one who deviated the path of this discussion. What started as a question about women in higher education led to you commenting on the accents of people from the Ukraine, how Jews had to bribe people to get places, etc. etc.
<shrug>
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Oh AlexP, you are the one who deviated the path of this discussion. What started as a question about women in higher education led to you commenting on the accents of people from the Ukraine, how Jews had to bribe people to get places, etc. etc.
<shrug>
Again, another magnificent distortion. Read my postings. I was helping you to attempt to recreate the path of how your great-grandmother might have ventured from the Podol to St. Petersburg in those days and how she might have obtained an education. It was a well-reasoned, scholarly, erudite presentation.
I maintain my point. Please stop hijacking forums and topics. And in any case, please do not debase other posters. I have just across the complete hijacking and debasing of poor Blanche's question about Alexandra's feet, and while it may not be a question for the Russian Academy of Sciences, it is far from being the silliest one around here. And you and your cohors completely buffonized it.
So enough is enough. Respect the topic and respect other posters' choice of their own topics. We surely respect yours.
I do not think that is such a difficult request to make of a mature person who exercises a liberal profession. If I am wrong, please let me know.
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Alex, I started this topic. Since you believe that the authors of a topic have the ultimate say in what is discussed, why not leave this alone.
Frankly, the fact that you take issue with every word I write, and the basis for your taking issue, is obvious to all. Too transparent. So let's move on, stop complaining, and either address the issue or ignore this thread completely.
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Alex, I started this topic. Since you believe that the authors of a topic have the ultimate say in what is discussed, why not leave this alone.
Frankly, the fact that you take issue with every word I write, and the basis for your taking issue, is obvious to all. Too transparent. So let's move on, stop complaining, and either address the issue or ignore this thread completely.
Indeed, your post is well-taken. I shall leave you to your largess in this topic.
And I trust that you will respect all of the other posters in their respective topics as well.
Someone once said : "Do unto others as you would have that they do unto you".
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May I respectfully remind you that this is not an appropriate place in which to enter into an argument such as this.
Whilst I can understand how you arrived at this point, the topic is 'Women and Higher Education' and I would be most grateful if we could return to that.
Should you wish to settle your differences of opinion concerning religion may I please ask you to avail yourselves of the private message function.
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Sorry, Martyn, but AlexP, by order of the FA, is forbidden to pm me.
However, I think he has agreed to stop posting here.
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I am not apportioning blame, I am requesting you to return to the topic.
PLease do so, or find another discussion in which to participate.
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During the 19th century in America many people believed that if a woman were to study at advanced levels, her brain would draw too much blood away from her womb, leaving her infertile or likely to produce inferior offspring.
Was the disapproval of women in higher education in 19th c Russia born of similar ideas?
Peace
Nadezhda
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"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." --Albert Einstein