Structure of curricula at Salem College
While most of the female teachers did not wed, all of her male professors were married. She also talks about how the classes were structured and designed to reinforce each other.
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with Mary Turner Lane, September 9 and 16, 1986; May 21, 1987; October 1 and 28, 1987. Interview L-0039. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Full Text of the Excerpt
- PAMELA DEAN:
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Were any of the women teachers married?
- MARY TURNER LANE:
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I don't think so. I don't think so. We had one
couple who lived on campus in a faculty house, and she taught English. I
had forgotten about her and he taught French. That was almost the only
married teacher that we had. The sociology professor, with whom I took a
course my senior year entitled "Marriage and the
Family," was not married. We never mentioned anything in that
course about the family except budget. That's about all that
course was made up of.
- PAMELA DEAN:
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It was an economics course.
- MARY TURNER LANE:
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Economics and sociology. No human reproduction whatsoever.
- PAMELA DEAN:
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You weren't supposed to know about that.
- MARY TURNER LANE:
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No, and we didn't. We knew nothing about that.
- PAMELA DEAN:
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How about the male professors, were they married? I would suspect that
they would be.
- MARY TURNER LANE:
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Yes, two remarkable men who taught Bible. This was a
required—one course in Old Testament and one course in New
Testament. One was taught by the president of the college and the other
was taught by Professor Ancome. The two men were truly scholars. The
study of the Bible was quite interesting to me. A wonderful difference
from my Sunday School study. So to look at the Bible in terms of history
and in terms of literature was a new experience and I enjoyed that.
History professors were men, and they were very good.
Somehow one of the best things that happened at Salem in my own education
was something that doesn't happen with a lot of people today.
The courses fell in a way that they reinforced each other. In my
sophomore year, for instance, I took a course in French literature, in
English literature, in European history, and I was taking an art and a
music course that all tied together, and that had never happened. So
that you looked at what a people were doing, and what they thought about
themselves and about society, and how they were expressing themselves in
art and music and literature, and it made sense. And then in my junior
year, I took American literature and American history, and the same sort
of thing came about.
And I've always had that commitment in my own teaching as
I've helped people become elementary school teachers, in the
area of social studies in particular. That I think
that you understand the history of the people if you study the people in
all of those dimensions. Now, I never knew whether Salem planned it that
way or whether it was the way I selected courses. But its a way of
learning that doesn't happen to our students today, because
they take isolated courses, none of which reinforce the other.
It's an integrated, unified way of learning that in a sense
gave me a perspective on learning that I have been able to utilize. So
that was the academic context in which learning took place that I think
made it a better learning experience than some others had been.