Schooling Girls and Women

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Political/ Economy-  American Revolution stimulated discussion about how a new nation could be forged and how public schooling could be used for nation building.  The advent of common schools and their need for teachers led women to the work force.  The growing industry (late 1800’s) required clerical help for which women were considered suited.

 

Ideology-  Women were entitled to education but they were inferior to men. 

Contradiction between the Classical Liberal ideas of progress and freedom and the subjugation of women.

 

Schooling- 

Attitudes toward gender found in basic ideological commitments in religious traditions. Views of influential thinkers.

 

Women were not viewed as independent, rational beings.

 

With rare exception, girls were barred from public schooling from the 1630's to the eve of the Revolution because:

1.    It was not considered necessary to educate girls in an agrarian and frontier society when only few people required education.

2.    It was also the common belief the females were basically unsuited for intellectual activities.

Those girls who were accepted to public school were only grudgingly admitted and could only attend when boys were absent eg. 5-7am.

 

Affluent women were often tutored at home or private academies but mainly on polite accomplishments such as dancing, music, drawing, and needlepoint.

 

Most believed the only appropriate goal was matrimony.

 

From the North Carolina Journal

          When first the nymph with in her breast

          Perceives the subtle flame,

          She feels a something break her rest,

          Yet knows not when it came,

          A husband 'tis she wants.

 

Women were thought to

          1)  Have her first responsibility to provide for comfort and solace of her husband

          2)  Attempt to improve the manners and morals of society by teaching and by example, and guide the development of the future generation.

 

By considering homemaking and nurturing-teaching roles to be exclusively female, it encouraged the view that women should be educated.  This was known as The Cult of Domesticity - curriculum of domestic sciences.  However,  the belief that women were suited to teaching both opened doors (in teaching) but also prevented them from pursuing other occupations.

 

Radicals of that time began to demand gender equality.  They were led by Susan B. Anthony, Elisabeth Cady Stanton, Sojourner Truth and others.  As the Seneca Falls Women's Rights Convention in 1848, they called for not only a demand for the vote, but the opening of higher education for women.  This educational demand was realized with the opening of the Normal schools, supported by Horace Mann.

 

Vassar College- 1860 founded on the premise that women were equal to men  was a major breakthrough for the higher education of women.

 

In the 1920's there was a domestic vocational education movement which patterned its female curriculum around the old domestic science pursuits of sewing, cooking, hospitality and keeping the family accounts.

 

Commercial Education (clerical jobs increased with the advent of business increased Taylorization) became an important aspect of female high school education.  This led to the employment of women as stenographers and secretaries.

 

Women’s experiences differentiated by class and race

·       Commercial education seen as appropriate to white working class females. 

·       White upper class females studied the classical curriculum (women’s colleges eg. Mount Holyoke 1830, Smith College, 1870).

·       The domestic science curriculum was seen as a way to socialize white working class females and immigrants and African American females into (appropriate) standards of sewing, cooking, and hospitality.

 

1950’s Home Economics Textbook