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
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.
·
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