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Perspectives on the History of Women's Education in the United States

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Jill K. Conway
Jill K. Conway*
Affiliation:
The Department of History and Vice President of Internal Affairs, University of Toronto
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Extract

THE LIVELY CURRENT DEBATE about developing programs of study which will raise women's consciousness and bring them into American intellectual life on a level of equality with men tends to be ahistorical and to subscribe to many of the unexamined assumptions of American educational history. Among the most revered of these is the interpretation unhesitatingly advanced by historians (1) of education that coeducation automatically was a “liberating experience” for American women and that access to professional education naturally placed women on a level with male professional peers. Advocates of increased participation for women in the creation and transmission of American culture had better examine these assumptions with the skepticism which feminists normally extend to male interpretations of women's experience if they are not to devise a faulty strategy for reform through inability to perceive some of the concealed hazards of the landscape. Although cultural historians have universally concluded that the development of educational institutions in colonial America and in the young republic of the early national period played a decisive role in the creation of an American democratic culture, little effort has been expended in analysing the impact of these institutions on women's social role or on their consciousness of themselves as independent intellects. To understand the dimensions of this impact we must begin, as in all questions of American cultural history, with the colonial period and the Puritan heritage. Governor Winthrop of Massachusetts Bay gave as succinct an expression of Puritan attitudes to women with aspirations to learning as it would be possible to find in his diary entry after meeting the emotionally disturbed wife of a friend.

Type
Articles
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 14 , Issue 1 , Spring 1974 , pp. 1 - 12
Copyright
Copyright © 1973 by New York University 

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References

Notes

1. See for example Woody, Thomas, A History of Women's Education in the United States (New York, 1929) p. 1, 329 ff. and 11, 224 ff. Woody's interpretation of the impact of higher education on women's status in American society has long remained unchallenged despite the conflict between his general interpretation of the direction of change and the record of individual college histories such as Bishop, Morris, A History of Cornell (Ithaca, 1962) and Fletcher, Robert S., A History of Oberlin College from its Foundation Through the Civil War (Oberlin, 1943), 2 vols.Google Scholar

2. Winthrop, John, The History of New England, Savage, James, ed. (Boston, 1853), p. 2, 216.Google Scholar

3. On the discussion of women's place in the 18th century colonies, see Benson, Mary Sumner, Women in Eighteenth Century America (Port Washington, 1966).Google Scholar

4. Franklin, Benjamin, Reflections on Courtship and Marriage: In Two Letters to a Friend. Wherein A Practical Plan Is Laid Down For Obtaining And Securing Conjugal Felicity (Philadelphia, 1746).Google Scholar

5. Rush, Benjamin, “Thoughts on Female Education Accommodated to the Present State of Society, Manners and Government in the United States of America,” first published in 1787 is most readily available today in Rudolph, Frederick L., ed. Essays on Education in the Republic (Cambridge, 1965), pp. 27–40.Google Scholar

6. Willard, Emma Hart (1787–1870) founder of Troy Female Seminary and author of many influential school texts on history and geography. See Lutz, Alma, Emma Willard: Daughter of Democracy (Boston, 1964). Catharine Beecher (1800–1878) founder of Hartford Female Seminary and prolific writer on educational questions. See Harveson, Mae E., Catharine Esther Beecher, Pioneer Educator (Philadelphia, 1932).Google Scholar

7. On Lydia Sigourney (1791–1865), see Haight, Gordon S., Mrs. Sigourney: The Sweet Singer of Hartford (1930). For the life of Mrs. Phoebe Worrall Palmer (1807–74) see Wheatley, Richard, The Life and Letters of Mrs. Phoebe Palmer (1876). The best account of the life of Hale, Sarah Josepha, editor of Godey's Lady's Book is Finley, Ruth E., The Lady of Godey's (1931).Google Scholar

8. Oberlin Evangelist, October 8, 1862. On coeducation at Oberlin, see Fletcher, , A History of Oberlin, p. 1, 377 ff., and 11, 643 ff. Google Scholar

9. See Woody, , A History of Women's Education, p. 11, 224 ff. for a discussion of the arguments for and against coeducation.Google Scholar

10. See Addams, Jane, Twenty Years at Hull-House (New York, 1910), Wald, Lillian D., The House on Henry Street (New York, 1915), Cannon, Ida M., On The Social Frontier of Medicine (Cambridge, 1952), and Richmond, Mary, The Long View: Papers and Addresses, sel. and ed. Colcord, J. C. and Mann, R. Z. S. (New York, 1930).Google Scholar

11. On Richards, Ellen H. (1842–1911) see Hunt, Caroline L., The Life of Ellen H. Richards (Boston, 1912). For the passage cited, see Hunt, , Life, 91. Google Scholar