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Female Education and School Competition: 1820–1850

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Nancy Green
Nancy Green*
Affiliation:
Northeastern Illinois University
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Extract

In October, 1832, William C. Woodbridge noted with alarm a phenomenon that was “producing in our own country, at this moment, a scene of contest, and slander, and falsehood, and violence, which should make the patriot tremble, and the Christian weep.” The source of this catalogue of evils was the encouragement of competition — or “emulation,” as it was then termed — in American schools. The most dangerous form this encouragement took was the awarding of prizes for scholarship. Woodbridge, though more alarmed than most, was not alone in his denunciation of emulation; the effects of competition were discussed in the new journals of education, in manuals for teachers, at teachers' institutes, and finally in normal schools throughout the 1830's and 1840's.

Type
Articles
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 18 , Issue 2 , Summer 1977 , pp. 129 - 142
Copyright
Copyright © 1977 by New York University 

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References

Notes

1. Woodbridge, Wm. C. (ed.), American Annals of Education, 2 (1832): 550. Woodbridge edited this journal from 1831 to 1837, using it as a forum for the most advanced educational ideas of the time.Google Scholar

2. Emulation is mentioned briefly by Curti, Merle, Social Ideas of American Educators (1935 1st. ed.; New York, 1959), p. 59; Katz, Michael, The Irony of Early School Reform (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1968), pp. 137–144; and Church, Robert, Education in the United States (New York, 1976), pp. 100–102.Google Scholar

3. See Gordon, Ann D. and Buhle, Mary Jo, “Sex and Class in Colonial and Nineteenth-Century America,” in Liberating Women's History, Berenice Carroll, A., ed. (Urbana, 1976), and Lerner, Gerda, “The Lady and the Mill Girl: Changes in the Status of Women in the Age of Jackson,” Midcontinent American Studies Journal 10 (1969): 5–15. For a view of related trends in Europe, see Scott, Joan W. and Tilly, Louise A., “Women's Work and the Family in Nineteenth Century Europe.” in The Family in History , Rosenberg, Charles E., ed. (Philadelphia, 1975) and Tilly, Louise A., Scott, Joan W., and Cohen, Miriam, “Women's Work and European Fertility Patterns,” – Journal of Interdisciplinary History 6 (1976): 447–476.Google Scholar

4. “Woman's Influence over Man,” Common School Journal, 13 (1851): 312.Google Scholar

5. See Riley, Glenda, “Origins of the Argument for Improved Female Education,” History of Education Quarterly 9 (Winter, 1969): 455–470.Google Scholar

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9. Some teachers rejected the use of prizes while retaining systems of ranking students. Ebenezer Bailey, for example, employed an elaborate system of merits and forfeits to arrange the graded seating of students, but rejected the use of rewards or medals. At his High School for Girls (Boston), he used no means “for promoting punctuality or exciting emulation, but such as are congenial to the legitimate objects of a school. If such means are sufficient to produce the desired effect, it would seem worse than useless to appeal to mercenary motives.” Google Scholar

10. Woodbridge, William wrote a number of articles for his American Annals of Education on Fellenberg's school at Hofwyl; Horace Mann of course was an exponent of the ideas of Pestalozzi.Google Scholar

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18. Reigart, , The Lancasterian System, p. 83.Google Scholar

19. Abbott, Jacob, a leading popularizer of evangelical beliefs, spent some time as principal of Mt. Vernon Female School, Boston; he used many illustrations from his experience as a teacher of girls in his manual, The Teacher, or Moral Influences Employed in the Instruction and Government of the Young (Boston, 1834). Emerson, George B. headed a girls' school in Boston from 1823 to 1855, was a member of the Boston School Committee (1847–48), and was a close associate of Horace Mann. His manual, The Schoolmaster, was published in 1843. Hall, Samual R., whose Lectures on Schoolkeeping (Boston, 1829) was the earliest and most widely-circulated of antebellum books of advice for teachers, was also the founder of the first teacher-training school in America, Concord Academy (1823).Google Scholar

20. Hall, Samuel R., “Emulation,” American Annals of Education, 2 (1832): 206.Google Scholar

21. Putnam, , “Prizes in School”: 38.Google Scholar

22. In the 1830's the dominant forum for their views was the American Journal of Education, edited by Russell, William, and its successor the American Annals of Education , edited by Woodbridge, William. Both of these men were prominent in the education of girls, Russell as a teacher and Woodbridge (whose father had called himself “the Columbus of Female Education” —Woody, A History of Women's Education, Vol. I, p. 154) as a publicist. During the 1840's, while a number of other journals published articles attacking emulation, the most vociferous was the Common School Journal under the editorship of Horace Mann. Mann's dislike for emulation may be traced to his acceptance of the ideas of Pestalozzi, but was undoubtedly strengthened through his long and close association with Emerson, George B. Google Scholar

23. Emerson, G. B., “On Motives to be Addressed in the Instruction of Children,” Part II, Common School Journal, 1 (1839): 373.Google Scholar

24. Ibid.Google Scholar

25. Ibid., p. 374.Google Scholar

26. See Sklar, Kathryn Kish, Catharine Beecher: A Study in American Domesticity (New York, 1976): p. 83.Google Scholar

27. Most published supporters of emulation addressed themselves to its usefulness in men's colleges. See, for example, “The Principle of Emulation,” North American Review 43 (1836): 476–515; and Wayland, Francis, Thoughts on the Present Collegiate System in the United States (Boston, 1842).Google Scholar

28. Beecher, C., “On the Best Motives in Education,” American Annals of Education 3 (1833): 30.Google Scholar

29. “Ninth Annual Report of the Board of Education,” in Common School Journal, 8 (1846): 205.Google Scholar

30. Warren, J. C., “On the Importance of Physical Education,” Lectures and Proceedings of the American Institute of Instruction, 1 (1830): 39.Google Scholar

31. Ibid.Google Scholar

32. Anderson, Professor, “Address before the Institute of North Carolina,” American Annals of Education, 4 (1834): 353.Google Scholar

33. Emerson, G. B., “On Motives”: 374.Google Scholar

34. Mann, H., “A Lecture on Special Preparation, a Prerequisite to Teaching,” pp. 172–3.Google Scholar

35. n. a., “Education of Females,” American Journal of Education, 2 (1827): 549.Google Scholar

36. Belcher, J. Henshaw, “On the Incitements to Moral and Intellectual Well-Doing,” Lectures and Proceedings of the American Institute of Instruction, 7 (1836): 85.Google Scholar

37. See also Rev. Lynd, S. W., “The Moral Influence of Rewards, in a System of Education, Founded upon the Doctrine of the Word of God,” Western Academician and Journal of Education (1837): 522; Beecher, Catharine, “On the Best Motives in Education”: 29; Hill, Joseph A., “Address before the Institute of North Carolina,” American Annals of Education, 4 (1834): 350.Google Scholar

38. Emerson, G. B., “On Motives”: 374.Google Scholar

39. Rev. Nathan Lord, who became president of Dartmouth in 1828, decided in 1835 that there should be no prizes or prize commencement orations. Hill, Ralph N., The College on the Hill: A Dartmouth Chronicle (Hanover, 1964), p. 75. Lindsley, Philip, President of the University of Nashville, allowed no student honors. American Annals of Education (1835): 444 and, Barnard's, American Journal of Education (1859), p. 33. See also an address by the President of Middlebury College, Bates, Joshua. “Intellectual Education in Harmony with Moral and Physical,” Lectures and Proceedings of the American Institute of Instruction, 9 (1840): 1–27.Google Scholar

40. “Motives to Study in the Ipswich Female Seminary,” American Annals of Education, 3 (1833): 75.Google Scholar

41. American Annals of Education, 6 (1836): 235.Google Scholar

42. The Journals of Cyrus Peirce and Mary Swift (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1926), pp. 99–100.Google Scholar

43. Barnard's, American Journal of Education 5 (1858), p. 424. Others had objected to the Boston system. With regard to its institution by Benjamin Franklin, Cyrus Peirce said, “Great men are not always wise. I consider that the cause of education, real education, has suffered rather than gained by every donation of this sort.” “The Substitute for Premiums and the Rod,” Common School Journal, 6 (1844): 268.Google Scholar

44. Warren, , “On the Importance of Physical Education”: 39.Google Scholar

45. “The Nature and Effects of Emulation,” American Quarterly Register, 5 (1832): 68.Google Scholar

46. May, Rev. S. J., “An Address delivered at the opening of a… schoolhouse,” Common School Journal 2 (1840), p. 224.Google Scholar

47. Bates, Joshua, “Intellectual Education in Harmony with Moral and Physical,” Lectures and Proceedings of the American Institute of Instruction, 11 (1840): 25.Google Scholar

48. Burton, Warren, “On the Best Mode of Fixing the Attention of the Young,” Lectures and Proceedings of the American Institute of Instruction, 5 (1834): 44.Google Scholar

49. Emerson, G. B., “The Education of Females,” Lectures and Proceedings of the American Institute of Instruction, 3 (1832): 40.Google Scholar

50. Mattingly, Paul H., The Classless Profession: American Schoolmen in the Nineteenth Century (New York, 1975); Tyack, David B., The One Best System (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1974).Google Scholar

51. It remained for a later generation to become aware that girls could learn to compete in situations, and to the degree, that social expectations allowed without betraying to the world the conflicts this caused for them.Google Scholar

52. Woody, T., A History of Women's Education, Vol. II, p. 148.Google Scholar

53. Bernard, and Vinovskis, , “The Female School Teacher”: 332–345.Google Scholar

54. Russell, Wm. (ed.), American Journal of Education, 3 (1828): 525.Google Scholar