EDST 200 Rud

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EDST 200 - Rud LECTURE SEVEN The Feminization of
Teaching
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• What Does the Term Mean?
• Definition for our Purposes
• The feminization of teaching refers to the change
  in teaching that occurred in the 19th century.
  Schoolteachers were mostly male at the beginning
  of the 1800s, but were female by the end of the
  Civil War.
• By the 1830s, only 40 of teachers were male
  mostly at the secondary level.
• We will discuss the implications of this for the
  times, and for our times, during this class.

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• 2. Rationale The Cult of True Womanhood
• The ideal of what women are. More virtuous and
  nurturing than men. More in connection with
  childhood through birthing and raising children.
  To be a woman meant to have these certain
  capabilities.
• Downside Women were believed to lack conceptual
  skills, nonetheless. Will discuss later.

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• European Influences
• a. Pestalozzi See Lecture Six and supplement.
• b. Froebel and Kindergartens A follower of
  Pestalozzi. kindergarten means garden for
  children, where they can grow.
• c. The Prussian Model of Education Advocated by
  Horace Mann and others for USA in late 1800s.
• Compulsory attendance.
• National training for teachers.
• National testing for all students.
• National curriculum set for each grade.
• Mandatory kindergarten. Break the mothers
  influence the state as parent.

Froebel
Horace Mann
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• Social Factors
• Need to provide public education for all
  children.
• Religious Indoctrinate with religious
  teachings recall Old Deluder law of 1647 (one
  chief object of that old deluder, Satan, to keep
  men from the knowledge of the Scriptures)
• Social, Economic, Democratic, and National Need
  to forge a new country that was growing and
  becoming very diverse.
• Daniel Webster Make them intelligent, and
  they will be vigilant give them the means of
  detecting wrong, and they will apply the remedy.

Webster
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• b. Salaries In the 1840s, teachers paid only 39
  cents more than factory girls in MA.
• Average weekly salaries, 1841 to 1855

c. Teacher Training Institutes in rural areas,
like Ball State its history.
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• d. Normal Schools in cities.
• Start of Normal School movement in Massachusetts.
• Three-year curriculum more of an emphasis on
  pedagogy, not subject matter. A laboratory for
  learning (the laboratory school) a model place
  to practice skills.
• Great proliferation of normal schools after the
  Civil War, to meet the demand for teachers.
• e. Teacher/administrator split by gender.
  Discuss.

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• Bitter Milk Then to Now
• a. Bitter Milk Women and Teaching by Madeleine
  Grumet (1988).
• b. Grumet asks how did teaching become
  overwhelmingly a female occupation and what
  impact does this have on the roles of teachers?
• c. Grumet notes the need for teachers, and to
  pay them less thus women were employed at a
  reduced salary.
• d. An unlikely proponent of this Catherine
  Beecher in 1853
• Women can afford to teach for one half, or even
  less the salary which men would ask, because the
  female teacher has only herself she does not
  look forward to the duty of supporting a
  familynor has she the ambition to amass a
  fortune. (cited in Grumet, 1988, p. 39).
• e. Womens roles to transmit knowledge (not
  create it) discipline and mold and care and
  nurture the young.