Emma Willard 17871870

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Emma Willard (1787-1870)

• Fall 2006
• EDCI658

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Who Is Emma Willard?

• Born on February 23, 1787 in Berlin, Connecticut,
  the 16th child of Samuel Hart, a self-taught
  farmer, and his second wife Hinsdale
• Before the Civil War, schools were open only to
  boys but at Emmas time, women were encouraged
  to attend primary schools
• Emma attended district school (primary) and
  Academy, the closest to secondary education

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Who Is Emma Willard Cont.

• At age 17, Emma started to teach and demonstrated
  a natural gift for teaching
• She formed classes with higher studies beyond
  rote repetition
• She were engaged in continuous education while
  teaching and attended Patten School and Royse
  School (one of the best at that time)
• Poor girls at Emmas time had no educational
  opportunities beyond district schools
• All curricular for girls even the well-to-do ones
  stressed accomplishments as sewing, music and
  art more than academic subject.

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Who Is Emma Willard Cont.

• She took charge, in Middlebury, VT, of one of the
  first academies for women in the country
• Married Dr. John Willard, a man twice widowed
  with four children at the academy
• She began a life of a married women and gave
  birth to John Hard Willard
• She opened a boarding schools for girls at her
  home
• Her curriculum first stressed the
  accomplishments, then move on to higher studies
  of math, history, and language

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Who Is Emma Willard Cont.

• Emma believed that married life would be happier
  if the wife could also be an intellectual
  companion to the husband
• She wanted to prove that girls are capable of
  comprehending college level studies
• Teaching method
• Understand the material
• Recite what has just been learned
• Communicate the information to one another

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Who Is Emma Willard Cont.

• Emma worked on her Plan for Improving Female
  Education (Female Seminaries)
• Emma published her plan and sent it to the
  prominent people of her time such as Monroe,
  Adams, Jefferson, and Governor De Witt Clinton of
  New York
• In 1818, Governor Clinton passed a charter for
  the Waterford Academy for Young Ladies, the first
  legislative act recognizing a womans right to
  higher education
• Emma moved her school to Troy, New York

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Who Is Emma Willard Cont.

• In 1812, the Troy Female Seminary began with 90
  students.
• Emma enlarged the curriculum making higher
  mathematics a permanent part of studies there
• She believed that religious training is the basis
  of all education and give instructions on
  religion using a non-sectarian manner
• She was the first woman to offer scholarships for
  women (around 75,000)

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Who Is Emma Willard Cont.

• Emma had a special interest in teacher training
• She was a forerunner of normal school
• Her seminary did much to change public opinion
  regarding the education of women
• In 1826, the first public schools for girls was
  established in both Boston and New York
• She was one of the first educators to take
  definite steps to train women teachers
• In her effort to help Henry Barnard to promote
  common school in CT, Emma became the first woman
  superintendent in the nation

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Who Is Emma Willard Cont.

• She received a gold medal at the Worlds Fair of
  1851 in London for her educational work
• She advocated for womens special abilities to go
  beyond primary school
• When she returned to the United States, she was
  taken prison by the Confederates during the Civil
  War
• In her later years, she was busy with updating
  history textbooks

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Willards Contribution to Education

• Troy Female Academy was the first school to
  provide higher education for women when no high
  school was open to women
• Her school offered some college level courses
  such as physiology and advanced algebra and
  geometry
• Combated the belief that womens minds were not
  acute enough to handle mathematics or the natural
  sciences
• Eroded the conventional belief that there were
  differences in mental abilities between men and
  women

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Willards Contribution to Education

• The Willard Plan was the first public claim that
  education should be available for all women
• It called for liberal arts curriculum with
  essentials from mens colleges, but would be
  taught exclusively by women
• She obtained public grants for the first time for
  the education of women
• She provided training for women to become
  teachers
• She organized an alumnae network

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Willards Contribution to Education

• Troy Model was reproduced by its own graduates
  all over the country. This model incorporated a
  systematic study of pedagogy
• In this movement for the higher education of
  women, Emma Willard must be given first place. No
  other women had made such definite experiments in
  education, no other woman had so daringly stepped
  into the limelight to wage her fight for
  education (By Alma Lutz, Willards biographer,
  cited in Murphy, p. 269)

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Willards Philosophy of Education

• For the sake of the Republic, women must be
  educated. Women of education and character would
  bear nobler sons and train them for useful
  citizenship. (Republican Motherhood)
• Education should seek to bring its subjects to
  the perfection of their moral, intellectual, and
  physical nature in order that they may be the
  greatest possible use to themselves and others.
• From Plan for Improving Female Education

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More Resources on Willard

• http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emma_Willard
• http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emma_Willard_School
• http//www.infoplease.com/ce6/people/A0852287.html
  
• http//www.pinn.net/sunshine/whm2001/willard1.htm
  l

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More Resources on Willard Cont.

• Kersey, Shirley Helson. Classics in the Education
  of Girls and Women. Metuchen, NJ Scarecrow
  Press, 1981.
• Lutz, Alma. Emma Willard Daughter of Democracy.
  Washington, DC Zenger Publishing, 1975.
• McClelland, Averil Evans. The Education of Women
  in the United States A Guide to Theory,
  Teaching, and Research. New York Garland
  Publishing, 1992.