Article contents
“Cultivating the Powers of Human Beings”: Gendered Perspectives on Curricula and Pedagogy in Academies of the New Republic
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 February 2017
Extract
Elizabeth Hamilton, author of the popular Letters on Education (1801), was a strong advocate of advanced education for females. When someone suggested to her that a “triumph of reason over the passions” might be unattractive in a woman, she retorted, “I beg your pardon; I thought we were speaking of the best method of cultivating the powers of human beings. … In this I can make no distinction of sex” [italics in original]. Most writers on education in the early republic agreed with Hamilton. The majority of educators believed that males and females were both rational human beings who needed to acquire mental discipline and who were interested in learning about the world around them. Both the curricula and the pedagogical methods proposed by educational theorists in the new republic reflected these beliefs.
- Type
- Symposium
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © 2001 by the History of Education Society
References
1 Hamilton, Elizabeth Letters on Education (Dublin: H. Colbert, 1801), 15, 28–29.Google Scholar
2 See, for instance, Kerber, Linda Women of the Republic: Intellect & Ideology in Revolutionary America (New York: W. W. Norton, 1980), ch. 7.Google Scholar
3 Sizer, Theodore R. The Age of the Academies (New York: Teachers College, Columbia University, 1964), 5–9.Google Scholar
4 Ibid., 28, 11.Google Scholar
5 Ibid., 5, 32.Google Scholar
6 Church, Robert Education in the United States: An Interpretive History (New York: The Free Press, 1976), 25.Google Scholar
7 Pond, Jean Bradford: A New England Academy (Bradford, MA: Alumnae Association, 1930), 37–38; Thomas Woody History of Women's Education in the United States, Vol. I (New York: Science Press, 1929), 299.Google Scholar
8 Brickley, Lynne Templeton makes a similar point, stating that the term ornamental “has yet to be analyzed properly.” She suggests that theorists dichotomized male education into academic and useful, and that classics were considered academic (or ornamental); except for those few going on to college to study for the professions, classics had no real utility and therefore were considered ornamental. Useful subjects for men included bookkeeping, surveying, mensuration, and shorthand. See Lynne Templeton Brickley, “Sarah Pierce's Litchfield Female Academy, 1792–1833” (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1985), 154–156.Google Scholar
9 Massachusetts Magazine, Jan. 1791, frontispiece.Google Scholar
10 Webster, Noah “On the Education of Youth in America,“ in Essays on Education in the Early Republic, Frederick Rudolph, ed., (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1965), 70.Google Scholar
11 “Address, By the Rev. Doctor Sproat,” in The Rise and Progress of the Young Ladies’ Academy of Philadelphia: Containing an Account of a Number of Public Examinations & Commencements; The Charter and Bye-Laws; Likewise, A Number of Orations delivered By the Young Ladies, And several by the Trustees of said Institution (Philadelphia: Stewart and Cochran, 1794), 25, 30.Google Scholar
12 See, for instance, “On Family Ambition,” Lady's Magazine (August, 1792), 121–123. Also see Jan Lewis, “The Republican Wife: Virtue and Seduction in the Early Republic,” William and Mary Quarterly 3rd ser, XLIV (October, 1987), 689–721; Ruth H. Bloch, “American Feminine Ideals in Transition: The Rise of the Moral Mother, 1785–1815,” Feminist Studies 4 (June, 1978), 117.Google Scholar
13 Edgeworth, Maria and Lovell Edgeworth, Richard, Practical Education, (New York: George F. Hopkins, 1801), 117.Google Scholar
14 Franklin, Benjamin “Proposals Relating to the Education of Youth in Pensilvania,“ in Sizer, The Age of the Academies, 70.Google Scholar
15 Doggett, Simeon “Discourse on Education,“ in Rudolph, Essays on Education, 152.Google Scholar
16 Smith, Samuel “Remarks on Education,“ in Rudolph, Essays on Education, 217–218; Samuel Knox, “Liberal Education,” in Rudolph, Essays on Education, 356.Google Scholar
17 Adams, John to Abigail Adams, August 28, 1774; quoted in Edith B. Gelles, Portia: The World of Abigail Adams (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992), 143; quoted in Gelles, Portia, 136.Google Scholar
18 Solomon, Barbara In the Company of Educated Women: A History of Women and Higher Education in America, (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1985), 23.Google Scholar
19 Rush, Benjamin “Thoughts Upon the Mode of Education,“ in Rudolph, Essays on Education, 29.Google Scholar
20 Similarly, the University of North Carolina maintained English as part of the formal curriculum until 1795, when it became an entrance requirement; the same was not true for Harvard until 1866. Rollo Laverne Lyman, English Grammar in American Schools Before 1850 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1922), 39–43; Edwin C. Broome, A Historical and Critical Discussion of College Admission Requirements (New York: Macmillan & Co., 1903), 43.Google Scholar
21 Rush, Benjamin “Thoughts Upon Female Education, Accommodated to the Present State of Society, Manners, and Government in the United States of America“ [1787] in Rudolph, Essays on Education, 29.Google Scholar
22 Magaw, Samuel An Address Delivered in the Young Ladies Academy, at Philadelphia, on February 8th, 1787. At the Close of a Public Examination (Philadelphia: Thomas Dobson, 1787), 10.Google Scholar
23 Woody, History of Women's Education I 340.Google Scholar
24 Rise and Progress, 38.Google Scholar
25 Ibid., 73–75.Google Scholar
26 Smith Pangle, Lorraine and Pangle, Thomas L. The Learning of Liberty: The Educational Ideas of the American Founders, (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1993), 82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
27 Woody, History of Women's Education I 412.Google Scholar
28 Ibid, 29.Google Scholar
29 Rise and Progress, 32.Google Scholar
30 Woody, History of Women's Education I 156. For an explanation of the Rule of Three see Church, Education in the United States, 14–15.Google Scholar
31 “Improvements Suggested in Female Education,” New York Magazine, Aug. 1797, 407.Google Scholar
32 Kimberley, F. Tolley, Higgins, “The Science Education of American Girls, 1784–1932“ (Ph.D. diss., University of California at Berkeley, 1996), 36.Google Scholar
33 Jabour, Anya Marriage in the Early Republic: Elizabeth and William Wirt and the Companionate Ideal (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), 11–12.Google Scholar
34 Mordecai, Rachel to Caroline Mordecai, 19 February 1812, Mordecai Family Papers, Duke Special Collections, Duke University.Google Scholar
35 Many thanks to Doris Malkmus for stating this point so clearly in a private conversation.Google Scholar
36 Norton, Mary Beth Liberty's Daughters: The Revolutionary Experience of American Women, 1750–1800 (New York: Harper Collins, 1980), 23.Google Scholar
37 Boydston, Jeanne Home & Work: Housework, Wages, and the Ideology of Labor in the Early Republic (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 41.Google Scholar
38 Norton, Liberty's Daughters, 24; Boydston, Home and Work, 37.Google Scholar
39 M.F.B., “Answer to a Father's Inquiries relative to the Education of Daughters,“ The New England Quarterly Magazine, December 1802, 156; John Cossens Ogden, The Female Guide (Concord, NH: George Hough, 1793)), 27; John Swanwick, Thoughts on Education, Addressed to the Visitors of the Young Ladies’ Academy in Philadelphia, October 31, 1787 (Philadelphia: Thomas Dobson, 1787), 22. Lynne Templeton Brickley also notes that the practical application of needlework cut across all socioeconomic and class boundaries: poor women earned their livings as seamstresses, middle-class women taught needlework, and wealthy women supervised the creation and maintenance of their household's clothing, linens, and furnishings. See Brickley, “Sarah Pierce's Litchfield Female Academy,” 160–161.Google Scholar
40 Brickley, “Sarah Pierce's Litchfield Female Academy,“ 163.Google Scholar
41 Rush, “Plan for the Establishment of Public Schools,“ in Rudolph, Essays on Education, 16.Google Scholar
42 Hamilton, Letters on Education, 15 28–29.Google Scholar
43 Church, Education in the United States, 34; Carl F. Kaestle, Pillars of the Republic: Common Schools and American Society, 1780–1860 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1983), 18,45–46, 97.Google Scholar
44 “Outlines of a Plan of Female Education,” Weekly Magazine, Aug. 11, 1798, 39.Google Scholar
45 “Hints on Reading,” Lady's Magazine, March 1793, 172.Google Scholar
46 Edgeworth, Practical Education, 143.Google Scholar
47 Solomon, In the Company of Educated Women, 17–18.Google Scholar
48 For examples, see “Female Education,” American Journal of Education III (September, 1828), 525; “Education of Females,” American Journal of Education II (November, 1827), 550–551.Google Scholar
49 Rise and Progress, 27, 34, 51–52.Google Scholar
50 Swanwick, Thoughts on Education, 7–8.Google Scholar
51 See, for instance, Edgeworth, Practical Education, 141.Google Scholar
- 3
- Cited by