Abstract
This thesis argues that the feminization of teaching occurred during the early national period in the United States as a result of a “deliberate reconciliation” of teaching and gendered norms for women’s work in a process that was gradual, generational, and built over time from the inside out. Early American female teachers, and not male reformers, facilitated the reconciliation process, which can be understood as a series of three overlapping stages. In the first stage, women established female academies as extensions of their homes. In the second stage, those female academies implemented apprenticeship programs for training their students as teachers. In the third stage, a second generation of women from those female academies became teachers in schools across the country or began their own educational establishments. Several well-known female educators, including Catharine Beecher and Emma Willard, provide evidence of this process.
Advisor
Baumgartner, Kabria
Department
History
Recommended Citation
Blackwood, Nichole, "They Teach As They Were Taught: Teaching and Women’s Work in America’s Early Republic" (2014). Senior Independent Study Theses. Paper 5849.
https://openworks.wooster.edu/independentstudy/5849
Disciplines
United States History | Women's History
Keywords
United States, women's work, teaching, history of education, Emma Willard, Catharine Beecher, early national period, women's education, female academies
Publication Date
2014
Degree Granted
Bachelor of Arts
Document Type
Senior Independent Study Thesis
© Copyright 2014 Nichole Blackwood