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Science for Ladies, Classics for Gentlemen: A Comparative Analysis of Scientific Subjects in the Curricula of Boys' and Girls' Secondary Schools in the United States, 1794–1850

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Kim Tolley
Kim Tolley*
Affiliation:
University of California at Berkeley
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In 1864, the British government established the Taunton Commission to conduct an inquiry into the education of middle-class boys. Concerned about the status of the arts and sciences in the schools, the Commission directed its appointed inspectors to pay particular attention to scientific subjects. Almost as an afterthought, the Commission decided to investigate the conditions in girls' schools as well. From 1864 to 1868, inspectors traveled throughout Great Britain, observing classes, interviewing headmasters and headmistresses, and examining students in private, proprietary, and endowed schools. To their surprise, members of the Taunton Commission discovered that while the sciences maintained at best a marginal toehold in boys' schools, they were quite popular in girls' schools. While a boy's education centered around Latin and Greek, a girl's education included ample doses of botany, chemistry, natural philosophy, natural history, and physiology.

Type
Articles
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 36 , Issue 2 , Summer 1996 , pp. 129 - 153
Copyright
Copyright © 1996 by the History of Education Society 

References

1. Schools Inquiry Commission: General Reports of the Assistant Commissioners, Southern Counties, VII (1867–68), [3966-VI] XXVIII, mf. 74.275–81, 71, 206–7; Phillips, Patricia, The Scientific Lady: A Social History of Women's Scientific Interests, 1520–1918 (London, 1990), 236. According to Phillips, the commission defined members of the middle classes as those occupying houses assessed at an annual value of twenty pounds or more. There were estimated to be between 974,000 children between the ages of five and twenty in this social class in approximately ten thousand educational institutions, most of which catered to boys.Google Scholar

2. The term middle class is used loosely here to denote those members of society able to afford the tuition rates of private secondary schools during the early nineteenth century.Google Scholar

3. See Woody, Thomas, A History of Women's Education in the United States (New York, 1980; 1929), 1: 563–65. Although Woody did not specify the institutions represented in his collection of school catalogs, a perusal of his bibliography reveals catalogs from twenty states. See Warner, Deborah Jean, “Science Education for Women in Antebellum America,” Isis 69 (Mar. 1978): 58–67; Farnham, Christie, The Education of the Southern Belle: Higher Education and Student Socialization in the Antebellum South (New York, 1994). Farnham argues that the science courses offered in southern women's colleges compared favorably with those offered in men's colleges. Her conclusion must be interpreted with caution, however, since it appears to be based on a small sample of primary sources and does not include an analytical comparison of the actual textbooks used in these institutions.Google Scholar

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9. See “Jefferson to J. Bannister Jr., October 15, 1785,” in A Documentary History of Education in the South, ed. Knight, , 2: 4–5. While Jefferson did not advocate a classical education for girls, such prominent educators as Catharine Beecher and Mary Lyon thought that girls should study the classics. For a general overview of women's education in the early nineteenth century, see Burstyn, Joan N. and Mulvihill, Thalia M., “The History of Women's Education: North America,” in The International Encyclopedia of Education , ed. Husén, Torsten and Neville Postlethwaite, T. (Oxford, Eng., 1994), 2: 6761–65. Woody, , A History of Women's Education, 1: 413, 563–65. Woody noted that Latin was offered in the more prestigious female seminaries after 1810. His sample of 162 school catalogs reveals that more than 50 percent of the schools listed Latin between 1810 and 1870, and approximately 25 percent listed Greek grammar. However, Woody's sample should be interpreted with caution, since only the larger and wealthier schools would have published catalogs during this period.Google Scholar

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13. For a discussion on the influence of these female educators, see Scott, Anne Firor, “The Ever Widening Circle: The Diffusion of Feminist Values from the Troy Female Seminary, 1822–1872” in History of Education Quarterly 19 (Spring 1979): 3–25; Warner, , “Science Education for Women in Antebellum America,” 58–67.Google Scholar

14. Marr, , Old New England Academies Google Scholar

15. Emma Willard and her sister Almira Lincoln Hart Phelps actively promoted the idea that a woman's education should include solid subjects. See Mulhern, , A History of Secondary Education in Pennsylvania, 394; Woody, , A History of Women's Education in the United States, 1: 108ff.Google Scholar

16. The samples of newspaper advertisements used in this study were selected on the basis of the specificity of their content. In many cases, it was not possible to tell from the advertisement whether the school served males or females, or both. Nor, in all cases, was the entire course of study provided. Some advertisers claimed to offer “the usual branches of education” in their schools, and such advertisements were too vague to be included in the samples. The samples included here are drawn from advertisements that clearly specified the gender served in the school and provided a detailed course of study.Google Scholar

17. It is a fairly common misconception among historians of education that the so-called ornamental subjects were a staple in the schooling of early nineteenth-century American girls. This interpretation of the place of ornamentals in female education has been preserved for decades in Thomas Woody's 1929 study of female education, in which Woody claimed that “the [female] seminary continued to offer the friperies of filigree, painting, music, and drawing in far greater profusion” from the time of Emma Willard and Catharine Beecher. See Woody, , A History of Women's Education in the United States, 1: 415.Google Scholar

18. Raleigh Register, 7 July 1831, quoted in North Carolina Schools and Academies, 1790–1840: A Documentary History, ed. Coon, Charles L. (Raleigh, N.C., 1915), 533.Google Scholar

19. Historian Christie Farnham argues that Latin appears more frequently in southern girls' schools than in northern institutions. See Farnham, , The Education of the Southern Belle, 28–32. However, the sources examined for this study do not support Farnham's thesis. Newspaper advertisements published in North Carolina and Virginia reveal that relatively few girls' schools in these two southern states offered Latin. During the decade from 1810 to 1830, only seven (19 percent) of a sample of thirty-six North Carolina girls' schools included Latin in their advertised courses of study. Similarly, only four (13 percent) of a sample of thirty-one Virginia girls' schools mentioned Latin in advertisements published from 1835 to 1838. In contrast, ten (42 percent) out of a sample of twenty-four girls' schools in Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York, and Maryland advertised Latin from 1820 to 1842. See discussion in Tolley, Kim, “The Science Education of American Girls, 1784–1932” (Ed.D. diss., University of California at Berkeley, 1996), ch. 8. Tarborough advertisement quoted in North Carolina Schools and Academies , ed. Coon, , 79; New Haven prospectus quoted in Butler, Vera M., Education as Revealed by New England Newspapers prior to 1850 (Ph.D. diss., Temple University, 1935), 188.Google Scholar

20. Trollope, Frances Milton, Domestic Manners of the Americans (New York, 1949; 1832), 82; Benson, Adolph B., ed., America of the Fifties: Letters of Fredrika Bremer (New York, 1924; 1853), 285.Google Scholar

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23. Mihesuah, Devon A., Cultivating the Rosebuds: The Education of Women at the Cherokee Female Seminary, 1851–1909 (Urbana, Ill., 1993), 21. According to the author, there were two Cherokee female seminaries. The earlier institution, established in 1843, was short lived. The second Cherokee Female Seminary, which is the subject of Mihesuah's book, was established in 1851.Google Scholar

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25. See Knight, , ed., A Documentary History of Education in the South, 5: 459–515. For instance, in their 1845 report, the examining committee of the Boston schools noted that conditions were deplorable in the Smith school, an institution catering to the children of free African Americans. See “Boston Grammar and Writing Schools,” in Common School Journal 7 (Oct. 1845): 299–300; Caroline Alfred to Lucretia Crocker, 21 Feb. 1874, Caroline Alfred Letters, Freedman's Aid Society Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society. Conditions in the South after the Civil War were no better. Caroline Alfred, a teacher of free African Americans in Georgia, complained despairingly that “in the public colored school in this city great pains are taken that the pupils shall only learn to read.“ Google Scholar

26. Stevenson, Brenda, ed., The Journals of Charlotte Forten Grimké (New York, 1988), 1–31, 82, 63, 89, 105, 107–8, 122. The quotation is from her entry of 28 May 1854.Google Scholar

27. Gray, Alonzo, Elements of Natural Philosophy (New York, 1850), iii; Tolley, Kim, “The Science Education of American Girls,” ch. 3.Google Scholar

28. This conclusion is based on an analysis of the newspaper advertisements mentioned in the above tables. Out of a sample of twenty-four girls' schools in New England states from 1820 to 1842, 42 percent advertised Latin, usually on an elective basis, in contrast to 47 percent of a sample of fifteen boys' schools.Google Scholar

29. New Bern Academy in Craven County, Fayetteville Academy in Cumberland County, Tarborough Academy in Edgecome County, Greensborough Academy in Guilford County, Vine Hill Academy in Halifax County, Salisbury Academy in Rowan County, and Raleigh Academy in Wake County.Google Scholar

30. Beadie, Nancy, “Emma Willard's Idea Put to the Test: The Consequences of State Support of Female Education in New York, 1819–67,” History of Education Quarterly 33 (Winter 1993): 543–62, 560n.Google Scholar

31. Mary Lyon quoted in Marr, , Old New England Academies, 247. Depending on the school's charter, examinations might be held at the end of each term or more frequently. At Salisbury Academy in North Carolina, both private and public examinations were held. Each year was divided into two sessions, each session consisting of two quarters. At the end of each quarter, a committee of the Trustees was appointed to conduct the quarterly examination. The committee took the last two days of the quarter to examine the classes privately on their various studies. Twice a year, a public examination took place, and the Trustees' report of the public examination was published in the papers. See Western Carolinian, 19 Sep. 1820, in North Carolina Schools and Academies , ed. Coon, , 360.Google Scholar

32. Raleigh Minerva, 4 June 1807, in North Carolina Schools and Academies , ed. Coon, , 399. For example, this was a common practice of the Classical School in Charlottesville, Virginia, from 1835 to 1836. See the issue of the Richmond Enquirer for 10 Nov. 1835, which advertises its course of study, and the issue for 29 Dec. 1835, which reports its examinations.Google Scholar

33. Of the schools that published reports of examinations, seven (78 percent) of nine girls' schools included scientific subjects, as compared to two (14 percent) of fourteen boys' schools. Data compiled from newspaper advertisements in Coon, , ed., North Carolina Schools and Academies. Catawba Journal, 5 Dec. 1826, in North Carolina Schools and Academies , ed. Coon, , 235–36; see also Raleigh Star, 10 Jan. 1812, in ibid., 601. The examiners' report discusses the students' extensive knowledge of astronomy in Mordecai's Female Academy in Warrenton, North Carolina.Google Scholar

34. “Boston Grammar and Writing Schools,” in Common School Journal 7 (15 Oct. 1845): 311–17. Lengthy extracts from the report of the Boston School Committee were published in numbers 19–23 of the Journal in 1845; Caldwell, Otis W. and Courtis, Stuart A., Then and Now in Education, 1845–1923: A Message of Encouragement from the Past to the Present (Yonkers-on-Hudson, N.Y., 1925), 11, 14.Google Scholar

35. Caldwell, and Courtis, , Then and Now in Education, 22–226. It is possible to identify the girls' and boys' schools from extracts of the Boston School Committee Report. Copies of the original tests are reproduced both in Caldwell and Courtis's text and in Common School Journal 7 (1 Dec. 1845): 361–63.Google Scholar

36. Caldwell, and Courtis, , Then and Now in Education, 168–69; 342–43. Apparently neither astronomy or natural philosophy was offered in the Smith school, an institution catering solely to African American children; Smith declined to produce scholars for examination on either subject.Google Scholar

37. Ibid., 182, 229. Ironically, although the examiners ranked Brimmer as the highest quality boys' school, its scholars were consistently outranked by other schools on the examinations in all subjects. The examiners, perhaps unable to see beyond the social status of Brimmer's students, nevertheless held unfailingly to a belief in the intelligence of the school's scholars: “The boys of the first class have … a general intelligence, which was perfectly obvious to the committee, but of which no record can appear in our tables” (ibid., 184). Caldwell, and Courtis, , Then and Now in Education, 342–44. In fact, the girls' schools Bowdoin and Wells ranked within the top three schools on each of the remaining examinations as well, a phenonomon that must be interpreted with caution. Generally, girls stayed in school longer than boys. In Boston, boys were required to leave school at the end of the term after their fourteenth birthday, while girls could remain until the end of the term after their sixteenth birthday. The average age of the girls examined at Bowdoin was fourteen years and eight months, while the average age of the boys at Brimmer was thirteen years. However, age alone did not account for all the differences in scores. On the history examination, for example, boys from Adams school, whose average age was only twelve years and eleven months, outscored the girls from Wells, whose average age was thirteen years and three months (Caldwell, and Courtis, , Then and Now in Education, 14, 330). See also “Boston Grammar and Writing Schools,” in Common School Journal 7 (Oct. 1845): 292, 296–97.Google Scholar

38. Data compiled from a random sampling of thirty towns each in First Abstract of the Massachusetts School Returns for 1837 (Boston, 1838), and Abstract of the Massachusetts School Returns, 1840–41 (Boston, 1841). In 1837, 17 percent of towns reported using natural philosophy textbooks in their common schools, 10 percent reported chemistry and 7 percent astronomy textbooks. In 1841, 73 percent reported using natural philosophy textbooks, 20 percent reported chemistry, 23 percent astronomy, and 3 percent natural history textbooks.Google Scholar

39. Mulhern, , A History of Secondary Education in Pennsylvania, 323–24; Woody, , A History of Women's Education in the United States, 2: 163ff. True quoted in Wray, Ruth Arline, The History of Secondary Education in Cumberland and Sagadahoc Counties in Maine (Orono, Me., 1940), 47.Google Scholar

40. As late as 1864, the state superintendent of Pennsylvania reported that “It is not probable that more than one-eighth of the students in the academies and seminaries pass on through a college course.” Quoted in Fraser, Rev. J., Report on the Common School System of the United States and of the Provinces of Upper and Lower Canada (1867) [3857] XXVI.293 mf 73.216–20, 106. Taunton Commission report quoted in Phillips, , The Scientific Lady, 239–40.Google Scholar

41. For example, see Hooper, William, “Imperfections of Our Primary Schools, 1833” in North Carolina Schools, ed. Coon, , 729–50. Hooper was professor of ancient language in the University of North Carolina. In a speech designed to alert North Carolinians to the dangers posed by the new trends in education, Hooper announced that students entering Andover Academy “cannot decline their Greek nouns and verbs with any tolerable accuracy” (ibid., 734).Google Scholar

42. Bates, Ralph S., Scientific Societies in the United States (Cambridge, Mass., 1965; 1945), 33; Hunter Dupree, A., Science in the Federal Government: A History of Policies and Activities to 1940 (New York, 1964), 383–86; “Geological Studies,” American Annals of Education 1 (Oct./Nov. 1830): 141; “Lucy Millington,” unpublished manuscript by Liberty Hyde Bailey, file 1, box 8, Liberty Hyde Bailey Papers, Carl Kroch Library, Cornell University. Bailey, who grew up in South Haven, Michigan, wrote that he had seen only one botanist, a visiting lecturer in the town lyceum, before meeting Lucy Millington in 1876.Google Scholar

43. Data compiled from Mulhern, , A History of Secondary Education in Pennsylvania, 328: Mulhern's sample of forty-seven academies (1750 to 1829) reveals that 9 percent offered mensuration, 19 percent surveying, and 13 percent navigation; data compiled from North Carolina Schools and Academies , ed. Coon, : the advertisements of 56 academies from the period 1794 to 1840 reveal that 9 percent offered mensuration, 29 percent surveying, and 13 percent navigation. See Columbian Centinal (Boston, Mass., 6 Oct. 1827); Raleigh Register (30 Sep. 1828), in North Carolina Schools and Academies , ed. Coon, , 494; Mulhern, , A History of Secondary Education in Pennsylvania, 472; “A Night School,” in Raleigh Register, 30 Sep. 1828, in North Carolina Schools and Academies , ed. Coon, , 494.Google Scholar

44. Siljestrom, Per, The Educational Institutions of the United States, Their Character and Organization (London, 1853), 393.Google Scholar

45. Mulhern, , A History of Secondary Education in Pennsylvania, 323; Woody, , A History of Women's Education in the United States 2: 163; quoted in Mulhern, , A History of Secondary Education in Pennsylvania, 391.Google Scholar

46. The exchange of ideas between America and Europe is discussed in Bailyn, Bernard, “Political Experience and Enlightenment Ideas in Eighteenth-Century America,” in An American Enlightenment: Selected Articles on Colonial Intellectual History, ed. Hoffer, Peter Charles (New York, 1988), 134–46. For an overview of women's participation in natural history and their authorship of popular science books for women, see Bonta, Marcia, Women in the Field: America's Pioneering Women Naturalists (College Station, 1991); Norwood, Vera, Made from This Earth: American Women and Nature (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1993).Google Scholar

47. See Rossiter, Margaret W., Women Scientists in America: Struggles and Strategies to 1940 (Baltimore, Md., 1982), 1–28; Barber, Lynn, The Heyday of Natural History, 1820–1870 (Garden City, N.Y., 1980); Keeney, , The Botanizers. Google Scholar