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1 1 The Profession of a Woman Female Teachers, Marginalized Students, and Rhetorical Education It is to mothers, and to teachers, that the world is to look for the character which is to be enstamped on each succeeding generation, for it is to them that the great business of education is almost exclusively committed. . . . What is the profession of a Woman? Is it not to form the immortal minds, and to watch, to nurse, and to rear the bodily system, so fearfully and wonderfully made, and upon the order and regulation of which, the health and well-being of the mind so greatly depends? —Catherine Beecher, “Suggestions respecting Improvements in Education,” 1829 In 1829, Catherine Beecher joined educators across the country to establish woman’s “true profession” as teacher. Educators such as Beecher recognized that, because of a national shift in educational priorities from classical learning and religious indoctrination to moral education, social etiquette, and basic literacy, women should be seen as the perfect candidates for the profession. Since women had a “natural” capacity to nurture and guide, and since they already were expected to be exemplars of piety, morality, good conduct, and correct manners, who would be a better choice to teach the children of the nation? Joseph Emerson and Horace Mann were just two among many educators who could only answer “no one” to this question. Emerson, the principal at a female academy in Saugus, Massachusetts, saw the new opportunity before his students and called them to expand their gendered duties from the home to the school. In his 1822 “Discourse, Delivered at the Dedication of the Seminary Hall,” Emerson prompted them to realize that, “next to the domestic circle, the schoolroom is unquestionably the most important sphere of female activity” (8). Women should be teachers, Emerson asserted, because they “naturally possess a greater share of those excellencies, which 2 The Profession of a Woman constitute a good teacher. More gentle, affectionate and winning in their manner; more ardent, zealous, and preserving in their efforts; . . . their operations upon the mind are more forcible and efficacious” (10). Almost twenty years later, Mann, secretary of the Massachusetts State Board of Education and avid proponent of the common school movement, continued to argue for woman’s rightful and natural place in the classroom. Mann made this argument for female teachers in his 1841 report to the Massachusetts board: That females are incomparably better teachers for young children than males, cannot admit of a doubt. Their manners are more mild and gentle, and hence more in consonance with the tenderness of childhood. They are endowed by nature with stronger parental impulses, and this makes the society of children delightful, and turns duty into pleasure. . . . therefore, females are infinitely more fit than males to be guides and exemplars of young children. (45–46) These and other educators would continually equate the mother with the teacher and would argue throughout the early nineteenth century that the woman, as teacher, should use her “natural” feminine qualities to instruct the nation’s children. As the century progressed, this argument became unnecessary, for it was almost taken for granted that women were best suited for the work of the teacher. At the 1863 meeting of the National Teachers’ Association, for example, John D. Philbrick observed this “normal” teaching situation: The presiding genius who received us so courteously, welcoming us in tones of peculiar sweetness, is a lady whose natural endowments and opportunities of education have combined to form the true teacher. . . . Here we see these scores of children, without the loss of a day, are at once set forward on the true path of moral and intellectual life; conscience is awakened, and its dictates practically obeyed; manners are formed; right habits are acquired; curiosity is aroused and gratified by imparting rational instruction. (53–54) This expectation that one would find a female teacher at the head of the classroom was more than justified in the coming years. In 1912, educator C. W. Bardeen reported that the teaching profession had become “an Adamless Eden,” finding that close to 90 percent of the teachers in New York, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Vermont, and New Hampshire were women (18). But even though the sheer opportunities for the female teacher changed dramatically from 1829 to 1912, her job description did not shift much from that described by Beecher in the early part of the nineteenth century.1 [3.136.97.64] Project MUSE (2024-04-24 23:24...

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