During the chapter 6 reading as well as the Voices of Freedom work, I noticed within the themes of fighting for equality in different ways during and after the revolution, the theme of education for women came up a lot. I remembered learning about women in scientific fields and how women got an education in MEHAP, and was wondering what the experience was like for American women.
When people were first coming to America in the 1600s, school wasn't held all together in a building. Certain men were assigned to be educators of sorts, simply making sure younger children were learning simple tasks such as reading, or more practical tasks such as the laws in the area. This led to the creation of small schools in some areas, but there were never larger schools that were state-run like we have today.
In the 1700s, there were schools called "dame schools" in the US, which was a school in a woman's home where she taught children, so there was more inclusivity for girls. But any institutions or schools in towns were often private and segregated by gender. Massachusetts was one of the few states that avoided this, giving women slightly more opportunities, but generally there was not the type of advanced and wide-spread education for women that men participated in. Some men at this time advocated for women's rights to education, but often for selfish reasons and usually not for complete equality, such as Benjamin Rush. Rush argued for female education so they could properly train their sons and so women could contribute better to society.
The 1700s brought change with more co-ed schools across the nation, however most women were given a lesser education and did not have the ability to pursue a higher education. Universities didn't allow women, and many academies and private schools also only took male students. Women were stuck with simple high-school educations from the public schools they were allowed to be in.
The 1800s continued to give rights to women, seen in the movement known as the Academy Movement, which took place mostly in New England. This movement provided girls-only as well as co-ed schools. These academies gave girls the ability to have a more formal education beyond the small town-schools they were allowed to learn in. The academy system provided many people beyond just girls better opportunities for education. The 1800s continued to provide further opportunities for women in general with schooling.
By the start of the 1900s, women's education had become much more accessible in universities and colleges. The biggest shift for women's education, however, truly came in the late 1900s when the educational amendments of 1972, which prohibited discrimination in schools on the basis of sex.
All in all, women's rights to education wasn't created with giant protests and national coverage. It was created through a slow paced collection of victories with more co-ed schools and the opening of university and college programs to women as time went on.
Sources:
https://dinotracksdiscovery.org/supporting/swapfull/context/academy-movement/
http://www.mcrcad.org/Web_Madigan.pdf
http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/elliott/art/147.html
https://newprairiepress.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1&article=3847&context=aerc
https://www.justice.gov/crt/overview-title-ix-education-amendments-1972-20-usc-1681-et-seq
Voices of Freedom by Eric Foner
Give Me Liberty by Eric Foner
I really enjoyed your post and found it incredibly informative. I had no idea something like "dame schools" existed and the structure of your post really helped to illustrate the slow progress you described at the end. There never really was this huge push for education in the same way voting rights and others were but rather this gradual awakening.
ReplyDeleteThis was a topic I was actually very curious about, and your post answered all my questions! I found it really interesting how women were teaching from home as early as the 1700s, and that true equality by law wasn't achieved for women's education until late in the 20th century.
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