"This fine assemblage of biographies introduces readers to 66 women educators whose professional lives mirror 'common themes.' This useful source is recommended without reservation to all libraries, academic and public." Choice
The history of women's education in the United States presents a continuous effort to move from the periphery to the mainstream, and this book examines both formal and informal opportunities for girls and women. Through an introductory essay and nearly 250 alphabetically arranged entries, this reference book examines institutions, persons, ideas, events, and movements in the history of women's education in the United States. The volume spans the colonial era to the present, exploring settings from formal institutions such as schools and colleges to informal associations such as suffrage groups and reform organizations where women gained skills and used knowledge. A full picture of women's educational history presents their work in mainstream institutions, sex-segregated schools, and informal organizations that served as alternative educational settings. Educational history varies greatly for women of different races, classes, and ethnicities. The experience of some groups has been well documented. Thus entries on the Seven Sisters women's colleges and the reform organizations of the Progressive Era convey wide historical detail. Other women have been studied only recently. Thus entries on African American school founders or women teachers present considerable new information that scholars interpret against a wider context. Finally, some women's history has yet to be adequately explored. Hispanic American women and Catholic teaching sisters are discussed in entries that highlight historical questions still remaining. Each entry is written by an expert contributor and concludes with a brief bibliography. The volume closes with a timeline of women's educational history and a list of important general works for further reading.
"For far too long Catholic teaching sisters have been denied their rightful place in the history of education. It is only during the past twenty-five years that researchers in many countries have begun to reveal the fundamental role played by these women in the schooling of children of both the masses and the elite during the 19th and 20th centuries. This essay provides for the first time a detailed overview of the historiography of the teaching sisters in Western Europe, North America, Latin America and Australasia, surveying scholarship since 1985. It reviews the literature on six major themes: contribution to schooling, teaching orders and schools, educational philosophy, content and practice, life and lived experience of teachers and students, the professionalization of teaching, and changes in the composition of the teaching staff. Very rich in bibliographical references, this book is indispensable for all further research on this significant but underexplored group of women teachers."--Publisher's website.
In Pursuing Truth, Mary J. Oates explores the roles that religious women played in teaching generations of college and university students amid slow societal change that brought the grudging acceptance of Catholics in public life. Across the twentieth century, Catholic women's colleges modeled themselves on, and sometimes positioned themselves against, elite secular colleges. Oates describes these critical pedagogical practices by focusing on Notre Dame of Maryland University, formerly known as the College of Notre Dame of Maryland, the first Catholic college in the United States to award female students four-year degrees. The sisters and laywomen on the faculty and in the administration at Notre Dame of Maryland persevered in their work while facing challenges from the establishment of the Catholic Church, mainline Protestant churches, and secular institutions. Pursuing Truth presents the stories of the institution's female founders, administrators, and professors whose labors led it through phases of diversification. The pattern of institutional development regarding the place of religious identity, gender and sexuality, and race that Oates finds at Notre Dame of Maryland is a paradigmatic story of change in US higher education. Similarly representative is her account of the school's effort, from the late 1960s to the present, to maintain its identity as a women's liberal arts college. Thanks to generous funding from the Cushwa Center at the University of Notre Dame, the ebook editions of this book are available as Open Access (OA) volumes from Cornell Open (cornellpress.cornell.edu/cornell-open) and other Open Access repositories.
This study examines the leadership of three African-American women administrators in higher education, and how they have used their spirituality as a lens to lead in the academy. The central questions in this case study include: How do African-American women make meaning of their spiritual selves in their everyday leadership practices? How does their spirituality influence their work and the type of relationships they develop with others in the academy? What are the ways in which these three women have used their spirituality as a lens to lead, and how does this leadership impact the social, cultural and political construct of a male-dominated arena?
First published in 2000. This study explores the lives, educational philosophies, and social activism of Anna Julia Cooper and Nannie Helen Burroughs. They were among the most outstanding late 19th and early 20th century Black women educators. The study identifies and analyzes themes that illuminate Cooper and Burroughs' unique angle of vision of self, community, and society as it relates to their distinctive educational philosophies and contributions to American education.
As a reformative force, the literary text encouraged activism among all its readers, but affected (and was affected by) women more profoundly than, and differently from, men.".
Seeking to understand how literary texts both shaped and reflected the century's debates over adolescent female education, this book examines fictional works and historical documents featuring descriptions of girls' formal educational experiences between the 1810s and the 1890s. Alves argues that the emergence of schoolgirl culture in nineteenth-century America presented significant challenges to subsequent constructions of normative femininity. The trope of the adolescent schoolgirl was a carrier of shifting cultural anxieties about how formal education would disrupt the customary maid-wife-mother cycle and turn young females off to prevailing gender roles. By tracing the figure of the schoolgirl at crossroads between educational and other institutions - in texts written by and about girls from a variety of racial, ethnic, and class backgrounds - this book transcends the limitations of "separate spheres" inquiry and enriches our understanding of how girls negotiated complex gender roles in the nineteenth century.
This work delves into the topic of moral education in America's K-12 schools. Following an introductory historical chapter, it analyzes salient topics and notable leaders in the field of moral education. It treats the issues thoroughly and fairly, providing a heightened understanding of both the major and minor themes in moral education.
The first woman elected superintendent of schools in Rowan County, Kentucky, Cora Wilson Stewart (1875–1958) realized that a major key to overcoming the illiteracy that plagued her community was to educate adult illiterates. To combat this problem, Stewart opened up her schools to adults during moonlit evenings in the winter of 1911. The result was the creation of the Moonlight Schools, a grassroots movement dedicated to eliminating illiteracy in one generation. Following Stewart’s lead, educators across the nation began to develop similar literacy programs; within a few years, Moonlight Schools had emerged in Minnesota, South Carolina, and other states. Cora Wilson Stewart and Kentucky’s Moonlight Schools examines these institutions and analyzes Stewart’s role in shaping education at the state and national levels. To improve their literacy, Moonlight students learned first to write their names and then advanced to practical lessons about everyday life. Stewart wrote reading primers for classroom use, designing them for rural people, soldiers, Native Americans, prisoners, and mothers. Each set of readers focused on the knowledge that individuals in the target group needed to acquire to be better citizens within their community. The reading lessons also emphasized the importance of patriotism, civic responsibility, Christian morality, heath, and social progress. Yvonne Honeycutt Baldwin explores the “elusive line between myth and reality” that existed in the rhetoric Stewart employed in order to accomplish her crusade. As did many educators engaged in benevolent work during the Progressive Era, Stewart sometimes romanticized the plight of her pupils and overstated her successes. As she traveled to lecture about the program in other states interested in addressing the problem of illiteracy, she often reported that the Moonlight Schools took one mountain community in Kentucky “from moonshine and bullets to lemonade and Bibles.” All rhetoric aside, the inclusive Moonlight Schools ultimately taught thousands of Americans in many under-served communities across the nation how to read and write. Despite the many successes of her programs, when Stewart retired in 1932, the crusade against adult illiteracy had yet to be won. Cora Wilson Stewart presents the story of a true pioneer in adult literacy and an outspoken advocate of women’s political and professional participation and leadership. Her methods continue to influence literacy programs and adult education policy and practice.