Reading Book for Female Schools: Minerva or Madonna

Abstract

The National System institutionalised the dominant ideology regarding the role of women in society. The domestic situation of the home was promoted, through the Lesson Books, as the natural habitat of women. Textbooks were employed as a powerful vehicle for reinforcing existing stereotypes regarding appropriate education for girls and there was no ambiguity regarding gender roles in society. Increasing numbers of girls attended school during the nineteenth century as the system progressed and that was because parents who had not previously been in a position to pay for their daughters’ education could now send them to school as the schools were sponsored directly (by and large) by the state. By the 1860s the numbers of girls attending national schools had almost reached that of boys. However, education was not given equal priority to girls as it was to boys.