Teachers and Gender: debating the myths of equal opportunities in Scottish education 1800‐1914

Abstract

This paper challenges the legacy of the historical myth of egalitarianism in Scottish education through a reconstruction of the different experiences of men and women teachers in the nineteenth century. The celebrated myth of the egalitarian and democratic tradition of Scottish education has almost entirely focused on men. It was asserted that the ‘lad o’ pains’ had equality of access to an educational ladder from the parish or burgh schools to a Scottish University. There was a prevailing belief that the Scottish education system was more meritocratic and superior to the English one. The paper also challenges the contention that the Scottish education tradition was more democratic than that in England. What was distinctive about the experiences of schoolgirls and of women teachers in Scottish culture and Scottish education? To what extent did females benefit from this so called democratic tradition in comparison with England? These questions are exploratory because studies of women are seriously neglected in the historical and sociological secondary literature about the educational tradition in Scotland.