Towards a ‘feminine’ curriculum for english schoolgirls: The demands of ideology 1870–1963

Abstract

This article begins with a brief consideration of the place of schooling in the socialization of middle and working class girls in late Victorian England, commenting on that society's ambivalence towards the value of formal education for girls. Middle class policy makers often defined the purpose of schooling for working class girls as the provision of a training in thrift and domestic skills which, but for the perceived inadequacies of working class household organization, might ideally be given at home. Many middle class girls were educated at home. A tiny minority attended schools like the Girls' Public Day School Company (GPDS Co) foundations, which set a premium on academic achievement. But even these schools had to battle against prevailing social attitudes defining education/vocational goals as unimportant for women. Whatever girls learned in school, out side they learned that ultimately, school didn't matter very much. The major part of this paper attempts to survey various social and ideological pressures on girls' schools in England over the last century to re-shape the curriculum in order to make more provision for domestic training; to emphasize the importance of women's reproductive and domestic ‘vocations’ at the expense of intellectual, professional or other occupational goals. These pressures included: (1) Traditional middle class arguments about the sexual division of labour and social control; (2) the medical profession's views on the dangers of intellectual education for girls; (3) demographic and eugenic anxieties at the turn of the century, together with the ideology of the early Infant Welfare Movement; (4) early twentieth century ideas about the ‘social hygiene’ of adolescence; and (5) the ‘back-to-the-home’ movement following World War I and the ideology of family life.