Women'S History and the History of Women Teachers

Abstract

The social history of teaching has attracted much interest in recent years.1 In particular, scholars have sought to analyze transformation of teaching into over course of 19th century. As is well known, already by mid-century, teaching in United States was coming to be seen as work for women; by end of century teaching force nationwide was overwhelmingly female. Historians thus far have begun to explore this development in mid-19th century by looking at ways in which the cult of true womanhood and idea that women were nurturant moral guardians underlay movement to employ women teachers (Hoffman, 1979; Kaufman, 1984; Sklar, 1973). More recently, quantitative studies of midand late-19th century have been undertaken to investigate economic conditions underlying hiring of women teachers. These studies have tested generalizations about male-female wage differentials and length of women's teaching careers by examining census and school records (Bernard & Vinovskis, 1977; Carter, 1986; Danylewycz & Prentice, 1984, 1986; Prentice, 1975; Rury, 1984; Richardson & Hatcher, 1983; Strober & Gordon, 1986). Other historians have used teachers' accounts of their own lives and teaching to consider ways in which teaching may have been a liberating experience for women teachers (Clifford, 1981, 1982). These studies have begun to clarify our understanding of teachers' careers and have raised important areas for future investigation. In this paper, I want to consider history of women teachers from a different vantage point one that makes use of feminist theory and feminist historiography. I focus on woman schoolteacher as an ideological construct, a term whose meaning was struggled over by different groups with varying interests. In order to examine this process, I turn to recent work in both feminist theory and women's history. I first examine work of recent feminist theorists in philosophy and politics who are creating new epistemologica! and theoretical approaches; I then examine ways in which these theoretical approaches have been applied to women's history, in particular