Chapter 6 focused on a few main issues in education. The main ideas involved the role of men and women as both teachers and students, the division of students in to grades, and the type of education that should be administered to children. The chapter goes as far back as 1821 when Emma Willard opened up what can be considered the first teacher training program. (141) The focus at the time was to provide the tools women needed to be mothers in society. This was largely the role of women in education for sometime after this as well. One of the things I found most interesting in this chapter was that People who advanced woman’s position in society in the long run such as Emma Willard held a patriarchal view in the beginning. Also, the job offered to women (teacher) was not desirable at the time, and in many instances could only be obtained through receiving ones own education on credit and teaching to work it off. This is something I did not expect of the time.
Another thing that grabbed my attention in the chapter was that I had never heard of Pestalozzi’s methods of teaching. Given what Finkelstein said on page 147: “teachers during this period were of two major types: “the ‘intellectual overseer,’ who stressed memorization and punished failures in assignments, and the ‘drillmaster,’ who had the students repeat material in unison.” I thought with divisions like this teachers would take logical approaches to balancing the two duties, like many do today, and not go so far as to have youth grades learn one way (Pestalozzi’s way) and then introduce the idea of books and learning. But, given Pestalozzi’s method raised a question to me, do you think that “‘maternal love'” is the first agent in education,” (148) or that it is religion or some other agent that we have not discussed yet?
Another question I had was regarding the last line of the conclusion of the chapter. “Women continued to toil in the factories of education.” I was wondering, given all the bureaucracy involved in the new standardized schooling system, is that what education became, an “education factory.” Do the ideals and morals shared by a female’s motherly teachings help to make this system more friendly and effective at all, or does sex no longer play a role in today’s society when it comes to teaching?
