Chapter 6 Organizing the American School

” Teaching was the first profession opened to women on a regular basis”  –Norton

It was interesting to see that the teaching profession was the doorway for other opportunities for women. Before the Revolution, the education of women were limited to only the basics.  However, schools began to offer teacher positions to woman. There were several reasons why they started to seek out female teachers. During this time, they felt that the development of moral character was significant. Since women possessed that motherly character, people believed that they would be better at teaching and nurturing children. Also, there was a high turn-over rate for male teachers. However, since teaching was the only opportunity for most women, females were more committed and held onto their job for a long time.

It was interesting to see the logic behind why they started to seek women for teaching positions. I feel like teaching really made a pavement for women for other career opportunities . Also, it opened the door to allowing women to receive higher education.  Colleges started to open admissions for females and it allowed females to be more than just a housewife.

I believe that this time was extremely crucial for women and shaped the society today. I think it definitely benefited not only women but the education system and the society as a whole.  Since women were able to be educated because of teaching opportunities, it allowed females to have a voice in society.

It was also interesting how a classroom was organized before the changes. ” Before this development, students had been taught in ungraded classrooms in which teacher were responsible for simultaneously teaching a variety of subjects to students at different levels of knowledge” ( p. 152) The idea of division of students by age came from Prussia and they utilized this borrowed method in the Quincy School.

Some questions that came up was :

— By utilizing females to be teachers as opposed to males, did it really make a huge impact on society’s moral character?

— They believed that females possess this inherent moral character. Do you agree that women have inherent moral character (more than men) and agree with their logic behind why woman would make better teachers?