A Brief History of Gender and Teaching

Let’s start off by being blunt here: in history, women get the short end of the stick a lot. Doubly for so for women who aren’t white, rich, straight, able-bodied, cisgender, etc. There are hundreds of thousands of points in history that can be looked at and analyzed in regards to the treatment of women in history, but a particularly interesting case is 19th century teachers, and just how much of an impact being a woman in the teaching profession had in this time period, and how it’s still felt today.

While Catharine Beecher and Horace Mann revolutionized the education system of 1800s America (Goldstein), they also did their part in reinforcing a centuries-old trend of placing women in strict motherly roles. Rather than working towards allowing women equal access in the workplace, Beecher and Mann focused more on changing teaching itself, morphing it into a position of moral high ground, where emphasis was placed more on morality (with deliberate ties to religious ideals) than sharing knowledge. Skills such as literacy were explored only so far as to read passages from the Bible, and little else was taught beyond basic mathematics and arithmetic. The education shift started by Beecher and Mann opened the position of teacher to more women, but in doing so, it changed the idea of the position itself, and deliberately lowered standards in the process.

When Susan B. Anthony entered the scene in 1838 as a teacher, she loved the independence of it all, a fresh eighteen year old stepping out into the world and ready to live on her own. With the work of Beecher and Mann, she was given this opportunity, and joined plenty of other women in the workforce to teach children, something she truly enjoyed doing for nearly a decade. But as time went on, “Anthony’s enthusiasm for teaching waned” (Goldstein), and when a new headmaster almost ten years her junior was placed in charge of her at school, it chafed at Anthony that despite all her years at the school, she had never been, and would never be, offered a larger role. After all, the new headmaster at her school had only one qualification over Anthony that landed the job: he was male.

Around this time of the mid 19th century, Elizabeth Cady Stanton was helping kick off the women’s rights movement as chief organizer for the Seneca Falls conference, the first national conference of the movement. Stanton observed and participated in the growing abolitionist movement, but after she found herself still being silenced by men, she decided that women needed their own movement, separate from spaces where the conversation continued to be male-dominated only. When Anthony heard about this conference and learned of the ideas in it, it was revolutionary, and it sparked a passion in Anthony that continued the rest of her life as she grew bound and determined to champion women’s rights for many years to come.

How does this all tie back into teaching? Well, Anthony was certainly more familiar with the position of teacher than most, and what she and other female teachers knew and were enraged about was the disparity in their wages, with men earning over twice as much as their women counterparts in the same occupation. Emboldened by Anthony’s speaking out, many female teachers voiced their support for her words, finally able to release their frustrations at the system they were cheated by. They were being denied equal pay and equal treatment, and were looked down upon by men, both domestic and foreign, and even by other women in the movement. Stanton, a wealthy woman who educated her children at home, did nothing to hide her disdain of “schoolmarms”, and looked down upon the profession, likely in part due to the subconscious sexism of the era, turning the feminization of teaching into something inherently negative (Goldstein).

A trend that’s continued today: the feminization of the teaching position means that, over a century and a half later, we’re still struggling to give teachers the respect they deserve, and to view them as an integral part of our country’s workforce. It happens in other fields as well; the more a field becomes dominated by women, the more men, sometimes without realizing, sometimes very much so, try to discredit the field of work itself. For all that there’s little to no difference between the words “teacher” and “professor” other than the assumption that one works in the public school system and one in a university, teachers are largely presumed female, and professors are largely presumed male, and this stems from an inherent bias to associate the higher position with men. We do this without thinking, and for many professions far beyond teaching as well.

So what can we do about this? We’ve come a long way from the struggles that Anthony faced, but women in education, and education as a whole, has a long ways to go in order to do the best we can do by our students in this country. A good start is in acknowledging the history behind teaching itself, and the pioneers of the profession such as Beecher, Mann, and Anthony, including the good and the bad (Beecher and Mann’s sexism, Anthony’s racism). Improvement is in looking critically at ourselves and our school systems, at government choices (such as our likely new Secretary of Education), and in learning from the past’s treatment of women and how to apply that knowledge to improving the present.

Goldstein, D. (2014). The teacher wars: A history of America’s most embattled profession. New York: Doubleday.

Krutka, D. G. & Milton, M. K. (Producers). (2016, September 9). Episode 21: Gender and Education with Kathryn Engebretson. Visions of Education.  [Audio podcast].

About Me

Why teach? There’s no easy answer to this question, or any specific answer at all. A hundred different responses can be given, with each as valid as the next, and a hundred more given after. How can the validity of each response even be judged at all, if there’s no standard to base the answer on? In terms of subjectivity, then, each response is a reflection of the response-giver’s distinct opinions on the matter, and in that case, it’s my turn to give mine.

Why teach? Ultimately, to help shape and open minds to new possibilities, and to knowledge never considered. Teaching is there to encourage learning of all sorts, and passion for topics of vast numbers. The purpose of teaching is to nurture young and old minds alike, and to see to it that we never stop learning as we grow older. The reason to teach can be wanting a child to have access to the books and language around them, or it can be nurturing love and teaching tolerance and kindness to help better the world around us. Teaching is there for us to share the knowledge that we know and deem important to friends, family, and students, and we can be taught by them in turn. It’s a form of connection, community, and growth. Really, to put it simply: why teach? So we can learn.

My name is Paulette Cunningham, and this is my first blog post for the 5113 graduate class, and I’m a beginner to the Masters of Arts in Teaching program here at TWU. I just graduated December of 2016 with a B.S. in Communication Sciences, working towards speech pathology, but I decided that I was ready to get out in the workforce maybe a little sooner than planned, and that this program was the perfect way to get started. I went into speech pathology initially with the intention of working with children, because I wanted (and still do) to be able to make a positive difference in young lives, but as I went through the program, I realized my goals fell more in line with teaching classes of students, rather than the exclusive one-on-one therapist/client atmosphere I was working towards. After a literacy course in my major where I was assigned to help one young boy with his reading skills, I realized this was something that I could really see myself doing in the future, and that it was something I truly enjoyed.

I declared my masters certification in EC-6 with ESL, which is the age range I think I’d really feel most comfortable with. I want to work with small children, partially because I’m a big kid at heart, and I’d love to get the chance to teach in the 1st and 2nd grade range (although I’ll be very happy anywhere in EC-6). I’m most passionate about reading, and I want to share that love with my students, both in further encouraging love for books in the already avid readers, and in helping nurture the skills of those who find it a little harder to jump into. More than anything, I remember just how much it meant to have teachers encouraging me when I was little, and the impact that they still left to this day, and I’m excited to have the chance to be that same positive force in the lives of kids just like me, and to, more than anything, be there to help and support all my students.