ES2307: Progressive Education

Week 5Progressive Education and

Gender

Tutor: Joan Walton

Women such as Sarah Trimmer and Hannah More, who educated poorer classes when not seen as acceptable to do so – but emphasised religious instruction and the concept of ‘sin’

Seen as antidote to Rousseau Thoughts on the Education of Daughters

(1787) – described desired attributes of young girls

Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792)

Maria: or the Wrongs of Woman (1798) – strong critique of marriage.

Time of French Revolution – defended individual liberty, freedom and anarchy

Founded by Burgh: “Burgh held that a girl should know just enough arithmetic to do household accounts, and just enough geography to converse with her husband and his friends. Boys were generally trained to block tenderness as a form of weakness. The only emotion Burgh encouraged was patriotism.”

Gordon, L. (2005) Vindication: A Life of Mary

Wollstonecraft. London: Virago.

“Mary Wollstonecraft ran her school along entirely different and what were then innovative lines: she had a maternal attentiveness to the physical as well as mental needs of a child; she was committed to wholesome food and her methods were flexible…She did believe in moral discipline, but not in the first place as a set of rules to be enforced.”

Gordon, op.cit. p. 45

Her ideas did not take place in an ideological vacuum

Other women before her had considered the idea of equality – educational and otherwise

For example, Catherine Macaulay and Elizabeth Montagu had shown positive role women could play in being part of intelligentsia

Belief that well-educated women would produce good families

Educational equality through the cultivation of reason and moral necessity was necessary to maintain harmonious society.

However, not linked to ideas of educational and individual freedom.

In this respect, not progressive education

Seen as originator of progressive pedagogy, in relation to its development by women

Did not adhere to the idea of the innocent romantic child v original sin-laden puritanical child

One of first female progressive pedagogues to put ideas into practice – in Palgrave Academy

Focused on more practical subjects and sciences, rather than Greek and Latin

Emphasised democratic practices Integrated children from different backgrounds

How to reconcile path of rational progress, with the kind of society that was created and the character and education of its future citizens?Rousseau’s response through EmileWollstencroft through educating girls and boys togetherBarbauld – the role of a good citizen should be created through learning in school to be of active and direct benefit to others. Wrote Lessons for Childhood (1778)