Victorian Schoolmistress
Education
It was preferred that the schoolmistresses were certified, particularly to work in the better schools during the latter half of the 19 th century. To become certified they were tested in grammar, geography, history, math, and writing from dictation. Additionally, their handwriting was analyzed for readability (Jackson).
Appearance of Schoolhouse
The focus on the appearance of the schoolhouse was mainly limited to the private schoolhouses, which wanted to attract the best students. Schoolmistresses decorated the school so that they looked relatively well-off, and conducted the school to give the appearance of a family/domestic setting. Unlike the public schoolhouses, the private schoolhouses aimed to attract a small number of the best students, whereas the public schools wished to attract enough students so as to collect an adequate amount of money for their salaries and other extraneous fees (Pederson 142).
Salaries
Generally, the pay was rather poor, barely ever being more than £300 per annum. From this, lodging fees, repairs, taxes, and payment to assistants was removed, causing the profit for personal expenses to be well below £100. Their salaries were garnered from the payments of their students. At the best boarding schools, £70 for boarders and £20 for day students was average. Conversely, in the poorer boarding schools, £3 to £10 was the average (Pederson 141).
Public vs. Private School Lessons
The public schools looked towards the public sphere for inspiration and trained students to be productive in the world and focused on their academics. On the other hand, the private schools tended to celebrate a life of leisure in the private setting. However, in public and private schools, music, French, arithmetic, writing and reading were the core subjects. Greater emphasis was put on domestic subjects and lessons were only taught to the point of being satisfactory in a social setting (Pederson 138, 144).
The Typical Day in a Girls’ Boarding School
7:00 – Wake Up
8:00 – Breakfast is Ready, Usually Including Meat
9:00 or 9:30 – Day’s Studies Begin
Noon – Girls Take a Walk After Having a Slice of Bread and Butter
Dinner Follows the Walk
3:00 – Studies Continue Until 5:00 or 5:30
Women of the Western schoolhouse had a reputation for instilling values and lessons to the children of the frontier. They were historical heroines who chose to journey all the way from the East just to hear the sounds of children learning. According to Anne M. Butler, in her book Uncommon Common Women, these women left behind their family and friends, "took teacher training, signed two-year contracts, and set forth for unknown sites " (68). Schoolteachers on the frontier must have had an incredible love for children in order to deal with the difficulties the West placed in their way.
My educational development has primarily been in the private school system. My younger sister attended public schools as well as my son so I have some experience with them as well. I am going to summarize three scholarly essays I have read and compare them to my own academic history.
The constant debate over the school systems in America, have yielded a discussion over whether these school systems promote individuality through ones’ schoolwork or if the whole system is set up to conform every student. Some important issues to discuss when looking at schools causing individuality or conformity are school dress codes, rigid school schedules and classes, and little creativity promoted in schools.
Tozer, Steve, and Guy Senese. School and Society: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives. 7th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2013. Print.
“The first school I attended was a small building that went from first to sixth grade. There was one teacher for all of the students. There could be anywhere from 50 to 60 students of all different ages. From 5 or 6 years old to in their teens. We went to school five months out of the year. The rest of the time young people would be available to work on the farm. The parents had to buy whatever the student used. Often, if your family couldn't afford it, you had no access to books, pencils, whatever. However, often the children would share” (Interview with Parks).
At the end of the nineteenth century, Arizona was not a state, merely a territory, with a fledgling government and an even more rudimentary school system. Great distances separated people and often the eight children required to start a school and hire a teacher could not be gathered in an area. When they could, however, the teacher was often in for a surprise. Holding school in old saloons, carrying water to the schoolhouse every day, having to use turned over barrels for desks, and being the sole caretaker of the schoolhouse were just a few of the hardships faced by teachers. For women teachers, there were still more: being paid less than male teachers, even though they were the majority, being unable to keep her job if she married, and not being able to attain higher positions such as superintendent or principal. Despite these conditions, women actively and ably pursued careers in teaching, and often went beyond the call of duty for their students and their community. By facing many obstacles and overcoming them, the early women teachers of Arizona greatly improved the status of Arizona schools and that of women everywhere.
The repetitive structure of a school day, in a way, provides me with a sense of security, an awareness of what to expect, but it can be monotonous and lack excitement. When you consider how much time students spend in school it is clear that the experience shapes their lives and can have a lasting effect. It is for this reason that it is crucial to have the correct balance of conformity and individuality for the benefit of both civilization and individuals.
One type of these new schools were Charity schools. Charity schools were established in the beginning of the century. These schools were for boys and girls of the working lower class, The main idea was to teach these children religion, and how to read and write. The children were also taught thing that would benefit them as a social class; such as cobbling shoes, carpentry, and straw plaiting. On occasions the crafts that the children made were sold to help the school. By 1740 there were close to 2000 charity schools in england1.
John Taylor Gatto, in his essay “Against School: How Public Education Cripples our Kids, and why”, argues that the contemporary purpose of education in public schools is to produce “harmless electorate,” “a servile labor force,” and “mindless consumers” (28). According to Gatto, he is blaming public schools by explain that the purpose of education is to shape students to certain expectations and habits without their interests. He argues that students “want to be doing something real” (Gatto 23). Also, He explains that they produce a manageable working class and “mindless consumers” (27-28). His point is that students want to learn something new that help them in their life better than actual books from school which don’t apply their interests and their experience (23). So he recommends home-schooling as option to schools (24). Gatto claims that contemporary schools “adopted one of the very worst aspect...
The Really Hard School An Analysis of School Hardships during the Victorian Era To say that life was rough during the Victorian area would be an understatement. For the poor that lived during this era, it was a living nightmare. This could probably be said for the children more so than others.
The environment through which education is realized is critical for the learning children. In this aspect, there exist many forms of schooling that support education of children; public schooling, home schooling and private schooling. However, each method of schooling has its own advantages and disadvantages compared to other schooling methods. The above arguments are based on both home schooling and public schooling. Each schooling method focuses on pertinent issues that make the method as the most ideal compared to the other. Moreover, these arguments focus in realization of specific goals of education and education environments as indicated in each subheading.
By the nineteenth century, public education, although not a perfect system, was well engraved in most Americans. These public schools taught the basics of knowledge through the three R?s: Reading, Writing and 'R'thmetic. This was the basic curriculum of a public school because public schools were in place to educate the people to better function in our society, not to teach them only what they wanted to learn or to teach how to ?better? society. These first public schools were founded on very Essentialist principles that I support whole-heartedly and that I feel should still be the main curriculum of our public schools today. Although electives are important because they help students select what they would like to do in the future, most classes in a public school system should be made up of a rigorous core curriculum so that students can gain the basic reading, writing, and math skills that they need to fu...
Before the 1840’s the education system was only available to wealthy people. Individuals such as Horace Mann from Massachusetts and Henry Barnard in Connecticut believed that schooling for everybody would help individuals become productive citizens in society. Through their efforts, free public education at the elementary level become assessable for all children in American by late 19th century. By 1918 all states passed laws that required children to attend elementary school. The Catholics were against this law, so they created their own private schools. In 1925 the Supreme Court passed a law that allowed children to attend private school rather than public school (Watson, 2008).
For some parents, deciding on a school for their children can be a difficult decision. Many parents do not spend much time thinking about it; they place their children into the local school designated by where they live. Others attended a private school themselves and found that it was a beneficial experience and therefore want the same for their kids. But which is better: private schools or public schools? While there are many advantages and disadvantages in each (nothing is going to be absolutely perfect), we are going to focus on the benefits of an education in the public school system, or in other words, schools funded by the government that are for anyone to attend. An accurate definition found in the Encyclopedia of American Education (1996) states: “Any elementary or secondary school under control of elected or appointed civil authority, supported entirely by public tax monies, and, with few exceptions, open to all students in a designated district, free of any tuition charges.” (780) These include elementary, secondary schools and vocational schools. Public schools are a good choice in education because they provide a wide variety of subjects to study, are diverse in their student body, available to everyone, yet can sometimes be misunderstood.
One might ask why some parents decide to home school their children rather than send them to public school to receive a traditional public education. In his article, “What Have We Learned About Homeschooling,” Eric Isenberg offers data which says, “Families choose to homeschool their children for both academic and religious reasons” (407). Even so, most people claim that public school offers the perfect environment for learning and developing. They argue