Emma Kart Willard Thesis Statement

In “The Daily Grind: Lessons in the Hidden Curriculum”, Peggy Orenstein gives an observation of an eighth graders day in math class at middle school. Orenstein in this selection is trying to give the reader a view of how there is a gender gap between girls and boys and how control of power is different between male and female. In the beginning Orenstein states that Mrs. Ritcher the math teacher, “is a ruddy athletic woman with a powerful voice.”(97) While class is in session, Orenstein observes the teacher showing more attention towards the boys then the girls. The author observes that: “Allison, a tall, angular girl who once told me, “My goal is to be the best wife and mother I can be,” raises her hand to ask a question. Mrs. Ritcher, finishing

Judith Sargent Murray’s On the Equality of the Sexes reveals the struggles women had in the 17th-18th centuries when it came to equal education opportunities. Women were expected to become people of domestication while men had many opportunities to expand their minds and be ambitious, and be leaders. Women were expected to focus on taking care of their family, not to have minds of their own. They wanted change.

Women started their first group to fight for gender rights in society social and economic equality and the right to vote which was not achieved until the twentieth century ("Women in Antebellum America", 2017). During the nineteenth century, two of the most famous academies for women were started which included, Troy Female Academy which was founded on 1821 by Emma Willard and Mount Holyoke

In early America, women were expected to take care of the household and of the children. However, writers such as Anne Bradstreet and Judith Sargent Murray wanted to emphasize the importance of education for women. The two texts by these authors that will be discussed are the poem, “The Prologue” by Anne Bradstreet and the essay, “Desultory Thoughts upon the Utility of Encouraging a Degree of Self-Contemplacency, especially in Female Bosoms,” By Judith Sargent Murray. A theme seen prominently throughout both texts is fairer treatment of women through education. Although both women do believe in opportunity for women in education, Bradstreet focuses more on the idea that women should have more acceptance in the intellectual world by men while Murray however, emphasizes the importance of women to be raised properly which resulted in them understanding their self-worth.

"Education should seek to bring its subject to the perfection of their moral, intellectual, and physical nature in order that they may be the means of the greatest possible happiness of which they are capable, both as to what they enjoy and what they communicate." - Emma Willard. Emma Willard was a leader in women’s education. She opened Troy Female Seminary, the first school for girls offering them an education equal. (Lutz, A. (1964). Emma Willard: pioneer educator of American women)

Lucy Stanton was born a free women and raised by John Brown, an abolitionist. She was the first African-American woman to graduate from a four-year collegiate course. A black woman going to school is extraordinary, because she challenged the ‘women are only housewives’ stereotype and rose like a phoenix from the ashes as an influence to future abolitionists and authors in the United States. Being a black woman in the 1850s, the odds were stacked against her. The majority of black students were denied admission to educational facilities, although white women were considered as non-intellectuals, black women were seen as less than that.

After decades of coping with the doubt and the regulation that women could not be educated, a number of women began to revolt. The women felt they too should be highly educated just the same as the men. They protested against the fact that men could go to college and this was not allowed for them and wanted the right to learn (Westward Expansion 1). Women wanted to be educated to better and to prove themselves solid. Schools for women began to up rise and gain some admiration in the 1820’s (The American Pageant 327). 1818 a lady by the name of Emma Willard, made a request to the legislature of New York, to fund a education for women. She got support from President Thomas Jefferson and The Common Council, in which she received four thousand dollars to fund in a school she later opened in the 1820’s, called, Troy Female Seminary (Westward Expansion 1). Soon after many schools began to come up, and Oberlin College, in Ohio, became the first college to accept men and women (Westward Expansion 1). In the turn of the nineteenth century, more and more thoughts and ideas of education for women became topic of interest. Political ideals scoped support for the better education for women, because leaders of policies of education and political issues seemed to feel that there need to be citizens with a creditable history of

During the nineteenth century, Women began to have an important role in natural rights and female education. Dorothea Dix and Mary Lyons spent their life fighting to help better society. Dorothea Dix was tireless in exposing mistreatment of those who were diagnosed with mental illness or who were institutionalized in the 19th century. She helped effect change for thousands of people. Mary Lyon was a female educator. She founded Mount Holyoke College, the first women’s college.

In 1852, Catharine Beecher was one of the founders of the American Women’s Educational Association, which was for the higher learning institutions for women in Illinois, Wisconsin, and Iowa. Through her writings and the schools she opened, Catharine fought for the women to be taught history, Latin, rhetoric, algebra, logic, physical education, and natural philosophy. She also introduced “domestics” education class, which is known as family and consumer sciences. She believed that preparing women to be respected caregivers was the key to provide women to become teachers, which Catharine saw as naturally suited for women.

As a woman myself, it is hard to imagine a time when I would not have been allowed to attend college, let alone be writing this paper. As children most of us heard stories from our grandparent’s about what life was like they were young. I can remember laughing at the thought of “walking up hill both ways” to get to school. With the liberties American Women have today, it is easy to take for granted everything the women before us fought so hard for. It is easy to forget the treatment they suffered in their struggle to bring us to today. In this paper we will examine the lives, struggles, and small victories of women that have led us to

An American pragmatist and feminist, Hull-House founder Jane Addams (1860-1935) came of age in time of increasing tensions and division between segments of the American society, a division that was reflected in debates about educational reform. In the midst of this diversity, Addams saw the profoundly interdependent nature of all social and political interaction, and she aligned her efforts to support, emphasize and increase this interdependence. Education was one of the ways she relied on to overcome class disparity, as well as to increase interaction between classes. Her theories about the interdependent nature of living in a democracy provided a backdrop for her educational theory. Education, she thought, needed to produce people who

“The subject of the Education of Women of the higher classes is one which has undergone singular fluctuations in public opinions” (Cobbe 79). Women have overcome tremendous obstacles throughout their lifetime, why should higher education stand in their way? In Frances Power Cobbe’s essay “The Education of Women,” she describes how poor women, single women, and childless wives, deserve to share a part of the human happiness. Women are in grave need of further improvements in their given condition. Cobbe suggests that a way to progress these improvements manifests in higher education, and that this will help further steps in advance. Cobbe goes on to say that the happiest home, most grateful husband, and the most devoted children came from a woman, Mary Sommerville, who surpassed men in science, and is still studying the wonders of God’s creations. Cobbe has many examples within her paper that shows the progression of women as a good thing, and how women still fulfill their duties despite the fact that they are educated. The acceptance of women will be allowed at the University of New England because women should be able to embrace their abilities and further their education for the benefit of their household, their lives, and their country.

The foundation of colleges for women as well as events at women’s rights conventions intellectually challenged society’s views on women’s traditional roles. As education became more of a public governmental service, the educational

She was a women’s rights activist set on a higher education standard for women. Willard was a widow leaving America not only to help her health but also to benefit her and her students. She “saw few limitations on what a women could do and built her career on the premise” (McCullough, 5). She left the school for her sister to take care of and went with her twenty-year-old son, venturing across the Atlantic.

The 18th to 19th century was a revolutionary time period for women. Jane Austen’s Emma was published during a time where women were campaigning for women’s suffrage and for female education. Emma is a book about a girl that vows not to fall in love, but plays matchmaker for her friend and acquaintances. The book shows readers what 18th century England looked like for women. Upper-class women were allowed to get an education; however, the education they were taught was vastly different than men’s education. Women learned how to weave and learn French while men learned about government, culture, philosophy from around the world, etc. However, Emma also introduces revolutionary concepts like education for women and the radical ideas Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of Women’s Right demonstrated.