She continued to advocate for teachers until her death in Although she was influential in providing women with the education necessary to become teachers, her efforts to transform teaching into women's work ultimately led to a further decline in the social esteem accorded the teaching profession.
In Her Own Words "Woman's great mission is to train immature, weak and ignorant creatures to obey the laws of God; the physical, the intellectual, the social and the moral. And will it not appear by examination that neither mothers nor teachers have ever been properly educated for their profession? And thus it appears that, though it is woman's express business to rear the body and form the mind, there is scarcely anything to which her attention has been less directed.
She had a school when she was very young, she developed this passion about sending women to civilize young children in what was then the west. She also took upon herself to write a book- several books, instructing women on the domestic virtues. So, the contradictions there are that while she was on the one hand creating the philosophy that linked school with home and was very committed to helping women develop housewifery as a profession, she was living the life of a professional woman herself, doing none of the things, in the sense, she was arguing housewives ought to do.
Beecher was telling women they should be teachers, but she certainly saw teaching as an extension of the domestic role. She was not telling them that they should be physicians, lawyers, bankers, that they should be industrialists.
There, she opened the Western Female Institute, which struggled financially. She also worked on the McGuffey readers, the first nationally-adopted textbooks for elementary students. Thereafter, Beecher traveled, supporting herself with lectures and books. In the s and s, Beecher returned to brief teaching stints. MLA- Michals, Debra. National Women's History Museum, Date accessed. Chicago- Michals, Debra. Catharine Beecher Edited by Debra Michals, PhD Works Cited. Boydston, Jeanne.
Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, Detroit: Gale, History in Context. Accessed March 4, Cross, Barbara M. Volume One. She attempted to hire an associate principal to manage this kind of instruction in her school. Beecher believed her school could change the world, and wanted the best female educators available. Lyon and Grant both declined. These elite, however, was unwilling to risk investing when no well-known educator would fill the new position.
Consequently, Beecher suffered a nervous breakdown and left the school in the hands of her sister for several months while she recovered. Upon her return, she took on the task of religious and moral instruction herself. In the early s, Beecher became more interested in the roles her female students would play in society. Running a home and raising a family were important, she stated, but women should also be given more responsibility and respect outside the home.
She believed that teaching was the perfect profession — it allowed women to be independent and influential in their community, and it was acceptably feminine. After operating her Hartford school for eight years , she left it to a colleague and moved west when Lyman Beecher became president of Lane Theological Seminary in Cincinnati, Ohio.
The growing populations of the western areas of the country were creating an increased demand for teachers, and Beecher made it her mission to provide the education women needed to join the profession. She opened the Western Female Institute, which she hoped could serve as a model for a nationwide system of teacher colleges.
In Cincinnati, she began a fundraising effort to support her school and the creation of similar schools, but Beecher was not well-liked in the city. Her abolitionist views were not popular in an area divided on the issue of slavery. She then turned to working on the famous McGuffey readers, the first nationally adopted textbooks for elementary students.
In this essay, she began to formulate her idea that women could have a powerful influence by creating a virtuous and harmonious home life. To encourage the spread of these ideas, Beecher published a number of books providing guidance and praise for domestic life, such as her extremely popular Treatise on Domestic Economy This was a practical and moral guide to domestic life on such topics as cooking, child rearing and general health care — a single source of household knowledge that had not existed before.
The book was an incredible success, earning her national fame. According to Beecher, the mission of all women should be to form the moral and intellectual character of children, and in order to fulfill that duty, women required a quality education.
Through nurturing and teaching, women could use their home life as a base from which to create change in the rest of society. Her support of the family and social hierarchy made Beecher a celebrity. From then on, Beecher traveled between homes of family and friends, supporting herself with lectures and books. The Duty of American Women to Their Country argued for free public education to protect the still-new democracy.
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