• Public education evolved significantly during this era
  • Education was not prioritized for girls as it was for boys
    • Higher education deemed unnecessary for women
    • Subjects were not the same
      • Women were taught things that could help them earn a husband
        • Goal is always to wed
        • We see this in Ruth Hall as her father encourages her to quit her studies and either become a teacher or find a husband
      • Artistic talents and languages such as French
    • It was not until the Education Act passed in 1870 that both girls and boys were required to receive an elementary education
      • Girls then began to learn reading, writing, and arithmetic
      • Even upper class families did not consider secondary education for their daughters until around the 1890s
  • Upper class girls
    • Not sent to private schools like their male counterparts
    • Taught at home, usually by a governess
    • Learned skills that they would need once married
      • Sewing, cooking, singing, playing an instrument
        • All things that she could use to help or impress her husband
  • Ragged Schools
    • First one established in 1818
    • Free schools that provided a basic education for orphans or poor children
    • Taught some of the typical school subjects, but also housework skills such as knitting and gardening
  • Dame schools
    • Technically a form of private school because they were not requiring to be free of cost like Ragged Schools were
    • Usually set up by women and run out of their homes
      • More of a daycare service
        • Some of the women who ran these schools were illiterate themselves so they could not really teach academic subjects
      • The children would also be given household chores
    • Mostly just a place for the children of poor families to go to so that the parents could go to work without worrying that their children were getting into trouble
  • Journal concerning education (1880)
    • “If American ladies will study scientific housekeeping, and mix in a little Christian courtesy, common sense, and womanly interest for girlhood therewith, they can find plenty of high-school graduates to serve in their new palaces”
      • How girls should be raised and taught
        • Prepares them for a life of servitude
        • The domestic life
          • Rather than possible careers, besides teaching
      • Speaks of the values that were associated with “good women”

Featured in Exhibit

Coming of Age in the 1800s
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