Available at: https://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/theses/3116
Date of Award
6-2025
Degree Name
MA in History
Department/Program
History
College
College of Liberal Arts
Advisor
Thanayi Cross Jackson
Advisor Department
History
Advisor College
College of Liberal Arts
Abstract
Women’s occupation as teachers has remained uncritically relegated to the sphere of women’s work. In reality however, early nineteenth century female teachers made clear articulations how they understood their occupations as teachers. Through their publications, autobiographies, and biographies written by former pupils, they left behind for current educators their estimations of the integral job they performed. As educators, these women maintained the paramount role of educating the nation’s next generation of citizens. This was of particular importance in the aftermath of the American Revolution when America’s children were subjected to lacking, colonial education experiments. Before and during the ensuing common schools movement, middle-class, educated women seeking personal and economic autonomy actively participated in expanding their role to the classroom within the bounds of Victorian separate spheres ideology. Once in classrooms, female teachers professionalized the occupation through their pedagogy, expansion of their own knowledge, and connection to their community. Within the walls of the schools they started, Catharine Beecher, Julia Tevis, Martha Hazeltine Smith, Mary Anna Longstreth, and Elizabeth “Lizzie” Spear, laid the foundation for later female reformers in the Progressive era which made profound calls for themselves and America’s children from their allotted private space in public.