Language and meaning in a documentary source: Girls' curriculum from the late eighteenth century to the Schools Inquiry Commission, 1868

History of Education

Volumn 34, Issue 1, 2005, Pages 77-93

  Cohen, Mich̀le ^a,b  

^a The American International University in London   (United Kingdom)

^b UNIVERSITY OF LONDON   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 28044442263     PISSN: 0046760X     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/0046760042000315336     Document Type: Review

References (118)

1. The story of this straggle has been documented by J. Kamm, Hope Deferred: Girls' Education in English History (London: Methuen, 1965);
2. S. Fletcher, Feminists and Bureaucrats: A Study in the Development of Girls' Education in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1980);
3. R. McWilliams Tullberg, Women at Cambridge [1975] (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1998).
4. See also E. Davies, 'On secondary instruction, as relating to girls' [1864], in Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon and the Langham Place Group, edited by C. A. Lacey (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1987). 4 There is one copy in the British Library. Peter Cunningham checked the printed and supplementary written catalogues at the CUL-but the book does not appear (private communication).
5. There is one exception. A. Jacobs, '"The girls have done decidedly better than the boys": girls and examinations 1860-1902', Journal of Educational Administration and History, 33/2 (2001), 120-36, which looks at middle-class pupils of both sexes taking the school examinations of the College of Preceptors in the second half of the nineteenth century.
6. C. Dyhouse, Girls Growing Up in late Victorian and Edwardian England (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981).
7. My source for these comments will be Beale's own Reports, but I will also refer to the original Parliamentary Papers. The eighteenth-century basis for the comparisons is M. Cohen, Fashioning Masculinity: National Identity and Language in the Eighteenth Century (London: Routledge, 1996)
8. and idem, 'Gender and the public private debate on education in the long eighteenth century', in Public or Private Education? Lessons from History, edited by R. Aldrich (London: Woburn Press, 2004).
9. Beale, Reports, 6.
10. Report from the Commissioners, Schools Inquiry Commission (Taunton Commission), 20 vols (London: 1867-68), Part I, 7.
11. Beale, Reports, 3.
12. Beale, Reports, xix.
13. See M. Cohen, 'Gender and "method" in eighteenth-century English education', History of Education, 33(5), 2004, 585-595, for a discussion of this topic mainly for the eighteenth century.
14. Beale, Reports, xix.
15. See S. Rothblatt, Tradition and Change in English Liberal Education: An Essay in History and Culture (London: Faber, 1976).
16. Beale, Reports, 95.
17. J. G. Fitch, 'The education of women', The Victoria Magazine, II (Nov-April 1864) 433-4.
18. Beale, Reports, 7-8.
19. Fitch, quoted in Fletcher, Feminists and Bureaucrats, 24.
20. Beale, Reports, 126.
21. F. P. Cobbe, 'Female education, and how it would be affected by University Examinations', paper presented at the Social Science Congress (London, 1862), 8, 10.
22. J.S. Mill, 'The Subjection of Women', in John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor Mill, Essays on Sexual Equality, edited by A.S. Rossi (London: University of Chicago Press, 1970).
23. The Lancet, 1868
24. quoted in J.N. Burstyn, Victorian Education and the Ideal of Womanhood (London: Croom Helm, 1980), 75.
25. Cohen, 'Gender and "method";
26. see also R. Watts, 'Some radical educational networks of the late eighteenth century and their influence', History of Education, 27/1 (1998), 1-14, for a study of radical Unitarians who put these beliefs into practice.
27. H. More, Essays on Various Subjects Principally Designed for Young Ladies (London, 1785) 9-10.
28. Revd J. Bennett, Strictures on Female Education (London, 1787), 107;
29. Revd J. L. Chirol, An Enquiry into the Best System of Female Education (London, 1809), 8.
30. Bennett, Strictures, 105-6.
31. T. Laqueur, Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud (London, Harvard University Press, 1990), 149-52.
32. Laqueur's influential theory is not without critics: see K. Harvey, 'The substance of sexual difference: change and persistence in eighteenth-century representations of the body', Gender and History, 14/2 (2002), 202-23;
33. P. Laipson, 'From boudoir to bookstore: writing the history of sexuality', Comparative Studies in Society and History, 34/4 (October 1992), 636-44.
34. R. Nye, 'Biology, Sexuality and Morality in eighteenth-century France,' Eighteenth-Century Studies, 35/2 (Winter 2002), 236-7;
35. see also O. Moscucci, The Science of Woman: Gynaecology and Gender in England, 1800-1929 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1990).
36. Cohen, 'Gender and the public private debate'.
37. M. Foucault, Archaeology of Knowledge (London: Tavistock, 1972), 190.
38. Beale, Reports, 6, 121.
39. Beale, Reports, 207, 223.
40. Beale, Reports, 8 (emphasis added).
41. See Cohen, 'Gender and the public private debate'.
42. Locke, Thoughts;
43. Thomas Gisborne, An Enquiry into the Duties of the Female Sex [1796] (London, 1813).
44. David Williams, Dissenting Minister and home tutor, A Treatise of Education (London, 1774).
45. Gisborne, Enquiry, 36-8.
46. Bennett, Strictures, 138;
47. Gisborne, Enquiry, 41.
48. Mrs Taylor and Jane Taylor, Correspondence Between a Mother and her Daughter at School (London, 1817), 12-13.
49. Gisborne, Enquiry, 38.
50. Chirol, 153. This was a crucial opposition in late eighteenth-century educational writings.
51. Chirol, Enquiry, 96.
52. D. Acland quoted in E. Kaye, A History of Queen's College (London: Chatto and Windus, 1972), 82-3. The letter was written to Emily Davies in response to her campaign for the admission of women to the Cambridge local examinations in 1862. Acland was expressing the worry of many men 'who were anxious to be helpful of the results of such dangerous requests'.
53. Beale, Reports, 206, 184.
54. On medical discourses about girls' health in the nineteenth century, see Dyhouse, Girls Growing up;
55. Burstyn, Victorian Education;
56. D. Gorham, The Victorian Girl and the Feminine Ideal (London: Croom Helm, 1982);
57. D. Raftery, Women and Learning in English Writing, 1600-1900 (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 1997).
58. Beale, Aborts, 210.
59. Beale, Reports, 7.
60. The language Fearon uses suggests he is referring to the fact that the Latin boys were taught from a young age 'disciplined their mental powers', while girls were handicapped by lack of this early training. See Cohen, 'Gender and "method"'.
61. Beale, Reports, 85.
62. See M. Cohen, '"A habit of healthy idleness": boys' underachievement in historical perspective', in Failing Boys? Issues in Gender and Achievement, edited by D. Epstein, J. Elwood, V. Hey and J. Maw (Buckingham: Open University Press, 1998).
63. Schools Inquiry Commission, V, 952, Q. 11874.
64. E. Clarke, Sex in Education: or, a Fair Chance for Girls (Boston: J.R. Osgood, 1873);
65. H. Maudsley, 'Sex in Mind and Education', Fornightly Review, 15 (1874), 466-83;
66. E. Garrett Anderson, 'Sex in Mind and Education: A Reply', Fortnightly Review, 15 (1874), 582-94.
67. J. Manton, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson (London: Methuen, 1965);
68. T.S. Clouston, The Hygiene of Mind (London: Methuen, 1906), 157.
69. T.S. Clouston, The Position of Woman: Actual and Ideal (London: James Nisbet, 1911), 111.
70. Beale, Reports, 3.
71. See Kamm, Hope Deferred, 211;
72. Dyhouse, Girls Growing Up, does not quote it but para-phrases it.
73. See M. Cohen, 'French Conversation or "Glittering Gibberish"? Learning French in Eighteenth-Century England', in Expertise Constructed: Didactic Literature in the British Atlantic World, 1500-1800, edited by N. Glaisyer and S. Pennell (Ashgate, 2003).
74. It was generally believed that the teaching of classical languages-i.e. grammatically-was the best way to educate the mind and improve the reasoning powers. Report of Her Majesty's Commissioners Appointed to Inquire into Revenues and Management of Certain Colleges and Schools (Clarendon Commission), 4 vols, London, 1864.
75. 'Gender and the public private debate'. 56 Schools Inquiry Commission, 7, Appendix, 429-30.
76. Beale, Reports, 39.
77. Beale, Reports, 148.
78. Thirty years later, the Direct Method, imported from Germany, advocated the use of the foreign language at all times in the classroom and opposed parsing and translation. See Michèle Cohen, 'Is There a Space for the Achieving Girl', in Equity in the Classroom: Towards Effective Pedagogy for Girls and Boys, edited by P. F. Murphy and C. V. Gipps (London: Palmer Press, 1996).
79. Beale, Reports, 57, 78.
80. Beale, Reports, 103 (emphasis in the original).
81. Beale, Reports, 52-3, 60, 73, 233, 229. Elizabeth Wolstenholme was a Manchester teacher and suffragist.
82. For the effects on class, see C. Stray, Classics Transformed: Schools, Universities, and Society in England, 1830-1960 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998).
83. Though effects on gender have not been studied systematically, see Cohen, 'Gender and "method"', and idem, 'Gender and the public private debate'.
84. W.H.D. Rouse, 'Classical studies', in Work and Play in Girls' Schools, edited by D. Beale, L.H.M. Soulsby and J.F. Dove (London: Longmans, Green, 1898), 67.
85. Revd A.G. L'Estrange, The Life of Mary Russell Mitford, 3 vols (London: Richard Bentley, 1870), 1, 12-15.
86. Beale, Reports, 124.The term governess was used for women who taught at school as well as at home.
87. Beale, Reports, 123-4.
88. B. Hill, Eighteenth-Century Women: An Anthology (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1984);
89. K. Sutherland, 'Writings on education and conduct: arguments for female improvements', in Women and Literature in Britain 1700-1800, edited by V. Jones (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
90. Two exceptions are M. R. Theobald, 'The accomplished woman and the propriety of intellect: a new look at women's education in Britain and Australia, 1800-1850', History of Education, 17/1 (1988), 21-35;
91. Bermingham, 'Elegant females and gentlemen connoisseurs: the commerce in culture and self-image in eighteenth-century England', in The Consumption of Culture, 1600-1800: Image, Object, Text, edited by A. Bermingham and J. Brewer (London: Routledge, 1995).
92. See also Cohen, Fashioning Masculinity.
93. Beale, Reports, 218.
94. Hannah More, Essays on Various Subjects (London, 1785), 132.
95. David Fordyce, Dialogues Concerning Education (London: 1745-48);
96. Vicesimus Knox, Liberal Education (London: 1782);
97. Erasmus Darwin, A Plan for the Conduct of Female Education in Boarding Schools (Derby, 1797).
98. See Cohen, Fashioning Masculinity for a more detailed discussion of these points.
99. For example, H. Chapone, Letters on the Improvement of the Mind, Addressed to a Young Lady (London, 1773).
100. L. Chambaud, The Art of Speaking French (Dublin, 1772), xvi.
101. Chambaud's attack on French taught as accomplishment was also a way of promoting his own more 'thorough' grammatical method. Cohen, 'Glittering Gibberish'.
102. H. More, Essays 130;
103. Cohen, Fashioning Masculinity.
104. Revd J. Fordyce, Sermons to Young Women, 2 vols (London, 1770) I, 89;
105. S. Diaconoff, 'Ambition, Politics and Professionalism: Two Women Painters', in Eighteenth-Century Women and the Arts, edited by P.M. Keener and S. Lorsch (London: Greenwood Press, 1988), 201.
106. H. More, Essays, 130.
107. Beale, Reports, 47, 123, 115.
108. Beale, Reports, 39, 62, 176, 170.
109. Rothblatt, Tradition and Change.
110. Beale, Reports, 46-7. It is important to remember that 'disciplinary' here refers to the discipline of mental faculties.
111. See I. Tague, Women of Quality: Accepting and Contesting Ideals of Femininity in England, 1690-1760 (Boydell Press, 2002);
112. E. Chalus, "That epidemical madness": women and electoral politics in the late eighteenth century', in Gender in Eighteenth-Century England, edited by H. Barker and C. Chalus (London: Longman, 1997);
113. Sarah Richardson, '"Well-Neighboured Houses": The political networks of elite women, 1780-1860', in Women in British Politics, 1760-1860: The Power of the Petticoat, edited by Kathryn Gleadle and Sarah Richardson (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000).
114. H. More, Strictures on The Modern System of Female Education, with a View of the Principles and Conduct Prevalent among Women of Rank, 2 vols [1799] (London, 1811), 1, 75-6.
115. J. Lewis, Sacred to Female Patriotism: Class, Gender and Politics in Late Georgian Britain (London: Routledge, 2003).
116. See Gorhain, The Victorian Girl;
117. Fletcher, Feminists and Bureaucrats;
118. Dyhouse, Girls Growing Up.