For Women to Teach, They had to Disavow any Private Gain

A history of education, Goldstein’s The Teacher Wars, notes of private work for women that

It was radical to suggest women should teach in co-ed schools.  In the early nineteenth century, only 10 percent of American women worked outside the home.  Because the assumption was that public work of any kind was degrading to a middle-class woman, Beecher had to make the case that opening the teaching profession to women would be good for students and society—not just for the women themselves.             (2014, p. 20).

This is amazingly powerful, this notion that so few people worked outside the home.  We also have to consider that upwards of 90% of all Americans worked in agriculture at this time.  It was about to change. . .  ponder the immense uprooting of the American family that was about to occur.  Ironically enough, a reformer like Beecher’s tactic was to insist that this was for public good and not the teacher’s private benefit.

We still see—even now—echoes of this.  I know of situations where parents get involved in schools’ home and schools committees or attend board meetings and use the specific salaries of specific teachers as weapons.  (This is the “I know how much you make” argument.)  Teachers spend plenty of their own money.  They ought not need to feel ashamed that they earn a salary.  But moves are underway now to undercut the public school systems, tenure, and even guaranteed salaries.  It was the right and not the left, remember, that urged merit pay for teachers.  My point is just to be as self-aware as you may be of the connections between then and now.