Ruth Watts

Gendering the story: change in the history of education

Giving this presidential address for the History of Education Society (UK) has offered me an opportunity to look over the history of women’s and gender studies in the history of education from when I first joined the society in 1976 to the end of 2004, to note the changes and effects of these studies and ask what we, in history of education, can learn from this and where we should go next. In doing this, I am using the term ‘gender studies’ loosely, aware that often what might be called such is in reality women’s history but the line between the two is so often blurred that it is difficult to distinguish them. How far masculinity is explored as part of ‘gender’ studies will be discussed below. The significance of gender in history has now been argued strongly for over two decades. A good example was the debate between Meg Gomersall and June Purvis with Keith Flett in 1989,

Introduction: theory, methodology, and the history of education

This special issue of History of Education is concerned with the ways in which we engage as historians of education with theoretical and methodological problems. It seeks to advance our understanding of theoretical and methodological considerations relating to the history of education. This is an ambitious project. There is a very large range of problems, both ‘theoretical’ and ‘methodological’, that affect the work of historians of education, and the papers in this collection will only be able to touch on a few of these. Nevertheless, in doing so, we believe that they will be able to demonstrate two outstanding issues that are pivotal for the history of education, as for other forms of history. First, they underline the importance of an awareness of theory and methodology in the work of the historian; that these are not optional extras but are integral to the historian’s craft. Second, they suggest that theory and methodology are best considered not as distinct or separate categories, but in their relations with each other. In all of these assertions, we take our cue from the advice of C. Wright Mills in his classic study The Sociological Imagination. With regard to the importance of theory in history, Mills argued that although history was highly theoretical in its very nature, many historians displayed a ‘calm unawareness’ of this that he found impressive but unsettling. According to Mills, the historian cannot avoid interpretation and selection in seeking an understanding of the past, ‘although he may attempt to disclaim it by keeping his interpretations slim and circumspect’. He continued:

Education, empire and social change in nineteenth century England

This article discusses the effects of imperialism on British (or chiefly English) social life and education in the nineteenth century rather than examining the effects on the colonised as is usually done. It is shown that the nineteenth century was infused with different visual and written images which helped develop attitudes and ideas which influenced social change in Britain. The “imperial gaze” demonstrated a fascination with the unknown and exotic; a scientific curiosity to discover, collect, classify and explain; an economic desire to find and exploit; and mixed motivations from religious, humanitarian and nationalistic impulses to convert, “civilise” and dominate. In different ways and at different levels this entailed a wish to “know” and an urge to pass on presumed “truths” that interlocked imperial influences into educational enterprise, although not necessarily within formal schooling. As the century progressed, events within the expanding empire, combining with scientific theories, helped to develop cultural arrogance, dominated by ideas of white, Western superiority. Yet there was no homogenous, uncontested discourse. As post‐imperial debates suggest, chronological shifts, differing gender and class responses are significant. Effects could be paradoxical as those of imperial opportunities and rhetoric were on womens lives. Examples from other imperial nations, especially France and the Netherlands, indicate parallel imperial, sometimes imperialistic, concerns and interests and varying consequences, but in different contexts. The paper ends with some suggestions on how the difficulties of analysing the effects of empire on social change and education could be addressed within history of education.

Pedagogue of the dance: the dancing master as educator in the long eighteenth century

The educational impact of the dancing master is examined within social and cultural contexts including patronage and artistic style. The nature of the dancing master’s peripatetic role and lesson content in domestic and private locations is analysed with reference to notational scores, dance treatises and archival sources. The impact on performance standards in ballrooms and assemblies is assessed and explanations are given as to how the value systems of the aristocracy and gentry were transferred into schools through the direct influence of Erasmus Darwin’s A Plan for the Conduct of Female Education (1797) and Robert Owen (1741–1858), who employed professional dancing masters at his experimental school in New Lanark.

Whose Knowledge? Gender, Education, Science and History.

What forms of knowledge are deemed worth possessing in any period and who is allowed access to them are crucial questions for the historian of education. Science, now a core subject of study, has long been seen as ‘masculine’, especially at its highest levels, although the historical reasons for this have been somewhat neglected in education. This paper compares and analyses the interrelationships of education, gender and science at both the end of the long eighteenth century and in the early twentieth century in order to explore issues of knowledge and gender and demonstrate the use of a historical perspective * I was very pleased to be asked by the editors to submit a paper to the journal in honour of Joan Simon. I admired Joan for her scholarship, keen intellect and lifelong championship of her principles and I loved her for her warm‐hearted friendship. Joan showed much interest in my research: in particular, she liked my paper on Jane Marcet given at the History of Education conference at Cambridge in honour of Brian Simon. Some years ago she and Brian suggested that I should write a history of science and education, so I should like to dedicate this paper to her. It is based on my inaugural lecture at the University of Birmingham and on my forthcoming book on the social history of women in science, Women in Science: a Social and Cultural History (London, Routledge, 2007). 1 Inspired by Sandra Harding’s title Whose Science? Whose Knowledge? Thinking from Women’s Lives. Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1991.

Gender, science and modernity in seventeenth‐century England

The seventeenth century in England, bounded by the scientific stimulus of Francis Bacon at the beginning and Isaac Newton at the end, seemingly saw a huge leap from the Aristotelian dialectic of the past to a reconstruction of knowledge based on inductive methods, empirical investigation and cooperative research. In mid‐century, Puritan reformers inspired both by the scientific thinking of Bacon and by the educational reforms of Comenius, hoped that educational reform at both school and university level would follow political and religious changes. In 1661, after the restoration of the monarchy, the founding of the Royal Society suggested that acceptance of experimental and practical science at the highest level had been achieved and that this would impinge on education. None of these assumptions can be accepted at face value. Indeed, the whole intellectual and educational history of the seventeenth century is far more complex than often portrayed. Various scientific and philosophical world‐views and different methods of scientific investigation jostled for supremacy and major leaps forward in scientific knowledge were often a combination of some of these. The physical sciences still came under the umbrella of ‘natural philosophy’. Nevertheless, this period is seen as the beginnings of a scientific revolution that has profoundly affected, even generated the modern world. Generally such developments have been both hailed and derided as masculinist. Earlier historians usually neither saw nor looked for womens place in scientific development: more recently, feminist historians have both tried to correct the picture and sought to explain the exclusion of women from most of it. Some have seen Western science itself in this period constructing notions of masculinity and femininity that would prevent women participating in the scientific ventures which represent modernity. This article will investigate the position of women within the scientific and educational developments of seventeenth‐century England. The development of Baconian science and its effects on Puritan reformers, especially Samuel Hartlib, John Dury and other like‐minded scholars, will be examined. It will be shown that their ideals, like those of Jan Comenius whom they admired and worked with, had positive implications for female education. Although, however, some females were affected by the educational reforming impulses of the Hartlib circle, in the changeable political and intellectual world of seventeenth‐century England, very little lasting reform was achieved. Generally women were not well educated in this period. They were excluded from formal educational institutions such as the grammar school and the university although these were not necessarily where scientific and educational reform took place. The advent of printing in the sixteenth century and the growth of scientific lectures in the seventeenth enabled upper and some middle‐ranking women to take part in some of the intellectual ferment of the day and women naturally had a place in science through their culinary and medical roles. Contemporary research has uncovered some of the scientific work done by women and stimulated significant discussion on what can be counted as ‘science’. In England, female relatives of those who espoused scientific and educational reform were themselves involved in such initiatives. On the other hand, they were shut out from membership of the Royal Society for the Improvement of Natural Knowledge, established in 1662, or any other formal institution. Some women were affected by Cartesianism and other scientific theories including those on both natural magic and more occult philosophies. This was a century, however, when unorthodox thinking could meet with frightful consequences and eminent thinkers across the continent fell foul of religious and political authorities. The period was shamed by the highest number of witchcraft trials ever in Central and Western Europe, including England, chiefly against women, albeit mainly the old and the poor. In the second half of the century, longings for stability and peace were more likely to consolidate patriarchical and conservative mores than give way to radical social ideas. Nevertheless, as this study will show, a number of women, chiefly of aristocratic lineage or at least educated above the norm, were able even to publish their scientific ideas. Two of the women mentioned here did so through translation: Lucy Hutchinson, translating Lucretius, and Aphra Benn, translating Bernard le Bouvier de Fontenelle. Hutchinson particularly revealed her own thinking through the notes she added to her edition. Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, chose to pour out the scientific and philosophical ideas she gathered through reading and conversation, in a torrent of unedited publications. Anne, Viscountess Conway, in more measured tones and timing, drew from her private form of higher education to publish The Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy, which influenced leading philosophers of her day, including Liebniz. Both she and Margaret Cavendish were sufficiently confident to critique Descartes, although Anne Conways thinking was based on a sounder education. Bathsua Makin was able from her own excellent education and her contacts with the Hartlib circle at home and Anna Maria van Schurmann and others abroad to promulgate an education for girls that would enable them to learn and use a range of sciences and mathematics in an extended female role. Even so, these women were a privileged few and promoted scientific and educational ideas from a vantage point of their own fortunate educational and/or social position. For none of them was this uncomplicated, while for other women, even ones within intellectual circles such as that of Mary Evelyn, their scientific impulses were restrained by gendered notions. Thus it is shown that in both the opportunities offered by new scientific and educational ideas and in their exclusion from the mainstream the position of women was in line with conflicting modern principles that underlay a contested terrain in science for the centuries to come. In addition, this brief exploration of these gendered contradictions of the scientific revolution in England shows the benefits of understanding the large areas of learning which are outside or juxtaposed to formal education, the networks that facilitate leaning and the contemporary context of gendered and scientific beliefs pervading different forms of knowledge.

Breaking the boundaries of Victorian imperialism or extending a reformed ‘paternalism’? Mary Carpenter and India

Recent studies on British imperialism in India and gender have sought to paint a much wider and deeper picture of imperialism than hitherto, by drawing women in. First, such studies contested the more traditional view of `women of the Raj’ by restoring to the imperial story white women who played an active role in imperialism, particularly those who believed they were helping oppressed s̀isters’ . Later analyses, however, have demonstrated the `paternalist’ attitudes even of white female reformers in India, showing that they usually wished to change the culture and religion of their Indian s̀isters’ . Furthermore they have been seen as racist in objectifying Indian women as the `Other’ , that is victims who passively awaited white women’s help. How far, therefore, could even the seemingly friendliest reformers break the boundaries of imperialism? How far were they actually paternalist or even racist? The following article will explore such questions through examining the case of the nineteenth century English educationist and social reformer, Mary Carpenter, who in the last ten years of her life focused on reforms in India, especially the education of its women. At least one modern Indian historian has depicted her as a liberal interventionist who crossed some of the boundaries of racial, cultural and gender divides. To what extent this view can be supported will be explored after an examination of the current debate on gender and imperialism. The following focus on one white, middle-class woman is given as an illumination of that debate.

Society, education and the state: Gender perspectives on an old debate

An examination of recent gender scholarship demonstrates how a gendered lens has contributed to the debates on society, the state and education. Using local and international examples mostly from about 1880 to 1930, this paper will investigate how gendered perceptions coloured the provision of education, what we mean by “the state” and how much and what type of education it and other bodies have provided for females in different contexts. Following this, it will examine the growth of women in teaching, the challenges and limitations which beset them, the opportunities that were opened up to them and how far they and other women achieved authority and/or expertise in education in schools, colleges, educational administration and management, or as leaders and thinkers. This will illustrate the gendered thinking underlying much state education, but also show women as agents, building up networks and communities of women involved in education in multifarious ways, including transnational education. At the same time it can be seen that this has often belied imperialistic imperatives and ethnic condescension. Moving between local examples from Birmingham and Britain and international examples principally from English-speaking scholarship, the importance of gender history is argued because it reveals educational experiences and tiers of educational initiatives, practice and administration often neglected yet significant in education, while at the same time raising new questions. It does not just bring females into history, but understands history in a different and deeper way.

Revolution and Reaction: ‘Unitarian’ academics, 1780‐1800 1

1 This article is based on a paper given at the History of Education Society Conference in Birmingham, May 1989 and on my unpublished PhD thesis, R. E. Watts, The Unitarian Contribution to Education from the late eighteenth century to 1853 (Leicester, 1987) [hereafter Watts, Thesis].

Females in science: a contradictory concept?

Background: the belief that women and science, including mathematics and medicine, are incompatible has had a long and complex history and still often works to exclude women from and/or marginalise them in science. Purpose: this article will seek to explore gender and educational achievement through investigating how such gendered presumptions have persisted at various levels of science, despite perceptions of science itself changing over time and scientific studies expanding, differentiating and becoming professionalized. In particular, after a brief discussion of the historical debates on the provenance and lasting recurrence of gendered assumptions in science, it will try to discover how these prejudices affected the education of girls and women in England from c.1910 to c. 1939 and then, to widen the picture, make some comparison with the USA in the same period, although, necessarily in an article of this length, this analysis will be somewhat cursory. It will then bring the history up-to-date by examining the situation in England today. Sources of evidence: the article will proceed by using extensive local sources in case study research on Birmingham, by then the second largest English city. The comparisons with the situation in the USA in the same period and the examination of the present situation will be based largely on secondary sources. Main argument: factors of location, family background, supportive networks and greater educational, political and employment rights will be shown to have allowed some women to break through the barriers that hindered many from accessing or rising in science. Thus, it will be seen through the Birmingham example that there was a growing yet limited field of scientific practice for women, ordered by a gendered philosophy which routed them into specific areas. This picture was further permeated by class, wealth, identity, contacts, networks and location albeit this was modified by the scholarship system. Comparisons with the USA show that similar factors were present there, albeit in a different context. Twenty-first century sources indicate that on the one hand there is still gendered access and progress for females in science in England yet, on the other hand, there have been, and are at present, a number of initiatives seeking to overcome this. Conclusion: Even today, therefore, whatever sciences females do is affected by underlying gendered assumptions and structural power relationships which need to be understood.