Provides a starting point for further research on the lives and duties of rural women teachers. It collects in a single bibliography a wide variety of material on rural women teachers from Colonial America to the 1940s including archival material, letters, diaries, journals, fiction, and dissertations.

Focusing on the lives and work of women teachers in two rural California counties from 1850 to 1950, Country Schoolwomen explores the social context of teaching, seeking to understand what teaching meant to women teachers, what it provided them, and how it shaped their categories of experience. The women we meet in this study taught in isolated one- and two-room schoolhouses and in the migrant schools of the Depression years; many of them witnessed the profound upheavals brought about by the two world wars. Through the lens of their lives, the author examines the growth of state control over schools, the irrevocable impact of powerful economic and political changes on small-town life, and the patterns of racism that have divided California from the time of the earliest European settlement. This study challenges a number of assumptions about the lives and work of women teachers. It is often assumed, for example, that the work of women in schools has always been controlled by men--that education has, with rare exceptions, remained a patriarchal space in which women care for children in classrooms while men hold positions of authority, define issues, and set policy. Country Schoolwomen introduces us to a network of women educators who occupied positions of power at the state level, who supported one another, and who defined an alternative, far more positive image of the woman teacher. The work of these women put forth a vision of classroom teaching as a serious and stimulating profession. And for many of the women in this study, teaching clearly did provide material resources and intellectual satisfaction. The historical record thus suggests that rather than signaling their subjugation, teaching has afforded women a potential source of power; it has offered them respect, autonomy, and financial independence. But women have had to struggle--not always successfully--to claim this potential, which male educators have often sought to deny or disregard. In addition, both university experts and local communities have persisted in viewing classroom teaching as "women's work" and have consequently been slow to acknowledge competing perspectives on the profession. This study ultimately reveals, then, not a homogeneous tradition but a dense ideological landscape, one in which representations of "the woman teacher" were often caught among contradictory and contested visions.

This book explores the professional, civic, and personal roles of women teachers throughout American history. Its themes and findings build from the mostly unpublished writings of many women. Clifford studied personal history manuscripts in archives and consulted printed autobiographies, diaries, correspondence, oral histories, interviews to probe the multifaceted imagery that has surrounded teaching. This work surveys a long past where schoolteaching was essentially men's work, with women relegated to restricted niches such as teaching rudiments of the vernacular language to young children and socializing girls for traditional gender roles.

The history of women's education in the United States presents a continuous effort to move from the periphery to the mainstream, and this book examines both formal and informal opportunities for girls and women. Through an introductory essay and nearly 250 alphabetically arranged entries, this reference book examines institutions, persons, ideas, events, and movements in the history of women's education in the United States. The volume spans the colonial era to the present, exploring settings from formal institutions such as schools and colleges to informal associations such as suffrage groups and reform organizations where women gained skills and used knowledge. A full picture of women's educational history presents their work in mainstream institutions, sex-segregated schools, and informal organizations that served as alternative educational settings. Educational history varies greatly for women of different races, classes, and ethnicities. The experience of some groups has been well documented. Thus entries on the Seven Sisters women's colleges and the reform organizations of the Progressive Era convey wide historical detail. Other women have been studied only recently. Thus entries on African American school founders or women teachers present considerable new information that scholars interpret against a wider context. Finally, some women's history has yet to be adequately explored. Hispanic American women and Catholic teaching sisters are discussed in entries that highlight historical questions still remaining. Each entry is written by an expert contributor and concludes with a brief bibliography. The volume closes with a timeline of women's educational history and a list of important general works for further reading.

This ethnographic study of female teachers in rural Oaxaca explores how education and employment empower women to make informed personal decisions and catalyze societal change.