Among the objectives that Chapter 8 seeks to achieve are these:
This chapter should help explain selected aspects of the history of the education of girls and women in the United States from colonial times through the early twentieth century.
A second objective is to introduce students to the precolonial ideological origins of biases against women. Because of the religious origins of colonialism in the United States, particular attention is paid to the religious origins of views about women's essential nature.
Students should begin to assess the degree to which prevailing beliefs about women affected women's opportunities for education in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth centuries.
Students should also evaluate the degree to which educational arrangements for women served the ideals of women's equality that were expressed throughout this period.
This chapter offers an opportunity for students to evaluate whether conservative, liberal, and radical views on women's education were adequate to challenge the subordinate status of women.
The Primary Source Readings at the end of the chapter provide illustrations of how, despite prevailing social and educational practices, dissenting women have historically been able to formulate viewpoints that challenge those practices.
