Beyond Mother’s Knee: The Struggle to Educate Women by Author Elaine Kendall

In the article “Beyond Mother’s Knee: The Struggle to Educate Women”, author Elaine Kendall That women’s rights to education were taken away, but as they gradually proved themselves to be more intelligent and qualified, they gained new respect and eventually were at the top of the “educational ladder”. Kendall makes it very clear that in the beginning of the 1700s men had many schools like Harvard, and Yale, but the only education that a girl was able to get was from her mother.

The minimal education that the mother would pass down would mostly be from her domestic experiences, either in the kitchen or from her own sewing experiences. Emma Willard, a strong supporter of women rights introduced her “Plan for the Improvement of Female Education”. Willard sent letters to congress, only to have them ignored and to put on the bottom of their “to do list”. In pursuit of higher education girls would go through great lengths to learn anything they could. An instance where this has happened is when the school girls would go to the stairs of boy’s schools and they would eavesdrop to get any education they could.

Unfortunately this was not very good for their health because some of these girls would obtain different respiratory deficiencies like pleurisy and in other cases bronchitis. Kendall states that while time went by, different states became a little more liberal and would become more lenient in allowing girls to come to schools in different hours of the day. Even though most of the women’s education was not obtained until later years, other methods of learning were importing private tutors. Though this was a bigger luxury and rarer in poor communities, rich planters often found it necessary to educate their children and sometime even get lessons for the girls to dance.

As for the poor citizens, it was very common for fathers to teach their daughter how to read, especially the bible. The men didn’t want women to be absolutely ignorant of what was going on around them, they just believed that it was unnecessary for women to learn, when stereotypically they were suppose to clean the house, make the food, wash the dishes, and comfort their husbands from a long hard day at work. Men believed that if women would be too interested in the arts and educational subjects, women would selfishly focus all their attention on that and not do the things that were important to them. Things like having food ready on the table, the bed cleaned, and their shirts sewn. Other schools later arouse. Dame schools became popular for girls.

These schools were brought up by older women who would only charge “threepence” a day to look after the “neighborhood girls”. These schools focused on basic home skills like sewing, cooking, and other essential things women had to know to sustain the house for her husband and children. After Dame schools a perfect opportunity had arose for boys and girls to get an education. The schools that were introduced were called Adventurer schools. Kendall explains how these schools were set up in order for the educators to make lots of money.

He explains, since there was no or little competition to educate women, these people would come into town and charge more money than usual to get an education. These schools would teach almost anything in any location. Much time school could be set up in a field, an apartment, or rented out rooms. Women gradually started to get more rights and soon women were teaching. Ironically, the once discriminated women were now the more preferred sex to teach because of their calm and intelligent voices. Kendall shows us how women went from having almost no educational rights, to being equal in a society where men dominate. Maybe even a little better.