Schooling Girls and WomenSchooling Girls and Womenand and

Schooling and American IndiansSchooling and American Indians

Schooling Girls and WomenSchooling Girls and Womenand and

Schooling and American IndiansSchooling and American Indians

Tozer: Chapters 5 and 7Tozer: Chapters 5 and 7

Focus on: Political Economy Ideology

Schooling In addition…

Schooling Girls and Women

• American Revolution-ideas on how new nation should be and education’s essential role

• Need for teachers in Common Schools led women to the workforce therefore needing a higher education for women

• Growing industry required clerical workers

Political Economy

Ideology• Move from wives and mothers to workers in society• Women not viewed as rational and independent beings• Women still believed to be inferior to men, but entitled to an education• Most believed the only appropriate goal was matrimony• 19th century-3 thoughts regarding education of girls:

– Right Wing– Liberals– Left Wing

Schooling

• Increase in number of girls in public school• Curriculum of domestic sciences• 1630-start of American Rev.-women barred from public

schooling (few exceptions)• Those girls that were accepted to public school done so

grudgingly—could only attend when boys were absent (5-7am)• Wealthy women often tutored at home/private academies

– Dancing, music, drawing, needlepoint

– Read about Emma Willard and her accomplishments p. 132…

In addition…• Woman’s first responsibility was to her husband• Manners and morals of society called for women to

exemplify this behavior to their children• Cult of Domesticity-women should be educated as

homemaking and nurturing were exclusively female teaching roles

• Radicals Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Soujourner Truth, and others, led the demand for gender equality

• Seneca Fall’s Women’s Rights Convention-demand for vote and higher education for women

• Normal Schools opened in response to demand for higher education for women

• Vassar College founded on the premise that women were equal to men---major breakthrough

• 1920’s-bDomestic Vocational Education movement• Commercial Education-appropriate for white working class

females, immigrants and African American females could then socialize in workforce

Schooling and American Indians6 STAGES

INTERACTION OF NATIVE AMERICANS AND EUROPE AMERICANS

1. CONQUEST- 1492-1886. Number of Indians reduced from 1 million to ¼ million by 1890—war and disease. Indians seen as an impediment to expansion and progress.

2. CIVILIZATION- 1819 Civilization Act—Indian men to stop hunting, move from kinship to individualization. Capitalism, women out of the fields.

3. REMOVAL- 1820’s. Whites in the south East felt that change wasn’t going fast enough,Indians felt that they could maintain their culture by moving. Trail of Tears—relocated to land in the West. “For their own good.” (president Jackson).

4. CONCENTRATION- concentrate in out of the way places and continue to convert reservations

5. ASSIMILATION- 1880’s, poverty on reservations, living in teepees, not assimilating. Christian missionaries sent to kidnap children. Public schooling to socializeEducation: Goal-assimilation, boarding schools, and later on reservation schools, and public schools. Children required to cut hair, rituals banned, prohibited from speaking native language.Land allotment and boarding school policies contributed to the destitution rather than the assimilation. Indians would receive and education appropriate to their status—vocational—marginal laborers/repetitive hand work.

6. SELF DETERMINATION- 1960’s Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) established. Red Power to force the government to uphold its treaties. (Protest dismissed as communist inspired.)

Political Economy

• -Each group of Indian people is a unique and complex cultural within the North American environment• -Many differences among tribes—linguistics, cultural and

environmental• -Many different tribes coexisted as a means of survival.• -Iroquois lived in “towns”. Matrilineal (Women owned property). Hunted, fished, crops, shared deer with

other towns. Coexisted with nature.• -Provided for own needs, cared for the sick, taught tribal

beliefs to children, taught values and skills.• -War and disease accelerated Indian change and

disillusioned Indians were constantly being encouraged to assimilate into European Christian culture

• -Treaties were agreed upon between the tribes and the federal government.

Ideology• -The idea of Manifest Destiny was often used as justification

for subduing all native cultures.• -19th century, Euro-Americans believed that their culture was

the definition of civilization.• American Indians, when conceptualizing God, saw God and

nature as one. American Indians believed that they should live in harmony with the environment, not to subdue it. Seen as savage by Euro-Americans.

• -1886-Dawes Act-distribute tribal lands to individual tribes members Policy reduced tribal lands by 100 million acres between 1886-1933.

• -Euro-American missionaries and government officials wanted to lessen the differences between themselves and the Indians.

• -Growing Nationalism resulted in an inevitable clash of ideological perspectives

Schooling

• European attempts to educate Native Americans were intended to be a part of a civil solution to problems that ensued violence.

• -Native American families resisted formal education and its assimilative approach

• -1886-Dawes Act-intended to teach Indians how yeoman farmers work.

• -18th and 19th centuries, Government was funding a number of Indian schools run by Missionaries. Indians also educated in on-reservation boarding schools and in public schools.

• -Boarding schools and the allotment policy was a major contributor of the break up of Indian tribes.

• Boarding Schools criticized:• -Barbaric living and working conditions in Boarding

Schools• -Attempt at rapid assimilation caused resentment of the dominant culture did not create a faster assimilation.

Francis E. Leupp- supported use of reservation day schools-- civilization could be brought to Indian instead of Indian to civilization.

Scientific Management and Educational Reform-• 1928-The Merriam Report titled “Problem of Indian

Administration” concluded:-Need to revise the BIA policy of cultural assimilation and boarding schools-BIA’s most fundamental concern was education-More government administration was needed to effect

policy change and maintenance-Through education the Indian could begin to

understand better the demands of modern culture and technology

-Important that Indians retain their cultural wisdom. –-Indian culture became a value by the BIA

administration-Indians would progress only if the most sophisticated management techniques and educational practices

were employed. -Lack of Indian administrators and teachers for Indian

schools

Read about these major players in the schooling of American

Indians

• W. Carson Ryan• John Collier• Willard Walcott Beatty (no relation to Warren!)

• WHAT IS THE IRA?