The Schooling of Working-Class Girls in Victorian Scotland: Gender, Education and Identity

by McDermid,Jane

• ISBN13: 9780415375580
• ISBN10: 0415375584
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Nonspecific Binding
• Copyright: 2005-09-22
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

The portrayal of Scotland as a particularly patriarchal society has traditionally had the effect of marginalizing Scottish women, both teachers and students, in both Scottish and British history.The Schooling of Working-Class Girls in Victorian Scotlandexamines and challenges this assumption and analyses in detail the course of events which has led to a more enlightened system. Education was, and is, seen as integral to Scottish distinctiveness, but the Victorian period saw anxious debate about the impact of outside influences at a time when Scottish society seemed to be fracturing. This book examines the gender-blindness of the educational tradition, with its notion of the 'democratic intellect', testing the claim of superiority for the Scottish system, and questioning the assumption that Scottish women were either passive victims or willing dupes of a peculiarly patriarchal ideal. Considering the influences of the related ideologies of patriarchy and domesticity, and the crucial importanceof the local and regional economic context, in focusing on female education, this book provides a much wider comparative study of Scottish society during a period of tremendous upheaval and a perceived crisis in national identity, in which women, as well as men, participated.

Author Biography

Jane McDermid is Senior Lecturer in History, University of Southampton

Table of Contents

List of tables	ix
Acknowledgements	x
Map of Scotland	xi
Education and gender in nineteenth-century Scotland	1	(26)
Placing women in Scottish educational history	9	(4)
National identity in nineteenth-century Scotland	13	(7)
On the margins? Catholics, education and identity in nineteenth-century Scotland	20	(3)
Sources and organisation	23	(4)
Female education in Scotland before 1872	27	(29)
The schooling of girls in Scotland to the mid-nineteenth century	27	(8)
Female education and the Argyll Commission, 1864--1868	35	(17)
Towards the 1872 Education (Scotland) Act	52	(4)
Working-class girls' schooling, 1872--1900: The `city regions'	56	(30)
Glasgow	58	(8)
The regions of heavy industry	66	(4)
The textile regions	70	(7)
Aberdeen and Edinburgh	77	(9)
Working-class girls' schooling, 1872--1900: The country districts	86	(28)
Perthshire	95	(10)
Working-class girls' education in a regional economy	105	(9)
Dominated by the dominie? Women and the teaching profession in nineteenth-century Scotland	114	(29)
The masculine tradition	114	(4)
Women in a masculine profession	118	(8)
Patriarchy and the feminisation of the teaching profession	126	(8)
Feminisation and anglicisation	134	(4)
Peculiarly patriarchal?	138	(5)
Conclusion	143	(13)
Notes	156	(29)
Bibliography	185	(12)
Index	197