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

by McDermid,Jane

• ISBN13: 9780713002478
• ISBN10: 0713002476
• Format: Hardcover
• 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.

Table of Contents

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