Dame school

"A New England dame school in old colonial times". 1713. Bettman Archive

A dame school was an early form of a private elementary school in English-speaking countries. They were usually taught by women and were often located in the home of the teacher.

Britain

A dame school; photograph by P. H. Emerson

Dame schools were small, private schools run by working class women and occasionally men in their own homes.[1] References to dame schools can be found from the 16th century onward.[2]

Dame schools often had a poor reputation and were often seen as a cheap form of daycare.[1] The London inspector of the British and Foreign School Society in 1838 wrote that "in the dame schools they cannot teach reading."[2]

In 1861 the Newcastle Commission reported:

The number of children whose names ought (in summer 1858 in England and Wales) to have been on the school books, in order that all might receive some education, was 2,655,767. The number we found to be actually on the books was 2,535,462, thus leaving 120,305 children without any school instruction whatever.

They looked at the previous year's data and found that 2,213,694 children of the poorer classes were in elementary day schools. But of this number:

  • 573,536 were attending private schools, such as dame schools where a woman provided child care facilities and a little reading, writing and arithmetic in her own home. These failed to give the children an education which would be serviceable to them in later life.
  • The other 1,549,312 children were attending public elementary day schools belonging to the religious denominations (church schools), but all but 19.3% were under 12, so were in primary departments. Only 300,000 were receiving any form of extended education, which was believed to be essential.
  • As many as 786,202 attend for less than 100 days in the year and can therefore hardly receive a serviceable amount of education
  • A large proportion of the teaching was inefficiently done
  • "Much, therefore, still remains to be done to bring up the state of elementary education in England and Wales to the degree of usefulness which we all regard as attainable and desirable" [3]

Most dame schools largely closed with the implementation of the 1870 Elementary Education Act.

Surviving former Dame School buildings

North America

In North America, "dame school" is a broad term for a private school with a female teacher during the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. The education provided by these schools ranged from basic to exceptional.[8] The basic type of dame school was more common in New England, where basic literacy was expected of all classes, than in the southern colonies, where there were fewer educated women willing to be teachers.[9]

Motivated by the religious needs of Puritan society and their own economic needs, some colonial women in 17th century rural New England opened small, private schools in their homes to teach reading and catechism to young children. An education in reading and religion was required for children by the Massachusetts School Law of 1642. This law was later strengthened by the famous Old Deluder Satan Act. According to Puritan beliefs, Satan would assuredly try to keep people from understanding the Scriptures, therefore it was deemed that all children be taught how to read. Dame schools fulfilled this requirement if parents were unable to educate their young children in their own home. For a small fee, women, often housewives or widows, offered to take in children to whom she would teach a little writing, reading, basic prayers and religious beliefs. These women received "tuition" in coin, home industries, alcohol, baked goods and other valuables. Teaching materials generally included, and often did not exceed, a hornbook, primer, Psalter and Bible.[10] Both girls and boys were provided education through the dame school system. Dame schools generally focused on the four R's of education-Riting, Reading, Rithmetic, and Religion.[11] In addition to primary education, girls in dame schools might also learn sewing, embroidery, and other "graces".[12] Most girls received their only formal education from dame schools because of sex-segregated education in common or public schools during the colonial period.[13] If their parents could afford it, after attending a dame school for a rudimentary education in reading, colonial boys moved on to grammar schools where a male teacher taught advanced arithmetic, writing, Latin and Greek.[14]

In the 18th and 19th centuries, some dame schools offered boys and girls from wealthy families a "polite education". The women running these elite dame schools taught "reading, writing, English, French, arithmetic, music and dancing".[15][16] Schools for upper-class girls were usually called "female seminaries", "finishing schools" etc. rather than "dame schools".

Australia

The first known school in Australia was founded in Sydney in December 1789 by Isabella Rossen.[17][18] The second known school in Australia was founded by Mary Johnson in Paramatta in 1791.[17] Both women were convicts supervised by clergyman Rev. Richard Johnson.[17]

See also

References

  • Gillard, Derek. "The History of Education in England - History". www.educationengland.org.uk. Retrieved 11 March 2017.
  1. ^ a b Purvis, June (2008-01-28). Women's History: Britain, 1850-1945: An Introduction. Routledge. ISBN 9781135367107.
  2. ^ a b Cockburn; King; MacDonald. "The Education of the Working Classes to 1870". British History on Line.
  3. ^ Gillard 2017, Section 3.
  4. ^ Dame School, Orton, Eden, Cumbria
  5. ^ getsurrey Administrator (3 August 2006). "Dame school rejuvenated". getsurrey.
  6. ^ Vieve Forward. "19 Green Road, Upper Stratton (C) Vieve Forward :: Geograph Britain and Ireland". geograph.org.uk.
  7. ^ http://www.peterjtyldesley.com/bongs/lunn/pages/137.html
  8. ^ Perlmann, Joel, and Robert Margo. Women's work?: American schoolteachers, 1650-1920. Chicago: University of Chicago Press (2001), 9
  9. ^ Tolley, Kimberley. Transformations in schooling: historical and comparative perspectives. New York: Macmillan (2007), 91.
  10. ^ Harper, Elizabeth P. "Dame Schools". In Encyclopedia of Educational Reform and Dissent, Thomas Hunt, Thomas Lasley and C D. Raisch, 259-260. SAGE Publications (2010).
  11. ^ Ryan, K. R., & Cooper, J. M. C. (2010). Colonial origins. In L. Mafrici (Ed.), Those who can teach (12th ed.). Boston, MA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning.
  12. ^ Forman-Brunell, Miriam. Girlhood in America: An Encyclopedia. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO (2001), 575.
  13. ^ Moss, Hilary J. Schooling citizens: the struggle for African American education in antebellum America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press (2009), 133.
  14. ^ Zhboray, Ronald. A fictive people: antebellum economic development and the American reading public. New York: Oxford University Press (1993), 92.
  15. ^ Greene, Jack and Rosemary Brana-Shute, and Randy J. Sparks, eds. Money, Trade and Power: The Evolution of Colonial South Carolina's Plantation Society. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press (2001), 305.
  16. ^ Clinton, Catherine. "Dorothea Dix." In The Reader's companion to American history By, Eric Foner and John Arthur, 289. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1991.
  17. ^ a b c Peel, Robin; Patterson, Annette Hinman; Gerlach, Jeanne Marcum (2000). Questions of English: Ethics, Aesthetics, Rhetoric, and the Formation of the Subject in England, Australia, and the United States. Psychology Press. ISBN 9780415191197.
  18. ^ Ross, John (ed.) (1993) Chronicle of Australia, Melbourne, Chronicle Australasia, p.77. ISBN 1872031838

External links


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