Lessons for Life: The Schooling of Girls and Women, 1850-1950

This is a study of education and growing up, both inside and outside the school, considering the various ways in which girls and women received their education in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In examining formal education at every level from the elementary to the university, it highlights the extent to which formal school structures and informal influences of socialization both reflected amd reinforced prevailing social practices and opinions. The first part of the book discusses how ideologies of femininity have influenced schooling for girls, the strategies adopted by pioneer Victorian headmistresses, and leisure reading aimed at girls and women readers. The next part of the book examines how educational inequality manifested itself in the elementary school curriculum, in relations in the teaching profession and intelligence testing. The third and final section explores the actual experiences of girls and women in formal education with accounts of schooling for girls in the inter-war years and the early years of college life for women students in Victorian Cambridge. This would be suitable reading for undergraduates and graduates in women’s studies, history of education,and social history.