Leaders in Education
Catharine Beecher (1800-1878)
Catharine Beecher believed strongly that for women to be properly prepared as teachers, they needed special training institutions similar to the model of men's colleges and universities. She spent nearly fifty years improving the quality of women's education and raising women's status in the teaching profession.
Born in Connecticut, Catharine Beecher received her first formal education from her father, the well-known clergyman Lyman Beecher. After the untimely death of her fiancé, Beecher decided to devote her life to service as a teacher. Not long afterward, in 1828, she founded the Hartford Female Seminary. The establishment of this institution for the education of females set the pattern for her life's work.
At a time when women had to leave the teaching profession upon marriage, Beecher urged them to become teachers before fulfilling their calls to be wives and mothers. However, she emphasized that the quality of women's education needed to be improved, pointing out that the model of female loveliness that included fainting and playing the "pretty plaything" was not adequate for the roles women were expected to assume. Beecher called upon the leading female schools in the country to establish a uniform course of education adapted to the character and circumstances of women, corresponding to what was done in colleges for young men, and she urged the benefactors of female institutions to provide suitable facilities for instruction, such as libraries and scientific equipment. She also saw the need for teachers who were not generalists, but specialists in academic disciplines.
As she spoke and wrote extensively on ways to improve the education of women, Beecher established female seminaries in New England and across the Midwest. Each of these seminaries was attached to a model school supported financially by the children who attended it. The faculties were prepared to teach at other seminaries in order to establish a regular and systematic course of education throughout the country. For women who were unable to pay for their preparation as teachers, Beecher urged that alternative public institutions be maintained. At a time when it was uncommon to campaign for educational reform and defend the needs of women, Catharine Beecher spent her life striving to do both.
Visit the following web sites for more information on Catharine Beecher:
Catharine Beecher
This biography is part of the PBS OnlyaTeacher web site. It contains quotations from Catharine Beecher, as well as short excerpts from scholars of her life.
Domestic Manuals
You can read Catharine Beecher's ATreatiseonDomesticEconomy, as well as the book she authored with her sister, Harriet Beecher Stowe, AnAmericanWoman'sHouse, at this site, which explores the history of how-to books for women.
Women in American History
This site, from EncyclopediaBrittanica, offers a brief biography of Catharine Beecher, as well as a link to quotations of her own words.