Sunday, March 6, 2011

Women in american education

For nearly two centuries women have been discriminated in many aspects of life. Mainly higher education, in colonial America women very rarely attended school and if they did it was only at the elementary level. Those women who were able to attend a school usually came from money this was the only way a female would be able to attend higher education. In the later years of colonial America secondary schools started called female seminaries. Families with the financial means now had the opportunity to send their daughter to get a secondary education just like their sons. These female seminaries would be the start of normal schools for women, which are schools of teaching. Where women like Emma Hart Willard and Catherine Beecher wrote text books on teaching but not the typical teaching methods of the time. During this time period around the turn of the century the corporal punishment method was in effect. These women wrote text about more humanely methods. They viewed the classroom as an extension of the home life, where cooperation was emphasized these were the views and methods that developed from these female seminaries. Until the turn of the 20th century women and sports weren't even put in the same sentence. Prior to Title IX(1972), women sports were controlled by societal expectations. Caution about a potential overemphasis on competition or on unladylike behavior led to modified rules in several sports. To say that women had any form of freedom or individuality in sport would be an incorrect statement because women had nothing close to that, they had to conform to what society thought was appropriate for a proper women. In the early 1900’s mass participation in class exercises’, field days, play days, and sport days, rather than just competitive athletics became the norm. These play dates were all a form of competition for women. In all the events the emphasis was on fun, and social interaction. The first resemblances of a competition for women were telegraphic meets these were events that women participated in and were timed in; thereafter they compared scores with other institutions. The sports that allowed this were swimming bowling, and archery the times would be compared with females from other institutions. TO this day females have made tremendous gains but some feminist still think there is much room for improvement and we haven't reached total equality.

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