HOW HAS TEACHING EVOLVED?
Asked about the teaching profession itself, Mr. Kuhn, who has served on negotiating teams for the teachers’ union, indicated that “teachers are generally highly respected in my community. You have to earn their respect. Once you have gained that respect, students and the parents will respect you.”
The role of women in teaching defines the profession. Because of their traditional roles as nurturing mothers, women have been seen as the natural teachers of children. Historically, they have provided a stable, inexpensive, moral teaching force for the country. Women have not always been the majority of teachers. During the colonial period, teachers were men except in the dame schools. After the Revolutionary War, females began to be recruited as teachers. Teachers today are even more likely to be women than in the 19th century, which may contribute to the lower status attributed to teaching.
The emerging pattern in the 19th century was men administrators managing women teachers. The leadership of the NEA was male school administrators, college presidents, and professors throughout most of its first 100 years. Women teachers had to seek permission from the male leadership to speak at the business meetings of the annual conference. The American Federation of Teachers (AFT), on the other hand, evolved from the Chicago Federation of Teachers, where two activist women teachers—Margaret Haley and Catherine Goggin—joined forces with organized labor because they felt they shared the same interests as workers (Spring, 2011).
Although teachers are held responsible for preparing students to meet national standards, they have not always been represented in the groups developing those standards. The expertise and knowledge of teachers are not yet valued by the policy-makers, business leaders, and think tanks as reflected by their limited involvement on many national and state committees on education reform. The Center for Teaching Quality asserts that “teachers must be seen as solutions, not problems” to raise student achievement and serve students effectively (Berry, 2011, p. 20).
Teacher Preparation
To ensure that teachers taught the curriculum that educational leaders desired, teacher education programs were developed. Reverend Samuel Hall is credited with establishing one of the first institutions for preparing teachers in 1823 in Concord, Vermont, but Emma Willard had opened the Troy Female Seminary in 1821, in which women earned their certification, which many school boards required. However, certified teachers were not readily available in many rural areas for another century (Spring, 2011).
Women teachers in the 19th century were expected to be single and follow strict codes of behavior set by local school boards.
Normal schools were established in 1839 in Lexington, Massachusetts, to prepare teachers for elementary schools. Most students in normal schools were women who had completed elementary or common schools, but had not completed high school. Curriculum in the normal schools required one to two years of study in which the elementary school curriculum was reviewed, classroom management studied, and teaching methods taught. Many of today’s state colleges and universities began as normal schools. They changed their names and expanded their missions beyond the preparation of teachers in the mid-1900s. Today, they continue to prepare the majority of teachers in the country.
Teachers of children in the 1700s had not always finished elementary school although teachers of adolescents may have attended college. The amount of education increased in each century that followed. In the 1800s, a growing number of elementary school teachers completed high school and began to attend teacher institutes and normal schools to further develop their knowledge of the subjects they were teaching as well as their teaching skills. It was not until the mid-1900s that most teachers completed a four-year college, which is now required for a teaching license. Into the mid-1900s teachers had more education than most members of their community. However, by the beginning of the 21st century, a larger proportion of the population had a bachelor’s degree than in previous centuries.
Teacher Behavior
Teachers have long been under the control of school boards and administrators. Not only did administrators oversee the work of teachers and select their textbooks; they also monitored their personal behavior. Teachers were expected to live exemplary moral lives. Their social activities were monitored by school officials throughout the 19th century and into the 20th. Horace Mann in 1840 indicated that a teacher should have “perfect” knowledge of the subject being taught, an aptitude for teaching, which he believed could be learned, the ability to manage and govern a classroom and mold moral behavior, good behavior as a model for students, and good morals (Spring, 2011).
Even though morals were only one of Horace Mann’s five qualifications, it appeared to be one of the most important to school superintendents and school board members. Contracts for women teachers did not allow them to socialize with men or be married. The emphasis on high moral character continued into the 20th century as teachers were warned that they should be very careful about their dress and behavior. Although moral character is not included in today’s teacher contracts, teachers are still expected by the public to be models of high moral character.