THE FOUNDERS OF A SCHOOL
While the family were getting settled in the new home, Catherine and
Harriet were making their plans about their school. In this somewhat
formidable endeavor the Beecher daughters were not without rivals.
There was already an academy in Cincinnati whose curriculum was said
to “embrace an extensive circle of female education,” which included
French, needlework and penmanship. I dare say they also taught their
scholars how to depict tombstones and weeping willows in chenille and
silk embroidery, but history does not inform us on this point. There
were also other schools for “female education” to the number of perhaps
fifteen. But none of these things were allowed to discourage them, for
this was the land of initiative and of experiment. Besides, the new
institution was to be far superior to anything yet dreamed of.
Catherine’s scheme was indeed an ambitious one. It included a young
ladies’ school for fifty or sixty pupils, with a primary department
for about the same number of little girls, and also a primary school
for little boys. These were to be the practice schools in her scheme
for the training of teachers, exactly as we conduct our normal schools
to-day. The school work was to be on the basis of that in a college;
and they believed so thoroughly in woman’s teaching power, that they
thought instruction in this country would never be well done until
women were trained directly for that service. This was what these two
young educators intended to do--to train perfect teachers for schools
that were sure to arise and that were already sadly needed all over the
central west and, indeed, throughout the country. They cherished the
thought that women by their motherly instincts and by the qualities
that housewifely lore and home-making and family life had fixed in
the very fiber of their being, would be specially adapted to the work
of teachers. The outcome in the next few decades of our national life
proves not only that these two young theorists were able to look over
the whole situation in the country and to see what was most needed and
the best means to attain the desired ends, but also that they were
far-sighted as to what the future was sure to bring forth. For the
New England migration was to pass over the vast space of the prairies
of all our middle states, making possible everywhere schools in which
almost the whole burden of the work was to fall to the hands of women.
They saw that the gigantic burden of subduing the land was to be the
special work of men. It turned out to be so. They saw that men of tact,
versatility, talent, and piety, as Harriet put it, qualities absolutely
necessary to successful teaching, would be constantly called away to
missionary and ministerial and patriotic duties. If such a man were
put to the work of teaching, he would be, said Harriet Beecher, like
a Hercules with a distaff in hand ready to spring at the first call
of the trumpet. The question of salaries also came in, for a man must
have enough to support wife and family. But we can hardly realize how
it seemed in 1832 when two young women urged forward the idea that if
young women were to be well prepared for the work of teaching, were to
be placed in responsible positions and were to devote themselves to
this work, adequate provision really must be made for their support.
Catherine spent a good part of her life and wrote chapters in her books
maintaining that side by side with the many well-endowed institutions
for men, there should be also a well-endowed provision for the
education of women. Those days were not so very long ago; but things
have happened at a wild rate since then. Yet Catherine Beecher has by
no means had her meed of praise for the work she did in training the
public mind toward the good things that we now take for granted almost
as much as if we had had them since the beginning of time. To be sure,
it is not at all certain that it is the best possible scheme for an
ideal country that nearly all teaching in its common schools should be
done by women; but in the transition of a swiftly expanding people the
great crisis was this: either the work of teaching had to be done by
women or it could not be done at all. In this hour of need thousands of
women arose to devote their lives to this work, receiving in payment a
poor wage, always less than would be given to a man for the same work,
and in the great majority of cases suffering the denial of that which
is most precious to the woman, the home-making instinct.
Of course it cannot be asserted that Catherine saw all this; but she
felt the immediate need of the situation. She believed that a woman’s
nature was adapted to the precious occupation of training children, and
being herself deprived of the place in life where her large, motherly
nature could have its full fruition, she chose to aid her country in
that day of need by helping to provide teachers for the swiftly forming
schools all through the middle states.[7] To this work the American
girls of 1830 were called by the voice of Catherine Beecher; aided by
her capable sister she took in hand the training of women for the work.
They hoped to be able soon to say to many hundreds of young women,
“Here is a place where you may qualify yourselves to be first-rate
teachers and receive help in finding a location in one of the many
flourishing towns and villages of the west where such services are
sorely needed.”
In doing all this for the sake of the nation’s welfare, Catherine
and her sister were following an instinct that had been developed in
the great body of New England women who shared with their fathers
and husbands and sons the passionate interest in what a late writer
has called its “adventure of democracy.”[8] Our hazardous experiment
in putting national control into the hands of the people was now on
trial before the monarchical governments of the European world, from
which our forefathers had run away in order to find a place in this
wilderness where they might worship in peace and govern themselves
according to their own ideas of justice and right. But the New England
mothers were made to see that they also had a part to perform in the
state. These early statesmen said: “Our women must concur in all plans
for education for young men or no laws will ever render them effectual.
To qualify our women for this purpose they should be instructed not
only in the usual branches of female education, but should also be
taught the principles of government and liberty, and the obligations
of patriotism should be inculcated in them.”[9] Hence these early
statesmen advised their wives to see to it that their sons were
instructed in the “divine science of politics.” These words naturally
fired the women with a desire to fulfill this great ideal so that they
should not be found wanting when the republic called to them plainly.
But they must be ready. They saw that. To prepare them for the task
that was theirs they must do more than the Spartan mother did when
she gave the shield to her son, saying, “Return either with it, or
upon it!” They must have something more than a haphazard training in
the mere rudiments such as had been their part in the country school.
It came into the mind of such women as Emma Willard and Mary Lyon to
build up schools where the training could be obtained that would give
the women what they needed in order to fit their sons for citizenship
in the republic. And they all had the same idea. The subjects must be
advanced--not chenille and samplers only--and the teaching must be
excellent.
While Roxana Foote Beecher was training her daughter in philosophy
and perspective, and Lucinda Foote was privately studying Greek with
President Stiles of Yale College, Mrs. Emma Willard was struggling
to gain a foothold for her seminary for the daughters of well-to-do
families, and Mary Lyon was as resolutely pressing forward her effort
to provide a school for those who must gain an education, if at all, in
some more economical way. Mrs. Willard’s Female Seminary at Troy was
finally founded in 1821, and Mt. Holyoke in 1837. But these were only
two out of many. In New York State alone twelve academies for girls
were founded between 1827 and 1839, and in New England and also further
south the schools and academies for girls were multiplying so fast that
there was soon opportunity for nearly every valley to offer some chance
for further culture than the country school afforded to the young women
of the region.
The great difficulty lay in getting the teachers for these schools;
that was what pressed most deeply on the mind of Catherine Beecher.
They could not call upon men for this work nor would it be well to
do so if they could. “If men have more knowledge,” reasoned Harriet,
“they have less talent in communicating it, nor have they the patience,
the long-suffering and the gentleness necessary to superintend the
formation of the child’s character.” Then with a touch of that passion
for reform that was an essential part of the Beecher character wherever
we find it she added: “We intend to make these principles understood,
and ourselves to set the example of what females can do in this way!”
In other words, she intended to be the best possible teacher, to be
as near to perfection as she could compel herself to be. That she
should make a declaration like this was not a piece of self-conceit;
it was merely the expression of her ideal. This saying of Harriet
Beecher makes one think of what Joan of Arc said when she was asked by
what charm or magic she made the soldiers go into battle. She simply
answered, “I called to them to come on into the battle and then I went
right on into the battle myself!” This is the principle that is at the
basis of all the charm that lures human beings into glorious heroism;
it is the very reason for the existence of leaders and prophets.
In 1833, then, and for some years thereafter, the two sisters
labored for the success of the school in Cincinnati. Harriet, with
characteristic energy, threw herself into the work. As the work of the
school increased she lived a life of incessant labor. What she tried to
do was enough to wreck the health of the most sturdy. Her whole time
was absorbed with her efforts for the new school. Even when on Sunday
she took advantage of the day of rest to lay aside her cares, the ill
feelings that disturbed her took away the rest and filled the hours
with misery. She had everything but good health. She felt as if she
were scarcely alive, and there was great danger that the old morbid
feelings would return. Again we find her mind and heart suffering from
the state of her health and physical ability threatened by excessive
overwork.
About this time she was reading the life of Madam de Staël and
“Corinne.” The work moved her intensely. It is interesting to see
how she accounted for the great effect it had upon her emotions. She
placed herself at once in the environment of her nation and saw how she
herself illustrated a national characteristic. The effect of republican
government, she reasoned, is to demand rigid forms of conduct. The
emotions thus constantly repressed burn inwardly all the more. They
burn to the very soul, leaving only dust and ashes, she thought. At
any rate this seemed to her to be the case with herself. Tired to the
bone, she felt that her soul was withered and exhausted. She wrote
to Georgiana, her beloved friend, with whom she still shared all her
deepest thoughts: “All that is enthusiastic, all that is impassioned,
in admiration of nature, of writing, of character, in devotional
thought and emotion, or in the emotions of affection, I have felt with
vehement and absorbing intensity, felt till my mind is exhausted, and
seems to be sinking into deadness. Half of my time I am glad to remain
in a listless vacancy, to busy myself with trifles, since thought is
pain, and emotion is pain.”
It is sad to see this young spirit so misunderstanding itself. What
Harriet Beecher needed was to run away from those cares for even a
short time. Just one little breathing spell, a little freedom from
care and responsibility would have freshened her and made it possible
for her to carry on her work far more thoroughly, though that perhaps
could hardly have been--but at any rate, with as much again of
buoyancy and joy. Now she heard little girls recite and told them
fairy tales beginning in the immemorial way with “once upon a time”
and spinning them out as she went along to the utmost delectation of
her young-hearted audience; now she took up the more serious subjects
of history and grammar, and the philosophy of taste. After school
hours she had to attend the teachers’ meeting, where such subjects as
scattering the quill pens and the copy-books on the floor, forming
classes, drinking in the entry (drinking water, of course), giving
leave to speak, ringing the recess-bell, and such details were solemnly
discussed.
During this time Dr. Beecher was supplying the pulpit in one of the
churches of Cincinnati. On Sundays the pupils in the school went to
hear him preach, and on Mondays they were called together to make
reports on the sermon. A devotional character was given to the meeting
of this class; it was conducted by Harriet and she gave to the service
a quiet fervor that was most beautiful and helpful.
Very soon a rather important piece of work was put into Harriet’s
hands. The school needed a geography for the younger scholars, and
Harriet was appointed to make it. She went to work and produced a
“New Geography for Children,” which was published in Cincinnati, and
was used not only in the Beecher School, but also in all the primary
schools of the city. Her geography was not at all like the books of
that name that we now use. It belonged with the class of instructive
treatises represented by the “Present Condition of the Terraqueous
Globe,” written by “Jedediah Morse, D.D.,” which he “Dedicated and
Devoted to the Young Gentlemen and Ladies of America with the Most
Ardent Wishes for Their Improvement,” and which was reprinted almost
every year from 1784 to 1850. The Peter Parley and Malte Brun books
belong in the same group. It was the era of a sort of pious compendium
written generally in the kindly letters of a father or an uncle. In one
number of the _Western Magazine_, a magazine published in Cincinnati
during that time, there is a scathing review of several of these small
attempts at giving young people some knowledge of the world they lived
in. The editor mentions the manual of Peter Parley and that of Malte
Brun and complains that these would-be purveyors of natural history
take liberties with fact. The anaconda, they informed the children,
was so big that it could crush a house; the buffaloes of America were
domestic and harmless. “This,” said the editor, “is the way they
are teaching the young idea how to shoot, but we should call it bad
shooting!” Miss Beecher had no domestic buffaloes and no house-crushing
anacondas in her book, and it seems to have been clear enough of
inanities to displace that of Malte Brun in the city’s list of school
books in 1834. It was a modest little book, but it represented a great
deal of work. She begins with the simplest but clearest directions
for drawing a map of the schoolroom and then leads up gradually to
the subject of the cape, isthmus, continent, etc. There are pictures
of interesting places, descriptions of the products of the countries,
the manners, costumes, religions and laws of the people. The book is
written like a story, with frequent affectionate addresses to the young
learner and admonitions that are to encourage him on his way where the
study seems difficult or dry. The personal character of the writer
has an opportunity to show itself in a book like this, and, if the
reprint of 1852 was a facsimile of the original work, as seems likely,
that Harriet Beecher, the teacher in the Cincinnati school in 1833, in
a very earnest chapter on the subject of slavery, has shown clearly
what her opinion would be when that great subject should come up for
discussion. She also clearly points out the part that the English bore
in the early history of our country in forcing the system of slavery
upon their colonial subjects on this side of the sea. She takes good
opportunity to urge the reasons why the New England forefathers left
their native land and sought the inhospitable shores of New England and
speaks feelingly of their sufferings in the early years of settlement.
None of these passages was toned down when the little book was
reprinted in England in 1852 for the use of the English schools.