The Schooling of Working-Class Girls in Victorian Scotland

Gender, Education and Identity

Jane McDermid

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781135783389
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

The portrayal of Scotland as a particularly patriarchal society has traditionally had the effect of marginalizing Scottish women, both teachers and students, in both Scottish and British history. The Schooling of Working-Class Girls in Victorian Scotland examines and challenges this assumption and analyzes in detail the course of events which has led to a more enlightened system.

Education was, and is, seen as integral to Scottish distinctiveness, but the Victorian period saw anxious debate about the impact of outside influences at a time when Scottish society seemed to be fracturing. This book examines the gender-blindness of the educational tradition, with its notion of the 'democratic intellect', testing the claim of superiority for the Scottish system, and questioning the assumption that Scottish women were either passive victims or willing dupes of a peculiarly patriarchal ideal.

Considering the influences of the related ideologies of patriarchy and domesticity, and the crucial importance of the local and regional economic context, in focusing on female education, this book provides a much wider comparative study of Scottish society during a period of tremendous upheaval and a perceived crisis in national identity, in which women, as well as men, participated.

Chapter 1

Education and gender in nineteenth-century Scotland

In their general accounts of the history of education in Scotland, H.M. Knox (1953) and James Scotland (1969) paid scant attention to female education, a lack remedied to a considerable degree by Robert D. Anderson in Education and the Scottish People 1750–1918 (1995). All three accounts take a traditional approach, ‘focusing on institutions and the decision-making elite, rather than on how education was seen and used by those at the receiving end’.¹ All three trace the close relationship between the development of a national system of education in Scotland and the central place of the Presbyterian Church. Reading was recognised as a fundamental skill, for both sexes, and was taught separately from writing. The latter was accepted as a skill more useful to boys than girls, who were more likely to be taught sewing and knitting, related not only to the domestic tasks expected of women, but also to the more restricted range of wage-earning occupations open to them. Indeed, sewing and knitting were seen as enhancing girls’ chances of ‘industrial’ work. Anderson points out that, before 1872, girls and younger children were more likely to be educated outside of the national system of parish schools, which was the case for all social classes, with lower-class girls often taught in dame schools, and the middle class in private schools for young ladies.²

The ‘Old’ and the ‘New’ Statistical Accounts of Scotland (the former recorded in the 1790s and the latter in the early 1840s) revealed a national pride in the parochial school system, and in the popular literate culture, though there were criticisms of the system’s shortcomings, notably of the underpaid schoolmaster, often depicted as a national treasure.³ However, by the 1840s, the system was under increasing pressure from rapid urbanisation, related to the growth in immigration from the Highlands, the countryside, and Ireland. In both the 1790s and the 1840s, education was seen as a necessary means of maintaining political and social stability, as well as national identity; but throughout this period tensions within the Church of Scotland strained the parochial system. Then, in the early nineteenth century, the influx of Irish Catholics further undermined the notion of a unified national culture.

A further pressure on the notion of a distinctive Scottish educational system came from increased state intervention in education, prompted by the electoral Reform Acts of 1832 and 1867 (1868 for Scotland), which threatened anglicisation along with increasing centralisation. This situation came to a head in the early 1860s with Robert Lowe’s ‘payment by results’ with its stress on elementary schooling threatening the link between the parish school and the university in Scotland. The Argyll Commission into Scottish education in the second half of the 1860s (which will be discussed in the next chapter) did not prevent the Code being applied to Scotland after the 1872 Education Act, while the schooling system was effectively divided along social class lines as in England.⁴ Also as in England, the curriculum was gendered. Centralisation in education was seen in the efforts of Henry Craik, who served as permanent secretary at the Scotch Education Department from 1885 to 1904, and who pressed for a common examination, a leaving certificate (introduced in 1888), at secondary level.⁵ This affected a small minority of working-class pupils, while those girls who sought entry to the examinations had to include domestic economy as one of their subjects.

In England, the preference was for separate schooling for the sexes, whereas in Scotland, mixed-sex schooling was the norm. However, a combination of the democratic tradition in Scottish education and Presbyterian patriarchy meant that Scottish girls, at least before 1872, were less likely than boys to be sent to school. It also meant that girls stayed at school for a shorter time than boys, and that many girls were sent outside the parochial system to separate schools offering a restricted choice of subjects.⁶ The parish school was built around the meritocratic ideal which was male-centred, but which in practice affected a tiny minority of lower-class boys. Lindy Moore has revealed that before the 1872 Education Act, it was possible for a girl to study classics and mathematics in the parish school, but girls remained excluded from matriculating for university degrees until the 1890s.⁷ As the nineteenth century progressed, the ideal of female domesticity also influenced the schooling of girls, while both that and the demand for teachers drew more women into the teaching profession. Nevertheless, the 1872 Act maintained the tradition of mixed schools in Scotland.

In his study of the female experience of schooling in Scotland between 1872 and 1945, David Limond has argued that ‘age, social origins or class and regional location seem to have been a greater determinant of poor attendance than gender variation’.⁸ This study of the period from 1872 to 1900, however, will show that, whatever the region, gender was always a major factor in school attendance. What is interesting is the interaction of all these determinants. For example, the 1871 census showed that in textile towns, such as Dundee and Paisley, where most child and youth employment was for girls, boys were more likely to stay on at school, whereas in big cities and in areas of heavy industry and mining (such as Glasgow, Lanarkshire and Lothian) it was girls.⁹ Chapter 4 shows that in farming areas (such as Perthshire and Dumfriesshire) there was heavy seasonal demand for child labour, resulting in a pattern of a brief period of full-time schooling, followed by several years of winter attendance. Anderson argues that, from the 1872 Act, compulsion narrowed the gap between boys and girls in attendance, and that the continuing tendency for poorer attendance rates of girls in the middle-age range was evened out by their tendency to stay on longer in school by the late nineteenth century.¹⁰ However, boys were more likely to finish their education by returning in the winter, while girls were more likely to be kept at home to help with housework and childcare. In addition, as Chapter 3 shows, the half-time system of schooling, unpopular in Scotland where it was seen to undermine the national tradition of education, was concentrated in the Dundee district, and so affected mainly girls. Moreover, as Anderson acknowledges, the development of girls’ secondary education in Scotland lagged behind that of boys, and that of girls in England, limiting the opportunities for female pupil teachers and schoolmistresses. He nevertheless concludes his study of Scottish education with the assertion that the achievement of the 1872 Act was:

above all to iron out the remaining inequalities – between Highlands and Lowlands, between town and country, between boys and girls, between prosperous and poor workers – and to extend the same basic standards to all.¹¹

This study accepts the final point, but stresses that the gendering of education not only entailed differences between the schooling of girls and boys (for example, in curriculum) but reinforced sexual inequalities (for example, in opportunities for secondary, and indeed university, education). Moreover, while the education system was national, and accepted with pride as an integral part of national identity, Chapters 3 and 4 show that regional differences had a profound effect on schooling, while maintaining differences between the educational experiences of girls and boys.

Three power bases have been identified in nineteenth-century Scotland: the countryside, dominated by the gentry; Edinburgh, dominated by the professions and Glasgow, dominated by industry.¹² Scotland has also been presented as a series of ‘city regions’ dominated by urban centres – Glasgow, Edinburgh, Dundee and Aberdeen – so distinctive that they defy generalisation.¹³ There were in addition two political divisions, parliamentary and civic, with little organic connection between Scottish affairs and Westminster politics.¹⁴ ‘National’ government was based in London. Education was seen as integral to Scottish distinctiveness; but it also had to be adapted to English legislation. Nevertheless, it was local politics which played the biggest part in the lives of most Scots in the nineteenth century. The result was the dominance of local elites, which differed according to the economic and social make-up of the parish, burgh or city.

While the aim of the parochial system of education was to promote national harmony, the upper and middle classes remained outside. Moreover, the working class was itself divided, between urban and rural, respectable and rough, male and female. According to Christopher Harvie, it was ‘the women who created a home-life, and a sort of community politics… They stayed away from drink, and crime, saved and organised their families, read.’¹⁵ Yet it is around the men and boys that the Scottish tradition in education revolves – the national stereotypes are the talented but poor boy (the lad of parts), the honours graduate, and the dominie. Even as Harvie recognises the essential role of women, the very title of his book, No Gods and Precious Few Heroes, underlines the gendering of Scottish history.

By the 1830s, there was perceived to be a crisis in Scottish education. Many believed that the salvation of Scotland lay not merely in preserving traditional rural values, but in somehow reintroducing them to the towns.¹⁶ There was a mythological ‘Scottish peasant’ who figured in much early Victorian writing on social problems: self-reliant, poor and pious. While women in Scottish fiction were presented primarily in terms of supporting their menfolk, they were not depicted as passive, but as practical and resilient (notably in the figure of Walter Scott’s Jeanie Deans).¹⁷ Eighteenth-century Scottish (male) moralists were fascinated by the role that the feminine character could play in a moral community, and perceived a correlation between motherhood and nationhood.¹⁸ This interest had become a concern by the early nineteenth century. In his 1834 pamphlet, Necessity of Popular Education, as National Object, James Simpson argued that a national system of education was essential for social harmony, and advocated the same education for all classes and both sexes, up to the age of 14. For Simpson, the faculties of the female were the same as those of the male.¹⁹ While most reformers agreed on the need for female as well as male education, more common was George Combe’s insistence on the need for instruction in the domestic skills to be included in the female curriculum:

I regard the great secular business of female life to be the producing, nurture, and rearing of children; the due management of domestic affairs; and the cultivation of those graces, virtues and affections which shed happiness on the family circle. These occupations are equally important to women as professions are to men; and under a proper system of education, women should be taught every species of knowledge, and instructed in every accomplishment which may directly contribute to the proper discharge of their duties.

Combe, however, also insisted that women needed a broad education, including science and philosophy, if they were to be properly equipped for promoting the physical and mental development of their children.²⁰ Thus, for early nineteenth-century reformers, education for a domestic role was not confined to the skills of housekeeping. In the late nineteenth century, different fears – for the physical rather than the moral state of the nation – led to a renewed emphasis on motherhood and female education. These fears were not peculiar to Scotland; but in Scotland, among Unionists, the stress on domestic education for girls in schools was linked to the stress on national identity.

Scottish national identity was not only conceived as masculine; it was Presbyterian. There was much dissension in Presbyterianism in the period 1750–1850, culminating in the Disruption of 1843; and, increasingly from the 1840s, there was much conflict between Protestants and Catholics.²¹ Thus while the essence of ‘Scottishness’ was Protestantism, Presbyterianism was not the only source of Scottish identity. There was migration from the Highlands and from Ireland, the latter especially resulting in a large Catholic minority which for the most part kept itself outside of the Protestant education system. Catholics sustained their identity through separate schools, which will be discussed below, as well as through their churches.²²

Highlanders who migrated to the Lowlands found acceptance easier than the Irish Catholics. The former managed to maintain a distinctive Highland identity without being seen as a threat.²³ R.D. Lobban’s study of the migration of Highlanders from the mid-eighteenth century to the end of the nineteenth century into Lowland Scotland (with Greenock as the case study), shows that, while they established schools, churches and societies, they did not create a specifically Highland ‘ghetto’. One reason might have been that in the eighteenth century, the majority of Highland migrants to Greenock were attached to the Church of Scotland, and had at least basic literacy. Those who settled ‘very quickly conformed to and became part of the general social, cultural and community life of [Greenock]’. Lobban concluded that Highland migrants to Lowland towns and cities helped shape the developing society, ‘for by making easier the transference of the Highland traditions and myths into the general Scottish culture… they enabled the modern Scot to preserve his [sic] individuality from assimilation to other cultures south of the Border’.²⁴

Irish Catholics, in contrast, were more marginalised. Indeed, it has been argued that as a stateless nation, Scotland expressed its national identity partly by Presbyterianism and the national Church preaching vigorous opposition to Catholicism.²⁵ Yet as will be argued below, Catholic schools were influenced by the national education tradition, even if their poverty, as well as their sense of being an alien minority, prevented them from openly embracing it. Nevertheless, at the same time that it was understood by Catholics as well as Protestants, that education was crucial, women were taught, in school and church, that however necessary they were, they were still subordinate to men.

Thus, whatever the denomination, nineteenth-century Scottish education was subject to the pressures of Victorian beliefs, including the ideal of female domesticity. Indeed, Scottish as well as English feminists in the late nineteenth century championed gender differences in education as a means of providing middle-class single women with career opportunities which men could not claim, and which would bring the woman teacher both status and influence in public life as headmistresses of girls’ schools, and as domestic science teacher.²⁶ As will be shown in Chapters 3 and 4, post-1872 School Boards favoured mixed-sex education, while the domestic science teacher found it hard to gain acceptance within the teaching profession. Thus, the Scottish egalitarian tradition, reflected in its mixed-sex parish schools, served to circumscribe the woman teacher since the head teacher was always a man.²⁷

It was women, including feminists (though not necessarily as we shall see schoolmistresses), who criticised the male educational establishmen...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Woburn education series
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of tables
• Acknowledgements
• Chapter 1 Education and gender in nineteenth-century Scotland
• Chapter 2 Female education in Scotland before 1872
• Chapter 3 Working-class girls' schooling, 1872–1900 The ‘city regions'
• Chapter 4 Working-class girls' schooling, 1872–1900 The country districts
• Chapter 5 Dominated by the dominie? Women and the teaching profession in nineteenth-century Scotland
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index