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FAITHFUL LABOR:
THE LIFE WORK OF JULIA ANNE KING, 1838-1919

By
Laura Docter Thornburg

A DISSERTATION
Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
Department of Teacher Education

2004

 

 

ABSTRACT

FAITHFUL LABOR:
THE LIFE WORK OF JULIA ANNE KING, 1838—1919

By

Laura Docter Thornburg

This dissertation is the pedagogical and professional biography of Julia Anne King
(1838-1919). King graduated from the Michigan State Normal School (now Eastern
Michigan University) in 1858. She was a teacher and administrator in Michigan’s public
schools for twenty three years before she returned to the Normal School to serve as a
professor, women’s advisor, and head of the history department. Through an investigation
of what teaching meant to King, this study reveals that, for her, ideas about gender,
pedagogy, and professionalism were intricately connected to Christian faith. King's
conceptions of woman’s sphere, service, learning, collegiality, social responsibility, and
knowledge were all linked to her understanding of Biblical discipleship.

This study stands in the territory where the history of teacher education, United
States women’s history, and feminist biography intersect. Historians have rarely examined
nineteenth century female teachers who attended normal schools. This study reveals that
teachers, teaching, and teacher education in mid-nineteenth century Michigan were more
complex, and positive, than our current understandings suggest. This research
acknowledges the powerful influences of religious faith in the lives of teachers and teacher
educators, thereby venturing into territory rarely explored by contemporary education
historians or policy makers. The study ends with a history-policy think piece that uses
King’s rich and rewarding life as a normal school student and faculty member to raise

questions about contemporary teacher education.

Copyright by
LAURA DOCTER THORNBURG
2004

To my husband, Doug Thornburg
and my children, Abigail, Hannah, and Tobias-
may no one ever attempt to fix, beforehand, the scope of their investigation of truth.

iv

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

As I read books I am always taken by the acknowledgments; authors rarely say
anything about family or how being involved in the project was shaped by, or shaped, their
personal lives. Perhaps this is part of being a woman teacher, but I derived a great deal of
strength from the many relationships which nurtured me into, through, and beyond this
dissertation, and I want to thank those who made it possible.

I was married on September 2, 1990. I started graduate school at Michigan State
University the next week. Doug moved with me, from Santa Cruz, California where he had
chosen to do graduate work in theatre, to East Lansing, Michigan, where I had chosen to do
graduate work in teacher education. Almost three years later, a month after I passed
comprehensive examinations, I gave birth to Abigail. While she was an infant I began this
project, and she is now eleven years old. I thank my husband, Doug, for believing, through
all these years, in the importance of my work. Women who combine marriage and
mothering small children with professional endeavors are rare, and the men behind their
successes should be honored.

I defended this dissertation almost seven years ago while pregnant with Hannah.
Retrospectively, I have, realized that the main obstacle to completing this project was my
realization that Christian religion was the driving force behind Julia Anne King’s whole
existence. .And, as I learned more about her faith, I had to wrestle with my own. Until I
reached a point where I was strong and peaceful enough in my own beliefs, I could not
articulate hers. I thank our many friends at Santa Barbara Community Church and Bishop
Creek Community Church for their fellowship and guidance.

While Doug, Abigail, Hannah, and Tobias are the reasons I was able to complete
this project in the context of a loving family, David Labaree, my advisor and director, is the
reason I was able to do this at all. David was assigned to me as my temporary advisor when
I was admitted to graduate school and I have never once considered trading him in. David

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artfully combines rigorous standards with gentle support and caring. He always listened
generously to me and respected my ideas, never forced his own agenda, but instead worked
hard to clarify my own and help it flourish. David has been my teacher, my employer, my
discussant, and always my mentor. Academia once seemed very mysterious to me, but with
his guidance it has appeared much more friendly and negotiable. I thank him for the long
hours and thoughtful responses. He went beyond the call of duty, as he struggled to
understand not only my dissertation but my life, and he did so with complete respect for the
ways in which the personal, political, and professional interact. I wish all doctoral students
could have directors who worked as hard and who made them feel as successful as David
has me.

My parents, Stephen and Beverly Docter, have always been my best teachers, and
even though I ventured into territory they had not explored, they were always by my side,
silently letting me know “you can be anything you want to be.” My mother started
teaching forty-two years ago. I was prepared to become an educational researcher at the
family’s dining room table, watching mom grade papers and make curricular decisions. I
still marvel at the ways she interacts with children and colleagues and the gifts she brings to
all who are lucky enough to work with her. My father studied history and practiced law, but
for the last forty-two years he has also devoted a great deal of his time to family life.
Through his three daughters he became an advocate for women’s education and athletics. I
am thankful that] have two wonderful parents who have raised me to have the confidence in
myself to try anything and—confident in their continuing love—to fail on occasion.

I think I was drawn to studying women because I have always lived with women
whom] admire. Ithankmy youngersisters, KarenWoo and Catherine Docter, who,
through their love, help me understand and take care of myself. They have taught me that _
the big sister does not always have to be the teacher and that the little sisters’ perspectives

sometimes provide insights that are not visible from the big sister’s standpoint.

A

I also want to thank my grandparents, Nicholas and Gretchen Docter and Laurence
and Elizabeth Ward, for their unending love for all of their grandchildren, regardless of the
varied paths we have chosen, and for their financial support which helped make all of this
possible. My father- and mother-in-law, Bob and Leilani Thornburg, were classroom
teachers too. I drank them, and Grandmas Lennie and Marie, for their support as their son
and I pioneered new gender roles.

My dissertation committee has been a pleasure to work with, and ] thank Jay
Featherstone, Lynn Paine, Peter Vinten-Johansen, and Lauren Young for their critique,
support and friendship. Committee members who care about the dissertation writer and
understand her development as a scholar are invaluable. I am especially grateful to the
extensive critique Professor Vinten-Johansen offered It took me too long to realize the
brilliance of his analysis and his suggestions for improvement, but I continue to learn from
hiscormnents.

] wish to thank all the professors who mentored me at Michigan State University,
especially Deborah Ball, Jere Brophy, Margaret Buchman, Doug Campbell, David Cohen,
Lisa Fine, Susan Florio-Ruane, Sam Hollingsworth, Maggie Lampert, Bill McDiarmid,
Ralph Putnam, Steve Raudenbush, Michael Sedlak, Gary Sykes, and Suzanne Wilson. A
special thanks to Lynn Paine for her artful version of feminist pedagogy at the doctoral level
which helped me find ways to balance marriage, motherhood, teaching and research; to
Brian DeLany for helping me see alternate visions of the past and how historical thinking
could inform the craft of policy analysis; and to both of them for their commitment to
equity-and honesty about its challenges—as partners, parents, teachers and scholars.

My classmates from Michigan State University made the cold winters bearable and
continue to push my thinking further. Thanks especially to Carol Barnes, Jennifer Barman,
Jim Bowker, Wendy Esmailka, 8.6. and Ann Grant, Ruth Heaton, Tami Lanz, Susan Luks,
Steve Mattson, Sue Poppink, Jeremy Price, Jim and June Reineke, Janine Remillard, Dirck

Roosevelt, Pam Ross, Mary Ryan-Talus, Kathy Semak, Kara Suzuka, Steve Swidler,
Dorothy Thompson, Bruce and Joan VanSIedright, Neli Wolf and many others.

I would like to thank all my colleagues and students at the University of Puget
Sound who supported me as I worked on this project while teaching in the School of
Education. Thanks especially to Heather Bruce for her companionship and compassion;
Heather held my hand as we faced challenges at the university, and she didn’t let go when I
decided to leave. Thanks also to Kate Brennan, Charlotte Ford, Adrienne Meyer, and Alix
Nickel for their administrative support and research assistance.

While writing this dissertation] gave papers at the College and University Faculty
Assembly of the National Council for the Social Studies, the History of Education Society,
and the American Educational Research Association. I wish to thank my colleagues from
those organizations who welcomed me into discourse cormnunities which supported my
work: Richard Altenbaugh, Keith Barton, Barbara Beatty, Jane Bernard-Powers, Kathleen
Cruikshank, O. L. Davis, Elizabeth Eder, Linda Eisenmann, Terrie Epstein, Jaime Grinberg,
Rob Levin, Linda Ievstik, Patrick Miller, Joe Newman, Chris Ogren, Harry Smfler, and
many others. I am particularly honored by Geraldine Clifford’s extensive feedback, advice,
and enthusiasm regarding my work.

A special thanks goes out to the many exceptional women who have taught me. I
especially honor Peggy McKee, who was my high school history teacher at Castilleja
School; Marilyn Mayo, who welcomed me into her United States history classroom when I
was a prospective teacher; Lynda Stone, who led the “bluebirds” in the Stanford Teacher
Education Program; and Laura Talbot, who is still showing me the way. I thank Teresa
Eckland, Susan Szewczak, and Christy Widler, for their friendships have sustained me, and
I thank Terry Stewart for her faithful labor in my home.

I wish to thank Maria Davis, the archivist at Eastern Michigan University, for her
exceptional help. I acknowledge the staff at the Oberlin College Archives, the Bentley

Historical Archives at the University of Michigan, and the many small libraries and
historical societies around the state of Michigan for their assistance.

Finally, I wish to thank Prudence King and her family, the descendents of Julia
Anne King’s brother, Ransom, for their support. I could not locate any living descendants
of the King family when I started this work, but Prudence King, also a teacher educator,
found me. I hope my dissertation does not contain any misrepresentations of her great-
great aunt, but any that do exist are, of course, my responsibility.

lat

"Ilov

TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF TABLES ........................................................................................ xi
PROLOGUE

Faith of our Mothers .................................................................................. 1
CHAPTER 1

The History of Normal Schools and the Voice of the Woman Teacher ....................... 13
CHAPTER 2

“The Beginning of Wisdom”: Christianity as Life Work .................................... 45
CHAPTER 3

“Neither Male nor Female”: Rethinking Gender .............................................. 81
CHAPTER 4

“Control Over her Own Powers”: History, Pedagogy, and Professional Education ...... 134
CHAPTER 5

Re—Imagining Teacher Education. ............................................................... 229
EPILOGUE

Teaching Outside the Lines ........................................................................ 249
APPENDIX .......................................................................................... 254
REFERENCES ..................................................................................... 260

H

arr

LIST OF TABLES

Table 1. King’s Life .................................................................. 12

Table 2. Normal School Faculty ..................................................... 132
Table 3. Department Breakdown ................................................... 133
Table 4. Professional Choices ...................................................... 224
Table 5. Original Courses, 1852 ................................................. 225-6
Table 6. Courses of Study, 1871 ................................................. 227-8

PROLOGUE
Faith Of Our Mothers

“Everyone crafts her own life, but the innovative life is harder to live than one that unfolds
through preexisting paths worn smooth by generations of use.”1

And Glad] Teach: Women 's Roles and Research Questions

Several years ago, I traveled to a conference to present two papers. Abigail, my then
17 month-old daughter, accompanied me, and my mother met us and served as baby-sitter
while I attended conference sessions. 0n the airplane, I read about nineteenth century
teachers.2 According to Horace Mann, young women “never look forward, as young men
almost invariably do, to a period of legal emancipation from parental control, when they are
to break away from the domestic circle and go abroad into the world, to build up a fortune
for themselves.”3 In 1972, Keith Melder, quoting Mann, summed it up this way: “women
were ripe for exploitation as school m’ams.”‘ Melder goes on to reason that, “not all
women submitted to the bureaucracy, but few true rebels stayed within the system. Few
teachers possessed the stamina or forcefulness to lash out against a repressive
orthodoxy.“ Jurgen Herbst's 1989 history of teacher education has a similar theme of
women teachers as victims. He claims the normal school professionalized every job in
education except the classroom teacher and concludes that women did this devalued work
“sadly.”5

I read this article with Abigail sleeping on my lap in the airplane. I received many
adoring remarks about babies and motherhood, and responded in the affirmative when
asked if we were going to see her grandmother. Several passengers, who must have

 

1 Bateson, 1989.

2 Melder, 1972.

3 Mann, 1841.

‘ Melder, 1972, p. 22.
5 Melder, 1972, p. 28.
6 Herbst, 1989.

assumed I did not work outside the home, since I was traveling mid-week with a baby, even
complimented me for “staying home,” rather than working. Later that day, we ate at the
conference hotel, and, as I requested a high chair, I overheard a table of my colleagues
saying how wonderful it was that these young feminists were challenging the old order.
They applauded the bold woman who would bring her child to a conference, and talked
about fighting patriarchy. We had peas and applesauce.

Was I “ripe for exploitation”? Was I “lashing out against a repressive
orthodoxy”? Was I sad I had chosen to be a teacher? Certainly I was challenging the
status quo, as my family and professional choices were not traditional. However, I did not
seek to ruffle feathers or become a thorn in the side of the mostly male leadership of the
organization hosting the conference. And, finally, I loved my family and my work; I viewed
my teaching, research, and mothering as integrated and hard to separate.

I wondered about the teachers Melder and Herbst described. Would the women
teachers lmve identified with these descriptions of themselves? Or were these
representations historical prescriptions and contemporary categories into which women
teachers' historical experiences were misplaced? Perhaps the teachers were comfortable
with what might seem like contradictions between their public and private lives, had different
ideas about what it meant to be a professional, and framed their experiences alternatively.

Even contemporary feminist accounts of nineteenth century teachers left me
wondering if, in our desire to expose the oppressive nature of patriarchy, we ignored a
subset of women teachers who worked quite effectively within the system, carving out
successful careers for themselves and influencing both boys and girls to be thoughtful
members of their communities and critical participants in society. Madeline Grumet claims
that female teachers complied with the rationalization and bureaucratization that pervaded the
common schools. She describes how teachers did not institute pedagogy that extended the
mother-child bond, but, instead, they acquiesced to graded schools and large group
instruction. Grumet depends on the generalizations that females were “deprived of the

classical education that most of the males that organized the schools enjoyed,” and assumes
that women did not serve as principals or on committees of visitors. 7

But what about the women who did enjoy a classical education and who did become
administrators-are we to assume that they “sold out” as women, and that they bought into
this system that promoted individualism, conservatism, and presentism? Have the
experiences of the mostly white, middle class, Christian women—who attended normal
schools as students and taught in them as professors, who served in leadership positions in
the early teachers’ associations and woman's clubs, and who published in educational

journals and participated in national aeademic conferences—been accurately represented?

Autobiography and Constructing the Past

Wondering about these teachers' lives and exploring the history of teacher
education, I was drawn to a woman named Julia Anne King (1838-1919). In histories of
the Michigan State Normal School (now Eastern Michigan University) she was featured as
an outstanding faculty member.8 King was of interest to me personally because she
occupied many of the same professional roles I do; she was a teacher, an administrator, a
teacher educator, and an historian. King and I both became teacher educators during times
of reform in teacher education. I admired her because she was able to successfully combine
professional life and personal integrity.

I introduce this historical study of a woman teacher through my biography because I
found that while researching and writing about King my own sense of identification with
her shaped my work. Straddling the roles of teacher and scholar, and of historian and
history teacher, in the context of teacher education is a challenging enterprise, and studying
a woman who did it, in the nineteenth century no less, is inspiring and thought-provoking.
The first time I presented a paper about King, a friend said, “I couldn't tell where you
stopped and King started. The way you've woven quotations by her into your narrative it is

7 Grumet,1981,p. 181.
8 Putnam, 1899; Isbell, 1971.

 

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hard to differentiate between her voice and yours.” This was precisely my dilemma.
Studying another woman, who, like me, was a middle-class white woman, a schoolteacher
and teacher educator interested in social change, made it both easier and harder to write this
history.

I had never felt connected to a historical subject, nor had I ever dreamed that I could
be a historian. In their new collection of essays, U.S. History as Women 's History, Iinda
Kerber, Alice Kessler-Harris and Kathryn Kish Sklar, tell us that they all grew up in “a
world in which history was rigidly limited It paid little attention to social relationships, to
issues of race, to concerns of the poor, and virtually none to women.”9 In 1969, when the
various contributors to their volume were already well on their way to becoming historians
of women, I entered kindergarten. But I too grew up in “a world in which history was
rigidly limited.” For example, as a beginning teacher, my conception of history was based
on ten disconnected undergraduate courses taught by, and about, white men. I spent more
time in college worrying about my social life than about my academic eareer, perhaps
partially because I found no way to integrate the academic into my personal life.lo I
enjoyed the conflicts, the conquering, and the ideas of history, but I never felt as if I was
capable of doing history, being a historical subject, or as if history was written to help me
understand my life or issues that mattered to me. Not only did I not personally feel a part
of history, I was quite certain that my students didn’t either. There were people in our text
who looked like my students, but they were shackled in the hull of a ship on the middle
passage, on the wrong side at the Alamo, or huddled in stables during the Japanese
internment.

‘ Learning this history was not an empowering experience for any of us. I believed
they needed to know cultural literacy basics in order to get ahead, so I taught history as
someone else’s game that we had to learn in order to beat them at it.“ I developed an

 

9 Kerber, Kessler-Harris, and Sklar, 1995. p. 1.
10See for examples of similar stories, Holland and Eisenhart, 1990, and Grumet, 1988.
1'Herbert Kohl takes this stance toward standardized tests in his 36 Children.

adversarial stance toward history because with my limited understandings of what history
was or what historians do, I believed that teaching which foregrounded disciplinary
knowledge was white, exclusive, male, and, therefore, antithetical to teaching for equity and
social justice.‘2

I had to wait until graduate school in 1992 to hear about Gerda Lemer. Thereafter I
felt a sense of vigor and excitement about learning women's history, but at the same time I
also felt a sense of betrayal and anger because I was not introduced to it sooner. Historian
Deborah Gray White claims “history is supposed to give people a sense of identity, a
feeling for who they were, who they are, and how far they have come. It should act as a
springboard for the future.”'3 While majoring in history did not do this for me, learning
about King's life did almost immediately. As I sat at my desk, surrounded by papers and
books from my own doctoral study of teacher education and from the curriculum and
instruction class I was teaching to history majors, I began to think differently about my own
circumstances, goals, and decisions in light of the example King's life provided

Scholars who write about women’s lives in hopes of expanding the historical record
to include the experiences of more women, altering the historical record to more accurately
interpret women’s experiences, and improving the position of contemporary women
through the stories of those women who preceded them, have been called feminist
biographers. Feminist biographers have noted that women, writing about other women, have
a heightened consciousness of the role of gender, and subsequently especially close
relationship with their subjects."

It is partly the absence of recorded history that sends women now to women

past for the detailed documentation of their daily lives. It is partly because of the
way in which biography, “the writing of a life,” can synthesize, blend and

 

‘2 While working on the early stages of this dissertation I worked with Peter Vinten-
Johansen and G. Williamson McDiamrid redesigning a secondary social studies methods
sequence at Michigan State University and studying our practice as it related to research on
undergraduate students’ disciplinary knowledge in their majors. This experience, in
addition to my study of women’s history and doing my own historical research, challenged
my previous conceptions of history.

'3 White, 1985, p. 167.

I‘Alpern, Antler, Perry and Scobie, 1992, p. 10.

transcend the realms of the public and the private that women are fascinated with
what the genre can provide. It is partly because women have a literary culture in
the developed world, and partly because women have a vested interest in the
nature of power and representation—in the construction of silence, in the
dynamic distortion and denial—that women want to concentrate on the
methodological questions of biography.”
These issues are not unique to feminist biography, for most biographers enter into
dialogues with their subjects, even when the subjects are long dead. “Any biography
uneasily shelters an autobiography within it,”‘° and this autobiographical component
inevitably alters. the biographer’s material.

Women teachers' interpretations of the edueational past will not distort the
discipline; rather, they can add invaluable new perspectives. Women teachers may be freed,
to participate in the shaping and valuing of historical knowledge and to envision alternative
pedagogical or professioml paths. Constructing truths that include multiple standpoints
will lead us closer to “that noble dream” (of objectivity) than discounting some approaches
as too subjective.” Feminist standpoint theory argues that objectivity is maximized not by
excluding social factors from the production of knowledge but by starting the process of
inquiry from an explicitly social location—the lived experience of those people traditionally
excluded from knowledge production.18

My historical research helped me understand more about who I am and the forces
that have shaped my personal, professional, and political perspectives and experiences.
Subsequently, this heightened awareness of my own social location contributed to deeper
understandings about King. For example, in writing King's life I draw from my years as a
“white teacher.” In the ethnically and linguistically diverse, and predominantly poor, San
, Francisco Unified School District, I found that in order to teach my students I needed to
understand their life stories. I wanted to respect other people's children enough to hear

them in their own value contexts, but sometimes I failed. For example, one day LaShawnda

 

”lies, 1992, p. ix.

l"Murray Kendall, 1965, p. x.

l7Harding, 1991; Appleby, Hunt, and Jacob, 1994; and Novick, 1988.
"’Hirsh and Olson, 1995, p. 193-225.

 

I‘d

was so disruptive, inattentive, and loud that I could barely hear the other children. As the
bell rang for recess, I requested that she stay in to talk with me. I opted for an empathetic
approach. “I know how hard it is to have a lot to say and to be excited to say it,” I started.
“Think you and I are a lot alike in that respect. I also have a loud voice which projects well
and I have to be careful about how and when I use it.” She listened more intently than
usual, but with a look of growing amusement regarding my claims about our similarities.
When I finished, she let me know her perspective: “Teacher, in my neighborhood, you
would just be a quiet little white mouse!”

Memories of LaShawnda remind me that as I play upon my similarities with King in
flying to understand the nineteenth-century normal school, I must also wrestle with our
differences. I am aware that I am, metaphorically, “just a quiet little white mouse” in an
unfamiliar historical neighborhood when it comes to really seeing inside King's world.
Similarly, Bell Gale Chevigny, biographer of Margaret Fuller, has written astutely about
how the main challenge of biography lies in recognizing the necessity for distance between
the self and the subject when symbiosis with the subject is a daily goal.19

While symbiosis with students from backgrounds different than my own was never
entirely possible, my stance was to know them well enough to create an enviromnent where I
could help them articulate and expand their knowledge. Without doing their thinking for
them, or expecting them to think as I did, I tried to support their growth. Mary Belenky and
her collaborators call this “midwife-teaching.”2° As historian, my role feels familiar. I
“play midwife” to the reincarnation of a woman whose times are different than my own.
The educational system often over-looked my students, and historians have over-looked the
experiences and perSpectives of many female teachers like King.21

Although at times I strive to distance myself and remain detached in an effort to

objectively evaluate the data, at other times, I consciously call upon the empathetic, historical

 

”Chevigny, 1984, p. 35s79.
20Belenky, Clinchy, Goldberger, and Tarule, 1986, p. 217—219.
21Kerber, Kessler-Harris, and Kish Sklar, 1995, p. 13.

relationship I have established with King in an effort to understand her better.22 1.1-1.
Hexter speaks of the first and second records in historical inquiry. The first is something
“out there” that has happened over time in the past. The second record is what each
historian brings to the first record-her questions, values, beliefs, and life experiences.23 I
admire King, and as I write about her, I continue to learn, not only about her but also

from her."

Reading about how King’s family moved to the city of Adrian so that she could
attend the newly built high school, and how she studied a classical curriculum and
developed close relationships with her mentors as a normal school student, prompted me to
reflect on my own family and the edueational opportunities I was afforded as a female
student. When I was fourteen years old, my parents enrolled me in an elite, all-girls day
school. My school's bulletin stated: “We believe that if a girl learns and grows in
surroundings where her voice is not only heard and encouraged, but truly respected, she will
emerge . . . with a keen sense of who she is?” My education was not a departure from
family tradition; my mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother attended similar
institutions. My great-great-great-grandfather was Richard Edwards (1820-1908),
President of Illinois State Normal University (1862-1876), who believed men and women
were equally qualified to pursue all knowledge. In an 1868 speech to the Illinois Teachers'
Association, he asked, “Is it not the acme of absurdity for you and me, because we happen
to grow beards, to step forward, with our little measuring strings, and attempt to'fix,
beforehand, the scope of women's investigation of truth?“5 It is with this personal history
that I approached this project.

 

22Ede], 1981.

23Hexter, 197 1.

2“See Piscitelli, 1994, for a detailed literature review and discussion of striking the balance
between engagement and detachment in biographieal writing. Also Chevigny, 1983; and
Weiler, 1997.

2‘ Castilleja School Bulletin,l981.

26Harmon, 1995, p. 94.

FY ’ it“. ' (

Kathryn Kish Sklar explains that her work process for Florence Kelley & the
Nation's Work: The Rise of Women '3 Political Culture, 1830—1900,27 developed in three
layers, the first laid by non-biographical questions, the next following a social science
approach to biography, and the final acknowledging a personal relationship between the
author and her subject.28 I too began by identifying the history of teacher education as an
area of inquiry and asking non-biographical questions about what visions of teacher
professionalism were embraced and what types of pedagogy were enacted in the nineteenth
century normal school. Then I met Julia Anne King, and I set about constructing a life
history of a woman who was both a student and a teacher at the norrml. The more I read
about King, the more inevitable that final layer, where a personal relationship between the
author and her subject develops, became. I think of King as a mentor—a woman who
combined history and social education,29 who thought that the whole aim of teacher

education was to “put one into possession of his own powers,”30

and who gracefully
negotiated her way through public schools, colleges, churches, professional journals and
national organizations, inspiring colleagues to say that they had “lived more courageously,
more truly, more fully beeause of having known her.”31

Like Sklar, I also did some meaningful non-archival research.32 Trying to get a feel
for the places of her life, I have wandered through the towns and the campuses King
inhabited over one hundred years ago. I have stood in the garden of her Pearl Street house
in Ypsilanti and in room forty-nine, her classroom at the normal school. I have walked ‘
along the old plank road that ran from her childhood farm into the small town of Milan, MI,
and I have visited her grave in silent reverence. As I encounter interpretive difficulties I
often turn to her for advice. I consider “What would Julia tell me to do?” as a way of
explaining away the worry that the very act of appropriating her life might infringe on her
2"Sklar, 1995.
28Sklar, 1992, p. 32.
29King, (unpublished manuscript, no date).
3°King, (unpublished manuscript, no date).

3113111::11,1919.
”Sklar, 1992, p. 28.

 

privacy or even violate her identity. King's words speak to my concerns about truth: “Truth
clothes herself in such varied forms that to hold to ultimate theories would be an evidence of
pedantry, which is worse than ignorance.”33 I certainly didn't want Miss King to think of
me as pedantic, so I continued.

My relationship with King has extended well beyond my historical research. I read
King's ideas about pedagogy before preparing lessons or discussing teaching choices with
my colleagues. Having come to know King, I respect my own mother more. I am more
inclined to see her as a source of wisdom, and I am more interested in understanding her life
and how it influences me as I compose my own. King, embodied in a box full of her
manuscripts, made the trip across the county with us when we moved. When my husband
struggled with the social ramifications of following his wife to her new job without one of
his own, I thought about why King never married, and when he’d care for our house and
hold me after a long day, I wondered who King turned to for support. King moved into my
first professorial office with me; a portrait of her and quotations by and about her grace my
walls and give me strength as a novice teacher educator. Sklar talks about how actors are
the only other people who “submerge their lives into others” as biographers do.34 My
husband is an actor. As he performed Vincent, Leonard Nimoy's play about Van Gogh’s
life, I wondered about how King and Van Gogh, contemporaries, would get along and how
much we are the same or different from them.

As I made decisions about this dissertation, I tried to keep in mind my original aims
in pursuing a doctorate. I decided to leave my seventh grade social studies classroom to get
the credentials I thought I needed in order to participate in an educational policy
conversation about transforming schools and society. I promised myself that I would not
let academia rob me of my identity as a woman teacher. I knew, even then, that the voice of

the woman teacher was important but rarely heard outside of her classroom. Now, many

 

33King, 1889.
3“Sklar, 1992, p. 26.

10

years later, I hope to contribute to those educational policy conversations about

transforming schools and society by writing educational history.

11

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

White julia Anne King’s Life

1838 Julia Anne King born to Charlotte J. and Hiram King in Milan, MI, a ‘
small farming village south of Detroit

1844 King begins public school education at a small one-room log school
in Milan.

1852 King’s father dies and the family moves into the town of Adrian so
she may attend the new Union High School.

' 1855-1858 hKing enrolls in and graduates from the Classical Course at the
Michigan State normal School in Ypsilanti.

7838 King takes her first job in St. Claire, MI. She is responsible for
organizing their first graded school.

1860 King returns to the normal school to take a set of courses in modern
languages, which had just been added to the curriculum.

1861-2 King serves as principal in Lansing, MI

1863-5 King serves Principal of Ladies and teacher at Kalamazoo College

1866-1875 LKing is head of the girl’s department and teaches history, literature,
and modern languages at Flint High School. During this time she is
an officer in the State Teacher’s Association and writes articles for
their journal.

78-75-1881 King serves as principal, librarian and then superintendent of
schools for five years in Charlotte, MI. She is one of the first
women members of the Association of Superintendents of City
Schools. She serves on a board of visitor’s to the normal school
and writes articles for the local newspaper.

1881-1915 King is appointed Preceptress at the NormalfiSLchool and becomes the
advisor to women students until the position is terminated in the
1890s. She is appointed head of the newly formed history department
in 1888 and in that eapacity is part of the faculty council until her
retirement in 1915. She continues to teach a variety of
courses—mostly history and civics, and to give speeches, publish
articles, and participate in national conversations about history
teaching.

1919 Kingdies in her home in Ypsilanti. Nieces and nephews including

Charlotte, who attended and taught at the Normal School, while living
with her Aunt Julia, survive her.

 

Table 1. King’s Life

12

 

.1

Chapter 1
The History of Normal Schools and the Voice of the Woman Teacher
“Women's History is a strategy necessary to enable us to see around the

cultural blinders which have distorted our vision of the past to the
extent of obliterating from view the past of half of humankind.”1

In this chapter I discuss the traditional view of normal schools as places deserving
of scorn. Normal schools were nineteenth century teacher training institutions. They have
been characterized by their low status, and their students, teachers, and curricula have
historically been portrayed as deficient.2 University professors, educational leaders,
teachers, and even teacher educators themselves have all heaped scorn on teacher
education’s shoulders. The titles of a few books capture the general tone of distain:
Educational Wastelands, The Miseducation of America ’3 Teachers, and Ed School Follies.3

I suggest tint by examining women’s lives and experiences this view could be
expanded. For many years, education historians ignored women, in general, and female
students and teachers in normal schools, in particular. In the last twenty-five years,
historians have begun to address the lives of women in schools and the significance of
gender in the history of education. I review this literature. I make a case for a biography of
Julia Anne King (1838—1919), student and professor at the Michigan State Normal School,
as a viable venue for reexamination of normal school history. The life story of this
nineteenth century female teacher calls into question the assumptions on which the
traditional historical critique of normal schools is based. Julia Anne King's experience as a
student, teacher, and professor provide a window into the past through which female
teachers’ experiences look much more complex and positive than historians have led us to
believe.

 

lLemer, 1979, p. 180.
2 Thomburg and Ogren, 1999; Borrowman, 1965; Warren, 1985; Goodlad, et al., 1990.
3 Labaree, 1995, p. 1; Bestor, 1953; Koemer, 1963; Kramer, 1991.

13

Second, I reveal how, in the process of writing King’s life, I came to realize that her
faith, Protestant Christianity, was the guiding force in her life. I build a case for looking at
the history of normal schools in a new light: with an eye on religious belief and the
influence of faith.

Finally, I suggest that the majority of historical information regarding normal
schools focuses on turn of the century and progressive era institutions, and that King’s
formative years, in the mid-nineteenth century, bring to light a different, earlier, normal
school history. I close this chapter with a brief discussion of what I attempt to do in each of
the following chapters and how my thinking about King has influenced the organization of

the dissertation.

Scorning the Normal Schools

Literature on the history of normal schools can be organized around four
explanations for why the normal schools have been maligned: a) the normal school gave up
on its original noble purpose—to educate teachers for our nation’s schools; b) the normal
school was a sexist institution which limited women’s options; c) at the normal school,
pedagogy was weak and curricultun was technical; and d) the normal school provided
poorer quality teacher education than did the twentieth century teacher colleges.

One of the reasons why normal schools have been so criticized has to do with the
purpose of normal education. Many of the normal schools sold out on their original
charge—to educate teachers who were called to teach in our nation’s schools. Instead of
serving God and country by staffing the common schools, normal schools often became
general education mills for farmers and working class students. “There was a persistent
tendency to move away from what had been the initial—and never quite fulfilled-demand
to prepare teachers for rural classrooms. Instead, students and others sought out normal

schools and teachers colleges in search of post-elementary and, later, post-secondary

14

I)

education.“ Because opportunities for study in recently-settled areas were few, many
students saw the emerging normal schools as an inexpensive means for condoned
education. Midwestem and western normal schools seldom, if ever, assumed a single
purpose; they rapidly became “people's colleges?”

Another explanation for the low status of teaching and teacher education has to do
with gender. The argument goes like this: teaching is done primarily by women, women
are generally not respected, so teaching is low status and has little hope of being a respected
profession until women are viewed as equals. Susan B. Anthony warned those interested in
elevating the profession of this possibility over one hundred years ago.6 Women teachers
have been characterized as the oppressed in a repressive bureaucracy.7 And normal
schools’ students, we are told, did not view teaching as a desirable lifetime career. Rather
they were victimized by a society that limited women’s professional options. Even the
normal school was part of this “treason” described by Herbst. Normal schools
professionalized every job in education-administrator, curriculum specialist, education
professor—except the classroom teacher.8 After graduating from normal school, teachers
encountered a professional life characterized by sexism and lack of opportunity. Men
became administrators who were given more power and money than women who mostly
remained simply teachers.

A third, perhaps the most common, and, given their mission to train teachers, most
damaging critique of the normal school, has to do with teaching methods (or lack thereof).

The founders of the early schools were weak on pedagogical theory, since most were
ministers or politicians rather than educators. They saw the need for morality, literacy,
and a modicum of actual knowledge but demonstrated little interest in fostering
creativity, imagination, or independent thought in children. They wanted the United

States to become a politically stable nation of thrifty, virtuous, hard-working citizens and
saw the public schools as instruments for promoting that goal.9

 

4 Herbst, 1989b, p. 213-214

5 Altenbaugh and Underwood, 1990, p. 143; Wassermarr, 1979.
6 Tyack, 1987.

7 Melder, 1972, p. 28.

8 Herbst, 19893.

9 Altenbaugh and Underwood, 1990, p. 140.

15

ll'.‘

In this description, ministers and statesmen are portrayed as ideologues or control mongers
with little concern for maturing children’s growth.
Normal schools were often blamed for the poor teaching that took place in schools.
Most nineteenth century teachers were young, poorly paid, and rarely educated beyond the
elementary subjects. They taught in small rural schools, did not have the benefit of teacher
training, and could hardly be considered members of a profession or even bureaucratic
employees.lo Based on two major studies, one on the twentieth century by Larry Cuban
and one on the nineteenth century by Barbara Finkelstein,ll it has become common place to
assume that “teachers in rural and urban schools alike drilled their students in individual or
class recitations with ritualistic precision. Learning was thought to have occurred when the
child could reiterate the infomration or emulate the skill.“2 Finkelstein’s book on teacher
behavior in popular primary schools in the nineteenth century United States summarizes
this depressing picture of instruction:
Teachers consistently behaved as though they believed that the exercise of reason and
judgment should be discouraged within the classroom setting. Proceeding it is likely,
on the assumption that each student was, in Shakespeare’s words, ‘a beast that wanted
the discourse of reason’, they tried to impose intellectual order by compelling students
to memorize facts... Teachers proweded as though they believed that all knowledge,
from reading to arithmetic, comprised collections of fact—absolute unchanging, true.
They did not seem to regard knowledge as provisionally held or progressively realized,
as constantly changing and as subject to creative manipulation.l3
Traditional, didactic teaching for social control and maintenance of the status quo, as
described above is typical of the few secondary sources that exist on the history of teaching.
As teacher preparation became associated with the university, pedagogy remained
low in status relative to the arts and sciences departments.” Merle Borrowman
characterized the normal school curriculum as single-mindedly technical, emphasizing day-
to-day classroom instruction rather than the critical thinking or academic pursuits associated

 

‘° Tyack and Hansot, 1982, p. 17-18.
11 Cuban, 1984; Finkelstein, 1989.

‘2 Warren, 1985.

‘3 Frnkelstein, 1989, p. 137.

" Clifford and Guthrie, 1988.

16

with liberal education.” There was a belief on the part of the academy and college
professors that teaching competence is based on, and largely limited to, mastery of one's
subject matter.

A fourth and final reason normal schools have been slighted is because the great
myth of American progress persists. Contemporary United States historians of all types
have debunked the earlier narratives of progress that lined our nation’s history textbooks
and claimed that we have been moving steadily toward a better tomorrow.“5 However, when
it comes to teacher education, myths die hard. The use of the word “evolution” in the titles
of two classic studies reveal the idea that normal schools have progressed and gained
something: Elsbree’s The American Teacher: Evolution of a Profession in (.1 Democracy
and Harper’s A Century of Public Teacher Education: The Story of the State Teachers
Colleges as They Evolved fiom the Normal Schools.l7 Even in the 1990s, Altenbaugh and
Underwood chose to title their chapter, in Places Where Teachers Were Taught, “The
Evolution of Normal Schools.” David Labaree writes about the “Lowly Status of Teacher
Education in the United States” and describes the history of teacher education as “An
Unlovely Legacy.”18 In Frederick Rudolph’s comprehensive study of higher education he
only mentions normal schools twice. When Rudolph discusses how teachers’ colleges
progressed toward full collegiate status, he claims teachers’ colleges were the “outgrowth
of onetime normal schools of high-school level?” Second, when talking about community
colleges, he claims that they “developed out of onetime normal schools.” These examples
illustrate education historians' understandings that from the nineteenth century to the present
there has been “evolution” toward better conditions, higher standards, more academie-a’gor,

and generally improved teacher education.

 

‘5 Borrowman, 1953.

‘6 For example, see May, 1988.
'7 Elsbree, 1939. Harper, 1939.
’8 Labaree, 1994 and 1995.

‘9 Rudolph, 1962, p. 463.

17

\\."

-4

Pangbum also used the term “evolution” to describe the change from normal
school to teachers’ college.20 Her interpretation describes the change as being the logical
outcome of increasing enrollment, accreditation, and centralization of administration. Many
educators still think of moving away from teacher education as positive institutional growth.
For example, when interviewing on college campuses in the 1980s, Goodlad noted, “It was
not uncommon for academic administrators to view the decline of teacher education on their
campuses virtually as evidence of a rite of passage signifying a coming of age for their
institutions?“
Woman-centered Stories

Why is it that historians have painted this disdainful picture? Might different
historical subjects, methods, questions, or interpretive lenses yield alternate stories? I
propose that historians have not fully explored the potential richness of the history of
normal schools because we have not studied the lives of the individual women who attended
and taught at them. Without women’s voices or attention to gender, we have an incomplete
view.

Even though many of the normal schools that pioneered teacher education eventually
became the state universities where the majority of our nation’s teachers are still taught,
historians of higher education have rarely studied the diverse experiences of women in
normal schools.22 Most of the teachers in this country were, and still are, women of working
class origins, but much of educational history lms not included the perspectives of female
schoolteachers. Even the titles of seminal pieces in the field reveal this omission: for
example, Paul H. Mattingly's The Classless Profession: American Schoolmen in the

Nineteenth Century.23

 

2° Pangbum, 1932.

2' Goodlad, 1990, p. 20-21.

2’ Geiger, 2000; Lucas, 1996; and Rudolph, 1962, all overlook these topics in their
“comprehensive” histories.

2’ Mattingly, 1975.

18

Even those scholars who hoped to correct the failure of early historians of education
to focus on teachers in the development of public education saw teaching more from the top
down than from the inside out.24 Early education historians and recent revisionists alike
cast education history as the privileged domain of policy-makers and intellectual elites.”
Teachers, teaching, and teacher education are the objects of their investigation, but they base
their analyses on the experiences and perspectives of men who held positions of power in
the normal schools, the State Boards of Education, or at the universities.“ The lives and
ideas of women teachers who attended or taught at the normal schools are generally not
included. This omission has been noted and a call put out for more work in this area. For
example, Linda Eisenmann suggests that Jurgen Herbst’s book, And Sadly Teach, provides
a framework for studying the normal schools into which a teacher- and woman-centered
history can now be fit.27

In the 1990s, as teachers, teaching, and teacher education became the targets for
improvement in nation-wide school reform movements, they also became subjects of
renewed interest among historians of education. American Teachers was the first large-
scale project to focus on teachers and teaching since Elsbree.28 Editor Donald Warren
claims the various contributors to his volume occupy that band of thought shared by the
overlapping spheres of history and public policy, and that they go beyond “giving”
teachers’ voice. While this huge volume is clearly a success, it is also a measure of how
much territory remains to be explored. Relatively little is revealed about the experiences and
perspectives of outstanding women teachers—such as the normal school students who
excelled, chose to devote some portion of their lives to teaching, and who, through their lives
as educators, were personally and professionally rewarded. Without their voices, and those
of other people who have been marginalized, we have only a partial history.

 

2"I‘yack, 1989.

2’ Finkelstein, 1992.

2‘ Herbst, 1989a; Zilversmit, 1993.
’7 Eisenmann, 1991,p. 221.

2' Warren, 1989.

19

>\l‘

Ih.

There are, of course, historians who attempt to see history through women’s lives.
Women’s historians have significantly transformed United States History,” but few of
them have chosen those engaged in woman’s “true” profession as their subjects.30 For
many years historians of education neglected women, and historians of women neglected
teachers and teacher education. Historians uncover the diverse worlds which women
created, providing new understandings about gender, professionalism, and women's culture
and community; however, few of these analyses concern teachers, their schooling, or their
work.
Thomas Woody's two-volume A History of Women's Education in the United
States, and Mabel Newcomer's A Century of Higher Education for American Women, were
early exceptions to the male bias in educational history.31 Woody was interested in
women's struggle to gain access to educational institutions created mainly for men.
Newcomer sustained Woody's liberal outlook but focused on women's colleges. In the
19608, revisionist historians of women's higher education began to question if access and
progress should be equated, and argued that coeducational and even women's colleges might
reinforce patterns of subordination.32
Sara Evans explains how nineteenth century college-educated women had to defend
their choice of career over marriage by saying they would
unleash maternal skills and capacities on a needy world—schooling the young, tending
the poor, and improving the health of women and children... The temporary success of
this argument rested largely on the creation of new female-dominated institutions that,
alongside women's colleges, provided an autonomous base from which women could
support each other in developing new ideas, experimenting with them, and launching
political battles in their defenses.33

Were women forced to limit themselves to these helping professions or did they feel called

to pursue these paths? Did they see this work as limiting or liberatory? Could it be that

 

’9 for example, Lerner, 1979; Kerber, Kessler-Harris, and Sklar, 1995.
3° a notable exception is Hoffman, 1971.

3‘ Woody, 1929; Newcomer, 1959.

32 Graham, 1975; Conway, 1974.

33 Evans, 1989, p. 148

20

ekro

\- .

~¢e

while they were still in bonds they were also free? These types of questions have only
begun to be explored.

Scholars interested in gender and education focus on girls’ experiences in primary
and secondary schools" and on women’s experiences as college students.” Few of these
authors concentrate on the supposedly sub-collegiate nomral school or the women students
who attended the normal schools, where, before the rise of women's colleges and the
acceptance of women at state universities, many nineteenth—century women received the
highest form of education available to their sex.

In a review of some of these titles, Joyce Antler says “more work on such topics as
southem schools, land-grant colleges, religious institutions, and black women’s education
must be done before a complete history of collegiate women emerges.”36 While this is an
important call for further research, her category “collegiate women” is somewhat
misleading, as in the nineteenth century the education system was not clearly delineated into
elementary, secondary, and collegiate. For example, the normal school was, sometimes at
once, all of these, thereby blurring the lines. Research on women’s eXperiences in
education necessarily includes rethinking what counts as “higher education” and what was
available to women.

In the last twenty-five years there have been an increasing number of studies that
uncover the forgotten lives of women teachers and thereby add valuable new insights to the
history of education.” These women’s experiences, in normal schools and other
educational institutions, as students, teachers, administrators, and scholars, suggest tint the
negative images of the normal schools as precursors to higher forms of university-based
teacher education are misplaced. Rather than scorn the normals, women’s historians are
now pointing out how the nomrals provided support, opportunity and advancement for
3" Tyack and Hansot, 1990; Bemard—Powers, 1992.

3’ Solomon, 1985; Horowitz, 1984; Gordon. 1990.
3‘ Antler, 1987.
37 For example: Clifford, 1981, 1983, 1986, 1989; Prentice and Theobold, 1991; Beatty,

1995; Bernard-Powers, 1992; Palmieri, 1989, 1995; Weiler,1988, 1994; Gordon, 1990;
Rousmanierc, 1997. p -

 

21

,gn '

women. At least some female teachers’ lives seem to contradict the accepted narratives
about the history of teacher education. For example, Holmes and Weiss, in their Lives of
Women Public School Teachers, provide fascinating stories of women public school
teachers, but they do not go much beyond editing diaries.”8 If women teachers’ lives are
told simply as stories, outside of the mainstream of educational thought, then they will
remain marginalized.

Marjorie Theobold and Alison Prentice gathered the works of historians of women
teachers from Austrailia, Britain, Canada and the United States. They claim it is essential to
consider the history of teaching part of labor history and to place the worker/teacher at the
center of the inquiry.39 In order to engender education history, education historians must,
like the new labor historians, shift their attention from men who held formal positions of
power to ordinary teachers and their everyday lives. Additionally, they must be willing to
reconceptualize family life, work life, and their intersections; and to look at women's diverse
experiences, as both domestic and paid educators, and their multiple representations of
feminism.‘0

Ann F. Scott and Geraldine J. Clifford were some of the first scholars of women
teachers to note the possibly liberating effects for some women of nineteenth-century
educational and teaching experiences."l While the separation and restriction of roles
controlled women and narrowed their options, it also allowed them a position of moral
superiority from which they could venture outside of the home and into the classroom.
These women’s historians discuss the camaraderie developed among students and
professors at the normals, the enthusiasm the intending teachers had for their chosen work,
the confidence felt by young women who could support themselves, and the peace they felt
knowing they were following God’s will for their lives. Kathleen Weiler’s recent work,
Country Schoolwomen: Teaching in Rural California, 1850-1950, supports the view that
’8 Holmes and Weiss, 1995.

3’ Theobold and Prentice, 1991.

”Baron, 1988.
‘“ Scott, 1979; Clifford, 1981.

 

22

I

teaching has been a source of power for women and puts forth a’vision of classroom
teaching as valuable and intellectually challenging.42

Many other scholars have written about the potentially liberating nature of teacher
education and the teaching profession. For example, Alison Prentice describes the rules and
regulations regarding the segregation of the sexes at the Ontario Normal School, in Tomato,
Canada, and she points out that “sexual segregation was a two—edged sword. It limited
opportunities for women and emphasized their differences from men. But at the same time
it gave them a base from which to organize a collective resistance and a weapon in their fight
for better treatment as women?“ Another example is Margaret A. Nash’s research on the
Western Female Seminary in Oxford, Ohio. She notes that the women there in the mid-
nineteenth century also embraced a form of separate spheres feminism. They did not
question the distinction between men’s and women’s roles, but they sought to expand the
roles available to women.“ Yet another example is Elizabeth Smyth’s study of a Tomato
Roman Catholic teaching and nursing order, the sisters of St. Joseph." They “dedicated
their lives to the service of God and neighbour through a life-long career in education,” and,
because they did not become wives and mothers nor seek economic independence and
social advancement, “teaching was the actualization of their vocation!”6

Unfortunately, woman-centered contributions have not successfully infiltrated the
general history of education. Talented historians of women have rarely gotten the attention
of traditional educational historians. Even when respected scholars, who are tenured faculty
members at major research universities, write histories, their findings related to gender are
often not incorporated into mainstream accounts of the history of education, especially in
the history of higher education.” When scholars who study women teachers, gender, and
normal schools give papers at the History of Education Society meetings, primarily women
‘2 Weiler, 1998.
‘3 Prentice,l990, p. 311.
“ Nash, 1996.
‘5 Smyth, 1994.

‘6 Smyth, 1994, p. 112.
‘7 Horowitz, 1995. see for example Geiger, 2000; Lucas, 1996; Rudolph, 1962

 

23

J .

attend the sessions. These women read each other’s work when doing research, but many
of their ideas have not yet infiltrated the grand narrative of educational history which male
scholars still control. Even Geraldine Clifford, Professor Emerita at the University of
California, Berkeley, past-President of the History of Education Society, and author of the
most extensive research on women teachers and gender in the history of United States
education stills feels male historians continue to ignore or downplay the introduction of
coeducation in the story of higher education and treat the normal school, women’s college,
and black college as a sideshow and not part of the main event."8

It is as if there is a contemporary form of the separate spheres ideology at work in
the history of education, and one group of historians is unable to access the conversation of
the other. In one sphere are the historians who have not yet considered what using gender
as a category of analysis might add to the field, and in the other sphere are the historians
who make that task central to their work. The first sphere is primarily made up of men who
have written books that are considered the most influential and summative works on the
history of education. The other sphere is made up primarily of women who have written
about normal schools, female seminaries, women’s colleges, and teachers.

Luckily, some men do study women’s lives and the ways gender operates in
education, and some women do manage to publish new perspectives that force scholars to
revision the field and reflect their contributions. Senior scholars of educational history,
Geraldine Clifford, David Tyack and Elisabeth Hansot, have published multiple books that
add considerably to our understandings of gender in educational history. In the spirit of the
excellent works by these scholars and their colleagues, and in light of the evidence from
women’s history that suggests normal schools did not deserve the all scorn they receive, a
reexamination of the history of normal schools, and of the women teachers that attended and
taught at them, is in order.

 

‘8 Clifford, 1995.

Biography and Institutional History as Viable Venue for Reexamination
Scholars have acknowledged that there is a gap in scholarship on the history of

teacher education and teaching. In the Handbook of Research on Teacher Education, in the
chapter to devoted to “Historical Studies of Teacher Education,” Wayne Urban says that
he does not deal “specifically with the relationship of teacher education to teaching and
teachers, but that lack simply reflects the omission of the relationship in most of the
historical studies of the topic.”"9 In the introductory chapter to Places Where Teachers
are Taught (1990), John Goodlad reflects on why there are so few histories of teacher
education, especially fiorn teachers’ perspectives, and he calls for both life histories and
institutional histories to be written. He says,

the difficulty arises in large part out of the great extent to which historians, in trying to

tell coherent stories of the past, must depend on biography and autobiography. Very

few teachers or teacher educators ever caught the attention of first—rate biographers. . .

Getting a historical picture on teacher education is even more difficult, because to do so

one needs institutional biographies... The audience for the historian’s efforts to place in

perspective the course of a university’s development, let alone its attention to teacher

edueation, is modest. Yet the reforms of teacher education— reform necessarily

involving colleges and luriversities—is a recurring topic of debates,0 debate deserving a

much better historical perspective than has been available to date."
I wanted to answer Goodlad’s call—to write a life history of Julia Anne King and an
institutional history of the Michigan State Normal School.

However, throughout this project I had trouble figuring out where my research fit.

At first I thought I was writing a history of teacher education, but there was so much local
variation and so little cross-institutional analysis of nineteenth century normal schools, that
fitting my ease study in with others was not possible. Next I considered the broader history
of higher education, but in the history of higher edueation the normal school has been
virtually ignored. It is not surprising that the Michigan State Normal School, which opened
as a coeducational institution well before state universities admitted women or women’s
colleges were founded, does not fit into a periodization that has been developed for colleges

or research universities.

”Urban, 1990, p.70.
soGoodliid,etttl. 1990, p..4-5

 

25

Finally, I looked to institutional histories. The structure of traditional institutional
histories, often built around the administrative terms of male presidents, usually did not
work for my woman and teacher-centered study. However, some institutional histories were
helpful in framing my own. David Labaree’s history of Central High School in
Philadelphia deals with the same time period as my study, includes a focus on teachers and
teaching, and integrates thematic and chronological approaches.’l John Goodlad’s volume
presents brief sketches of a variety of institutions that prepared teachers, and it includes a
chapter on the state norrnals.’2 Geraldine Clifford and James Guthrie’s study of elite
schools of education focuses on multiple institutions which prepared teachers and deals
with issues related to power and opportunity in teacher education, including gender.S3
Palmieri’s study of Wellesley is perhaps the closest to what I was envisioning writing; she
explores the lives of women faculty members, individually and in community, while
studying an institution.“

Ultimately, I decided that the main story was about King. The history of the normal
school would emerge as I wrote about her life. Once I freed myself to think of this as a
biography, many wonderful examples were available."5 One such is Catharine Beecher
(1800-1878) who never taught school, but who was influential in the development of female
seminaries. Many normal school teachers taught in or attended female seminaries before
coming to the normal. Beecher’s advocacy of teaching as an alternative to motherhood, and
as an acceptable domestic role for Christian women, probably influenced King as she made
personal and professional choices. Another influential biography portrays Lucy Sprague
Mitchell (1878-1967) who taught at the Bank Street College of Education. Her methods of
teaching children as “little discoverers” aml of making teacher education classes active

centers of inquiry were similar to King’s. M. Carey Thomas (1857-1935) was part of the

 

5' Labaree, 1988.

’2 Goodlad, etal.,l990.

53 Clifford and Guthrie, 1988.

“Palmieri, 1995.

S’Sklar, 1976; Antler,l987; Horowitz, 1994.

26

~ 0

t 2“”

I‘

first generation of college women. Thomas was president of Bryn Mawr College, and
although King did not have the opportunity to study or teach in a single-sex environment
like Bryn Mawr, nurny of the features of the early women’s colleges were adapted from
women’s communities like the one King was a part of at the Michigan State Normal
School.

One of the challenges of writing a biography was that I had to read in so many
difi'erent areas in order to understand the complexities of King’s life. “Biographers, in
reconstructing an individual’s life, face special challenges, not the least of which is the wide
preparation they need to understand a person’s often multiple realms of activity.”56 I read
the history of teacher education; I read about the historiography of U.S. women’s history
and about feminist approaches to biography; and I read histories of the common school,
woman’s, and college movements and theories of pedagogy and professionalism. I studied
previously unexamined primary sources, including essays, lesson plans, speeches,
newspaper articles, journal publications, and books that King wrote.” I read about the
history of the Michigan State Normal School and the men and women who contributed to
its growth and prosperity during the nineteenth century.’8 In the research process, I elicited
information about King's life at the Michigan State Normal School, and I examined sources
which provided King's point of view. My assumption was that in order to build an
understanding of the institution which prepared King for her life-work and provided her
with employment at the height of her professional life, the view from the teacher’s desk was
likely to be the most revealing.”

’"Alpern, et. al., 1992. p.12.

’7 Collections of King’s papers are housed in the Archives at Eastern Michigan University
and in the Bentley Historical Library at the University of Michigan.

’8 Two published histories of the Michigan State Normal School exist In 1899, Daniel
Putnam wrote History of the Michigan State Normal School, and in 1971, Egbert Isbell’s A
History of Eastern Michigan University: 1849-1965 was published. These books are
valuable resources both as primary and secondary sources; both were written by professors
in celebration, at least partially, of their institution. Both of these histories mention
Preceptress Julia Anne King (1838-1919). I also draw from several short biographical
sketches of King from a collection on Michigan educators, the Michigan History magazine,

the Normal School’s yearbook and newspaper, and King’s memorial services.
’9 Warren, 1989.

 

27

r“;

O

Julia Anne King

Julia Anne King graduated from the Michigan State Normal School (now Eastern
Michigan University) in 1858. King was inspired by her normal school teachers, studied a
wide variety of academic subjects, engaged in intellectual debate throughout her life, and
encouraged her own students to become socially responsible critical thinkers. King taught
in a one-room school, an early graded school, and a city high school; she served as a
principal and was one of Michigan’s first female superintendents. In 1881, King returned
to the Normal School to complete 57 years of professional service as Preceptress“ and
Head of the History Department. The Detroit Free Press called her “the greatest woman
educator Michigan has ever had,”61 but when asked to describe her life King answered with
four simple words: “born and taught school.”"2 This whimsieal reply was a modest
reflection of the truth, for education in her eyes included the whole of living.

King’s life is a viable venue for a reexamination of normal school history. After
reading the literature which described the nineteenth-century normal school curriculum as
single-mindedly technical and the student-teachers as lacking in formal education,
intellectual capacity, and commitment to the teaching profession,"3 I thought King must have
been an exception—a strange woman who was given unusual opportunity, achieved a great
deal, enjoyed her work as a teacher and teacher educator, and contributed to the field in both
theory and practice. Nothing in this secondary literature explained how such an
extraordinary nineteenth century woman teacher was possible. It was as if she had lived
outside of educational history and did not belong in America's early public schools. I
wondered how this woman teacher could have been the product of a nineteenth century

 

6" The Preceptress was an advisor to the women students. At some schools the position
was called “Principal of Ladies.” Although the position was in some ways a precursor to
the Dean of Women, at the Michigan State Normal School the Preceptress was a counselor
and a professor who was second in rank only to the Principal, while the Dean of Women
was a policy enforcer who had lower status than professors. This position is discussed in
more detail in Chapter 3.

6‘ Detroit Free Press, May 13, 1919

‘2 Lord, 1954, p. 309.

‘3 Borrowman, 1953; Herbst, 1989a; Goodlad, 1990; Warren, 1989.

28

normal school and, since she was, how accurate and appropriate our historical maps of
teachers, teaching, and teacher education were.

Then I read works in which the researcher made women teachers’ lives central and
struggled to understand their experiences and perspectives. There were many women in this
literature who were similar to King and who were her professional peers.“ I realized that
what appeared, based on King’s life, to be gaps and misunderstandings in the literature
could be filled in and explained by the work done by women scholars.“ King’s
accomplished life did not seem possible in the conventional history of teacher education, yet
King fit women’s historians’ descriptions of women and their education in the nineteenth
century.

King was an influential woman teacher whose life story has not been widely studied
or published in any book-length form. King’s students and colleagues wrote about her
while she was alive, and a brief biography of King appeared in a 1900 volume on Michigan
Educators.“ In 1954 Mary Lord wrote a brief biographical article about King in the
Michigan History Magazine.67 Lord may have been one of King’s students and seems to
have written little else besides this tribute to a teacher she admired. King is known on the
Eastern Michigan University campus, as there is a dormitory which still bears her name, and
she is featured in both histories of the school."8 Even so, King’s life has not made its way

into the larger history of education; in the last thirty years, when women’s history has

 

‘4 For example, women in these histories: Clifford, 1989; Palnrieri, 1995; Smith, 1979;
Sklar, 1976 and 1995; Ogren, 1996; Waite, 2002; McGuigan, 1970; Bordin, 1993.

"5 There are some notable exceptions to this women research women and men research men
model. Some examples of men who have done research on women, or with attention to
gender, in the history of education include David Tyack, David Labaree, Rob Levin, and
Wayne Urban.

5" brief biographies of King were published in the Normal News (the student newspaper) in
1893 and 1895 and in the Aurora (the school yearbook) in 1893 and 1900. Ernest P.
Goodrich delivered a memorial address at services held in her honor, June 24, 1919. See
also, Educators of Michigan: Biographical (Chicago, IL: J .H. Beers& Co., 1900, p 138)
MCL.

"7 Lord, 1954.

"8 Putnam, 1899; Isbell, 1970.

29

no,

flourished, King has been absent from major collections of famous educators and/or
women.”

My examination of King’s life is based primarily on primary source documents by
and about her which are located in the Archives at Eastern Michigan University and in a box
donated to the Bentley Historical Collection at the University of Michigan by her niece,
Charlotte King (18??-1958). These papers include lesson plans, notebooks, letters,
newspaper clippings, unpublished manuscripts, and published articles. All of the sources I
have consulted are of a professional nature. What existed of King’s personal papers were
destroyed by her descendants years ago. 7" In addition to the papers contained in these two
archives, I have consulted primary source documents from the organizations to which King
belonged, the schools at which she taught, and the communities in which she resided.

King’s life is a particularly good one to write in an effort to connect the “separate
spheres of research” in the history of education. King was a woman who worked primarily
with women and who influenced a great many young women as they beeame tomorrow’s
teachers, but she also worked effectively beside men and was respected by them. Although
she challenged the educational system, she pursued her lifework within it. Even though she
gained a great deal of power and influence, she did not offend her colleagues or cause an
uproar. Because she was so gentle and respectful of male authority, it seems that if there is
a woman who could make educational historians wake up and take notice of gender, King
might be the one who could. Some women in history present such an uncomfortable
challenge that male historians can easily write them off as deviant, but King was such an
integral part of her institution, so loyal a member of the faculty, and such a respected teacher
and colleague, that she is easy to like and to listen to.

Finally, King’s life is also a particularly good one for bridging another gap in the

study of women teachers and teacher education. There is a chasm that exists between

 

"9 70Altenbaugh, 1999; Eisenmann, 1998; Adamson, 1999.
"personal correspondence with Prudeirce King (teacher educator in Boston, Massachusetts
and JuliaAnrre King’s great- great grand niece), 1996.

30

historical research on teachers and teaching practice in schools. King’s life provides
alternative visions for teacher educators and policy reformers by exposing the variety of
factors that influence a teacher’s practice. King’s life also invites women teachers to re-
imagine their own lives as teachers and learners and, through its example, gives them

strength as they serve children and society.

Michigan State Normal School

King’s lifework is closely connected to the history of an early and influential
normal school. The Michigan State Normal School was the sixth state-sponsored normal
school in the country and the first west of the Alleghenies. It was founded in a formative
era for public schools, female education, and higher education. For almost fifty years it
remained the only normal school in Michigan, a pioneering state with respect to education.
There were many varieties of normal schools in nineteenth century America; private,
municipal, and county normal schools developed along with mass public schooling, and
norrmrl departments were formed in academics, high schools, and colleges. The state-
sponsored normal school, like the institution King attended, was the most widespread and
enduring model, and the Michigan State Normal School was one of the most influential.

Internal histories of the Michigan State Normal School were published in 1899 and
197 1.71 Recent comprehensive studies of teacher education do not include the Michigan
State Normal School or only mention it briefly. Numerous histories of education in
Michigan include something about the normal school or discuss related developments."2
However, none of these studies examine the institution through the lifework of a woman
teacher. Through examination of primary sources by and about King, and reexamination of

primary and secondary sources on the history of the normal school at which she was a

 

7’ Putnam, 1899.1sbell, 1970.
7’ Bordin, 1993 and 2001; Whitney, 1931; Catton, 1988; Putnam 1877 and 1904; and
Council of Teachers College Presidents, 1934.

31

or

student and a professor, I try to see through her eyes in an attempt to widen and make more
accurate our perception of the past.73

My understanding of the Michigan State Normal School is based primarily on
reexamination of two earlier histories: Daniel Putnarn’s (1899) History of the Michigan
State Normal School, and Egbert Isbells’ (1971) A History of Eastern Michigan
University, I849-1965. In addition, I examined the normal schools’ yearbooks,
newspapers, course catalogues, and the Annual Reports of the State Superintendent of
Public Instruction. Finally, I depended on general secondary sources on nineteenth century
normal schools and on the Michigan public schools.

The Cenaulity of Faith

It was in the final iterations of this project that I finally came to realize the
importance of Christian faith in King’s life. Only by listening to her voice and letting it
lead my investigation and analysis was I able to fully understand the centrality of religion in
her practice. Previously, I had force-fit my chapters into other historians’ categories that
were closely related to what I had identified were major themes in King’s life and the
history of the Michigan State Normal School. Unfortunately, by starting with mainstream
history of education themes and telescoping in towards King, I missed out on the
opportunity to have her life experience and perspectives shape my writing. In Writing a
Woman's Life, Carolyn Heilbrun asserts that patriarchal culture has not only defined the
limits of women’s lives, it has determined what stories about women will be told. Those
who write about women’s lives have suppressed the truth of the female experience, in order
to make the written life conform to society’s expectations about what life should be.74 In
writing King’s life, I unknowingly did exactly what Heilbrun describes. I found pre-

existing historical terms or ideas and tried to fit King into them.

 

73 Tyack, 1976. pp 355-389.
"Heilbrun, 1988.

32

“9

As I revised the dissertation, bringing Julia Anne King to the forefront, and
struggling to hear her voice, it became clear I would nwd to abandon the categories I had
co-opted: Protestant Republicanism, Domestic Feminism, and Pestalozzian Pedagogy. As
King became central, her values and beliefs dictated that Christianity become central.
Christianity was the umbrella under which pedagogical and professional issues emerged
and took shape. Because King was deeply committed to her faith, it touched all aspects of
her life. Because of my new understanding—that King’s faith shaped her views on gender,
pedagogy and professionalism—I moved information on faith, and what it meant to King to
be a Christian, to the beginning of my discussion.

By giving voice to an early normal school woman, King, I uncovered an essential,
but understudied, aSpect of the history of teachers and teacher education—the importance of
Protestant religion. In all the published works I had read on the history of education and of
women, I had encountered very little on the religious beliefs of teachers or how those beliefs
might influence their educations or careers.

I knew from my research on the Michigan State Normal School that it was founded
by ministers and statesnren committed to seeking Biblical truths and to spreading God’s
word through Michigan via the normal school-educated “ministering angels?” At the
Normal School there was no sectarianism, perhaps because it was not founded by a
particular church, but, like the common schools, it was a state-sponsored institution with a
commitment from the beginning to a sort of broad-based “pan-Protestantism?"s

I began to look purposefully for a contemporary secondary literature on religion in
the nomral schools. I found that religion—at least in its Protestant forms— was a potent
influence in the lives of individual leaders and in the institutional life of higher
education?" Marsden and Reuben agree that the early leaders of the university movement
were religious men. For example, Daniel Coit Gilman, William Rainey Harper, Andrew

 

7’ Putnam, 1899, p. 17.
7‘ Tyack, 1966.
7" Eisenmann, 1999, p. 297; Reuben, 1996; Marsden, 1994; Sloan, 1994.

33

Dickson White, and James Burrill Angell, were all men of strong religious convictions who
spent considerable energy defining (and seeing no conflict in) a “secular, Protestant
university!“ Marsden claims the University of Michigan was the era’s best
approximation of a state institution comfortable with religious overtones, partly because of
support within the state legislature. It is not surprising that King’s teacher training
institution was founded with a similar Christian spirit, because the University of Michigan
was set up by the same state legislature as the Michigan State Normal School, and many
early schoolmen, ministers, and politicians had roles in the founding of both the University
of Michigan and the neighboring Michigan State Normal School.

Unfortunately, these religious perspectives have not successfully infiltrated the
general history of teacher education. Perhaps after influential historians proclaimed the
anti-intellectual nature of Protestant faith, scholars may have been intimidated to attribute too
large a role to religious influences. Veysey “reified our understanding that religion blocked
the road to real university development” and Hofstadter “found in narrow-minded,
sectarian education the original stumbling block to intellectual expansion.” Hofstadter
concluded that increased sectarian control of ante-bellum colleges by market-hungry
churches blocked intellectual growth.79

Some contemporary women’s historians also seem uncomfortable with the
Christian worldview that informed the life work of many mid-nineteenth century educators.
For example, Frances E. Monteverde’s analysis of Mary Sheldon Barnes“ reveals as much
about the politics of contemporary feminist social education as it does about mid-nineteenth
century women and their beliefs, authorities, or truths. Monteverde criticizes her subject for
choosing primary source materials for her 1885 book, Studies in General History, that

“limit the range of possible answers” and assume that “modesty, submissiveness,

 

7‘ Eisenmann, 1999, p. 301.

7’ Eisenmann, 1999, p. 297; Veysey, 1965; Hofstadter, 1996.

8" Barnes (1850-1898), was the daughter of Edward A. Sheldon, founder of the Oswego
Normal School; one of the first women to graduate from the University of Michigan; and a
professor of history at Wellesley College and Stanford University.

34

domesticity, obedience, loyalty, and sobriety are virtues.” She also concludes that Barnes’
religious beliefs provided a rationale for women’s low status in society.81 Altemately, I
think King’s religious beliefs, which were similar to Barnes’, provided her with a rationale
for gender equity and an active professional life as a woman. I attempt to unravel and
understand Kings’ worldview, whereas some non-Christian multi-culturalists would fault
the narrow-mindedness of King’s convictions. Rather than subjecting nineteenth century
texts to current diversity criteria, I ask what being a Christian meant to King and how her
religious beliefs informed her views of gender and teaching. King’s ideas about the
philosophy of history and the best methods of history instruction were similar to Barnes’,
and King used Miss Sheldon’s (Bames’) primary source book in her classes.82 King’s
life makes me wonder if Barnes, and others, searched for truth in order to be good at
“participatory citizenship,” or if, like King, they had loftier aims—such as being God’s
ambassadors."3

In Marsden’s postscript he concludes that perhaps the “very development he
studies—the inexorable rise of value-free science—may have kept scholars from asking
significant questions about the historical role of religion in academe.” Rather than
distancing personal belief and linriting our approach to questioning and analysis, Marsden
asks whether religious perspectives should be included among legitimate scholarly
viewpoints.“ Eisenmann, like Kathleen Mahoney, calls for a “more receptive approach to
religion’s influence on modern aeademe” and invites comparative examination of various
educational settings, including normal schools. She notes that those who study normals
schools would not doubt the keen significance of religion in teacher training, but she notes
that the role of religion “has often been treated as an early element that college leaders

eagerly swept away as they brought their institutions into the orbit of prestigious

 

8’ Crocco & Davis, (1999), p. 27-33.
82 King,
"3 Crocco & Davis, (1999), p. 27-33

8" Eisenmann, 1999, p. 303.

35

-o,r'

trendsetters.”8’ Eisenmann goes on to site the social history of student and faculty bodies
and the lives of individual students and faculty members as sites for new historiographic
opportunity. She proposes: “Women’s history applied to an appreciation of religion might
suggest a very different explanation for women’s continrwd belief in God as a vital force
that guided their approach to education and career?“ I attempt to answer Eisenmann’s eall,
as Julia Anne King’s belief in God was clearly a vital force that guided her lifework.

Timing is Everything: Normal School not Coflege

Bringing King’s life to the forefront exposed a third aspect of the history of teacher
education that has rarely been explored—that of timing, or, specifically, the early years in
which normal schools were established. Historical analysis of normal schools has
depended almost exclusively on the first two decades of the twentieth century, the
progressive era, when there was a proliferation of normal schools across the nation.
However, the first normal schools in the country were founded several generations earlier in
the 1840s and 18508. Historians, concentrating on the late nineteenth and twentieth
centuries, have studied institutions that resemble the Michigan State Normal College (1899-
1959) more than the early Michigan State Normal School (1852-1899). By looking at the
earlier school, I attempt to broaden understandings about the history of normal schools and
the students and teachers that inhabited them in the mid-nineteenth century.

King graduated from the Michigan State Normal School two years before the Civil
War even started. The years of normal school history which most influenced and reflected
her life were those from its founding in 1852 to its official change to a college in 1899.
This is not surprising, because King spent the majority of her life (1838-1919) in the
nineteenth century, but it is significant because, during the later part of King’s professional
life, the institution changed. King was a product of the early normal school, not the more
modern Normal College.

8’ Eisenmann, 1999, p. 304; Mahoney, 1996.
8‘ Eisenmann, 1999, p. 305.

 

36

So

Crenrin and Butts state, “by and large, ideals of the common school, the high
school, the state university, and the normal school were all products of the period. They
provided a distinctive American educational ideal which has endured to the present time.”87
But the normal school has not endured. Normal schools either closed or became high
schools or colleges with normal departments. The original ideals of the normal school
evaporated as teacher education became a function of colleges and universities.

By bringing King upfront, the differences between school and college, and the
transformation that occurred, were illuminated. The twentieth century Michigan State
Normal College fit better into the comprehensive histories that have already been written.
What King’s life exposed was a different, earlier, version of the Normal School that has not
been studied extensively. The founders and leaders of the early Michigan State Normal
School had different goals and objectives than their later counterparts, and they had different
ideas about religion, gender, learning theories, and curriculum. All of this influenced the
lives of individual students and teachers as well as the institutional history of one of the
most respected and influential of the antebellum normal schools.

In the early years, Michigan State Normal School was a much more positive
institution, especially for women teachers, than the literature on later" normal schools would
suggest. King was extremely talented and accomplished, largely because of her normal
school education and employment. The normal school provided King with an education
and a career that nurtured her values and beliefs, and contributed to her professional
success. King’s life reveals that at the mid-nineteenth century normal school pedagogy was
on the cutting edge, curriculum was integrated and liberal for professional purposes,
women’s culture and professional opportunities were nurtured, and religious beliefs were
recognized as shaping images of a better society and teaching practice.

Many of the normal school founders considered their work as public servants an
enactment of their faith, and they took great pains to learn as much as they could about

 

"7 Cremin and Butts, 1953, p. 190.

37

N

In,

modern pedagogical theory and children’s nature. The founders of many normal schools
were, as Altenbaugh and Underwood describe, ministers and politicians, but this did not
preclude them from being thoughtful educators or dictate that they were “weak on
pedagogical theory.” On the contrary, principals of early normal schools studied
Pestalozzian and other contemporary educational theories and often published books about
their new methods of teaching.88

King’s life also demonstrates that as the Normal School became a college, it did not
become more effective at edueating women teachers or providing them with professional
opportunities. Women were, in the later years, held to the standards of the male college but
were involved in social activities that nrade them subordinate to men. Nor did the more
modern Normal College become more effective at teaching teachers disciplinary knowledge
or the pedagogy of school subjects. Pedagogy was cordoned off from acadenric subjects as
the Normal adopted college majors and electives. Finally, in the quest for truth at the
Normal College, religion was replaced with scientific authority.

Scholars have written about a shift, which took place around the turn of the last
century, from religion as a guiding force to religion as an object of study.” John P. Burris’
new study of religion at international exhibitions during the age of the university, reveals
this shift. His cultural study demonstrates how religion became a separate
endeavor—simply one concern among many. Through studying exhibitions such as the
World’s Fairs, Burris traces the emergence and development of religion as a field of
intellectual inquiry, rather than life’s guiding force."o Marsden notes that by the 1920s
“religion lost its primacy in both curriculum and epistemology and was left struggling for a
place within the increasingly objective university.”91

Other scholars have noted that the changes that took place around the turn ofthe
century influenced women and the wnstruction of gender. Between the 1890s and 19205
8" Isbell, 1970; Putnam, 1899; Loomis, 1932; Welch, 1862.

8" Eisenmann, 1999, p. 303.

9" Burris, 2002.
9’ Eisenmann, 1999, p. 301.

 

38

women had appropriated the language 0 “science” to assert their individual rights, but in
the process they unknowingly undermined their own collective power. Modenrity brought
both gains and losses eroding the female community that had flourished in Victorian
Ameriea."2 Lynn Gordon points out, it was not just the transition from normal school to
college that affected teacher education, it was also the social milieu in which graduates found
themselves in the twentieth century.93 Her work acknowledges that definitions of
masculinity and femininity were changing, but she does not emphasize the importance of
these progressive era changes at the normal school.

That changes in teacher education that occurred one hundred years ago had anything
to do with changing notions of gender or the ways the new university defined masculinity is
a topic which has not been widely explored. Goodlad notes that “the transition from
normal school to regional state university and from teaching to research together appear to
have contributed significantly to the insecure status of teacher education... Teacher
education was not so much pushed aside as it was overshadowed. It became one of several
competing functions rather than central.”94 Goodlad’s work demonstrates that there was a
change in status, but does not link teacher education’s new subordinate position to changing
gender roles and expectations or to changing ideas about faith and the role of Christianity in
higher education.

Christine Ogren’s pioneering research on gender in normal schools also
demonstrates how the changes that took place in normal schools as they became colleges
were not all for the best. Her investigation of coeducation at Wisconsin state normal
schools in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries suggests that the normal schools’
distinctive brand of coeducation fostered equity between the sexes that was lost as the

normal schools became colleges. Ogren asserts, “It is a fair question to ask whether

 

9’ Evans, 1989, p. 173.
9’ Gordon, 1990, p. 200.
9‘ Goodlad, 1990, p. 20

39

American education gained or lost when the lowly nornml schools advanced to collegiate
status?”
Ogren’s work builds on Geraldine’s Clifford’s claims about the effects of college

attendance on women. Clifford writes:

the weakening of the bonds of womanhood among educated women has been a major

consequence of college attendance. . .the values of science and professionalism undercut

the very culture and politieal climate that had given women strength to expand their lives

and to look critically at conventional assumptions about their basic personalities.

Women lost their old feminine supports but had no other supports to replace them.“
These scholars contradict generally accepted assumptions about higher education and claim
that women’s opportunities were limited, rather than expanded, as the nineteenth century
single purpose normal schools became multipurpose colleges.97 Even though the move
towards collegiate and then university status has generally been considered progress,
historians who study the experiences of women warn us that the supposed upgrades may
lmve had unintended gender effects.98

There appears to be a pervasive scholarly misunderstanding of what constituted the

normal school experience in its first half century of existence. The conventional perception
of the normal school movement is flawed because: 1) The research community still does not
value work about women, teaching, or gender; therefore, historians haven’t studied enough
female teachers, and, when they have studied men, they haven’t asked questions about
family, faith, or other feminized subjects. 2) An anti-Christian sentiment pervades
contemporary college faculties and research communities.” Scholars who choose to study
or advocate for women may be particularly uncomfortable with religious rcpics, as they may

view Chrisu'anity as sexist or narrow-minded. 3) Historians have focused on what

happened after the transition from school to college was well underway, rather than assess

 

’5 Ogren, 1995, p. 4.

9‘ Clifford, 1983, p. 12.

’7 Ogren, 1995.

9" Tyack and Hansot, 1988.

’9 See for example, Carter, 1994.

Nil

the early normal schools in terms of the original visions and initial examples. The important
time and place to study is the pre-college normal school of the 1800s.

Were we to undertake a revisionist interpretation by focusing on one school, the
Michigan State Normal School, and particularly one graduate and practitioner of that school,
Julia Anne King, we would not only be forced to rethink our generalizations about teacher
training in the second half of the nineteenth century, but we would also learn more about

Christianity, gender, pedagogy, and teacher professionalism in those times.

Designing King’s Lifework

The rhythms of King's life as a female student, teacher, public school administrator,
and teacher educator, were not shaped by presidential administrations, nor did her ideas and
commitments evolve chronologically, according to patterns of dominant thought or in
response to certain developments within the educational system. Instead, her basic ideas
about the purposes of schooling, why one teaches and how one thinks about one's work as a
teacher, were formed by the time she graduated from the normal school at twenty years old.
This is not to say that she did not develop or challenge herself to grow; on the contrary, she
understood that “we have a life work to do, and our happiness consists in doing and well
doing.”‘"" She spent the remaining sixty-one years of her life preparing both head and
heart and going forth to be a faithful laborer.”l She found for herself “the great social
need of the hour”‘°2 and toiled for good

I listened to King in an effort to understand the lessons and philosophies she
learned as a teacher education student, clung to or developed as a teacher and administrator,
and shared with others as a teacher educator. King’s beliefs about teaching, learning, and
learners; her orientations toward knowledge; her views about the “good” society; and her

understanding of gender roles and opportrurities for women, were all informed by her faith.

 

“’0 King, 1858.
1'” King, 1858.
”2 King, 1915.

41

She was not alone in her constant references to the Bible and Jesus’ teachings. When she
spoke to her students and colleagues she incorporated Biblical passages right into her
prose. She never bothered to cite the Biblical verse, chapter, or book she referenced; it was
as if she believed everyone would know what or whom she was quoting and how the
passage ended.

In chapter two I establish Christianity as the guiding force in King’s life and
describe how God’s Word informed her teaching practice and influenced her
conceptualizations of the teaching profession. The next two chapters develop out of the
religion chapter. If in chapter two I establish King as a Christian, in chapter three and four I
peel away more layers of her identity—in chapter three as a woman, and in chapter four as a
teacher and teacher educator. In each chapter I explore not only who King was but also
how the institution in which she studied and taught supported her beliefs. The Michigan
State Normal School’s connections to Christianity are explored in chapter two; the
experiences of women at the Michigan State Normal School, and their opportunities as
graduates, in chapter three; and the curriculum and instruction of teacher education, as well
as the on-going professional lives of early teachers and teacher educators, in chapter four.

Within each of these three thematic chapters I imagine concentric circles with King
in the middle—surrounded by the Michigan State Normal School and the larger society. In
each I mention the gradual transformation of the Michigan State Normal School to a
college. As the normal school beeame a college, the pursuit of God’s glory was abandoned
in favor of a new idol: science. Opportunities for women in college-based teacher education
declined, and liberal arts courses, which combined pedagogieal knowledge with disciplinary
knowledge, were discontinued, as teacher education became a separate department. The old
Normal School’s institutional strength and King’s personal strength are demonstrated by
her ability to adapt to the new collegiate environment even as the new institution began to

regard teachers with her perspectives as obsolete.

42

In chapter five, I reflect on how King’s life and the history of her normal school
might contribute to contemporary conversations about teacher professionalism and the
professional edueation of teachers. King was an integral and respected member of the
communities to which she belonged, and she was representative of her contemporaries who
chose to make teaching their lifework. She achieved a professional position of power not
accessible to women who chose to marry and have children, but she was neither unique nor
marginal. The combination of l)”new” pedagogy in an elite educational environment, 2)
the relative financial and intellectual independence that teaching offered women, and 3) the
opportunity to serve God and His children, made teaching and normal school attractive to
liberally-educated Christian women and led to a form of teacher professionalism which
embraced these ideals.

It is not appropriate to look at history and say “we should do it like they did one
hundred and fifiy years ago,” but we can learn from educational history by asking
questions that stories like King’s inspire as we also consider “improving” teacher
education and “professionalizing” teaching. For example, what role do faith, pedagogy, the
liberal arts, gender, and social action play in our current teacher education programs? What
forms of teacher professionalism do our programs promote? Are we still dealing with the
aftermath of the reforms in teacher education that took place at the turn of the last
millennium? How ean we, in the twenty-first century, improve our practice in light of new
historical understandings?

The structure of this study is related to both King’s life and mine. As I was trying
to hear a teacher’s voice, I was also trying to write a history that will effectively educate.
My experience as a history teacher suggests that education is the most meaningful when
students can organize information around themes they recognize in their own lives and build
on their own understandings and experiences. Just as I employ culturally relevant
pedagogym because I seek to empower students who have traditionally not been served

 

'"3 Ladson-Billings, 1994.

43

‘wo

well by schools, I write King’s biography because I seek to empower historians, who have
traditionally not considered female teachers’ lives viable venues for scholarly inquiry, and
teachers, who have traditionally not looked to educational research for inspiration. The
thematic structure should encourage historians and teachers alike to reflect on the ideologies
that inform their work and help them envision alternatives. I write for the same reasons I
teach: “to make power less mysterious and knowledge more accessible”‘°" for my

students, colleagues, and myself.

 

’"‘ Kerber, Kessler-Harris, and Sklar, 1995, p. 14.

44

Chapter 2

“The Beginning of Wisdom”:
Christianity as Life Work

“Religion, morality, and knowledge being necessary to good government and the
happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.”
Northwest Ordinance, 1787

“Her character has its source in God, and her hopeful,
healthful, benign influence abidetlr forever.” 2

Julia Anne King’s parents, Hiram (1794-1852) and Charlotte J. King (1806-
1898), came to Michigan from Vermont before she was born. They “cleared a place in
the forest, built a log house, and engaged in farming.”8 Growing up on the frontier, King
endured hardships and accepted responsibility early in her life. King remembered being
awakened one night by her mother’s anxious voice. The baby was sick, and since her
father had a broken leg, little Julia was the only one able to go down the dark forest road
for the doctor.” Reflecting on King’s childhood, her mother claimed that the little girl
with twinkling blue eyes and chestnut hair “had enough energy for two.”5 It was this
twinkle and this energy that pervaded her life work in adulthood.

Julia Anne King was raised in a Christian family. The King family has been
described as of Puritan stock.‘ They attended the London Township Methodist Church
located just out of the town of Milan on one of the plank roads that ran across
southeastern Michigan. During the 18408, in one-room schoolhouses on Michigan’s

 

’ King, 1858 (quoted from the Bible: Ps 111: 10: "The beginning of wisdom is the fear of
the Lord”)

2 This quotation was beneath King’s photo in the yearbook. Aurora, 1909, p. 30

3 Lord, 1954, p. 306.

4 Lord, 1954, p. 306.

’Aurora, 1893, p. 37.

‘ Putnam, 1899, p. 169.

45

frontier, young children like Julia Anne King recited Bible verses and learned a Christian
version of morality. As an adult, King worked as a public school teacher and teacher
educator, but she also worked at a Baptist College, taught Sunday school in evangelical
Protestant churches of various denominations in the towns where she taught school, and
attended the Baptist Church in Ypsilanti. She is buried, next to her parents and three
siblings who died as young children, in the graveyard adjacent to the small rural church
that now stands where her childhood house of worship was located. Julia Anne King was
a woman of many talents and titles, but first and foremost, she was a Christian.

In this chapter I establish what that meant to King. First, I analyze King’s 1858
essay titled “Life Work” which she wrote in her classmate Hattie A. Farrande’s notebook,
“Reminiscences of Normal Days and Normal Friends.” King had intimate knowledge of,
and made constant reference to, the Bible. She had membership in a community of
Christians who did not require scriptural references. For example, in her life work essay
King never explicitly mentions the Bible or particular verses, yet her prose is laced with
allusions and paraphrases of relevant scripture. I use this earliest surviving piece of
King’s scholarship as the basis for her beliefs when she graduated from the Michigan
State Normal School at twenty years of age. This eight page student paper, composed for
a girl friend, serves as a window into King’s beliefs and commitments.

In the beginning of this chapter, I analyze the content of the “life work” essay and
demonstrate its heavy reliance on the Bible as life’s instruction manual. Second, I move
beyond this essay into King’s other writings that concern faith. I discuss what the “body
of Christ” meant to her and to her conception of community. Third, I situate King’s
beliefs as typical of teachers and teacher educators in the mid-nineteenth century by
examining the beliefs of men and women who founded and taught at the Michigan State
Normal School and at Michigan’s other early schools. These “ministering angels”
believed God’s Word and Christian service were of utmost importance in all aspects of

life, including public school teaching and state~sponsored teacher education. Fourth, l

45

look “beyond Michigan” at the role of faith in teaching and teacher education in other
parts of the country and abroad. Finally I discuss the ways religion changed at the
Normal School as it became a college. Perhaps it was his Christian worldview that led

Professor Sill to label the transition to a college, during which faith lost out to science,

“an injurious manifestation of ambitious folly.” 7

Julia Anne King’s Life Work
King thought of Jesus as her Lord and Savior; she believed she was on this earth
to do God’s work. King taught that people needed to work in the world as part of the
expression of their faith, and that teaching was one way to participate in the working out
of the kingdom of heaven on earth. She wrote:
We have a life-work to do, and our happiness consists in doing and well doing...
Prepare both head and heart and then go forth and be faithful laborers, resting assured
that earnest faithful labor brings its reward—that though it comes not now, it is
somewhere in the shadowy future. . .8
The term lifework, used in this way, could be any vocation that a Christian feels called by
God to do and which can be done to glorify God. King assures her prospective teacher
colleagues that their labors will be rewarded, not with big salaries or fame, but in God’s
Kingdom to come.
When King graduated from the Michigan State Normal School in 1858 she was
clear about why she was going to work as a teacher and for whom she was working. She
saw teaching as ministry and encouraged her classmates to do the same. In King’s life

work essay, she helps us understand how she viewed her calling and how central the

Bible was to her thinking.

 

7 Sill, 1893, p. 273.
8 King, 1858.

47

The world is the field for working out glory, honor, and eternal life. So long as life is
the labor goes on—but labor for what? The meat which perishes?. .. Man is immortal
and should not work solely for the things which perish or take to themselves wings
and fly away.’

In this opening paragraph King paraphrases Jesus who said, “Labour not for the meat
which perisheth, but for that meat which endureth unto everlasting life, which the Son of
Man shall give unto you: for him hath God the father sealed” (Jn 6:27).’0 The Son of
Man was Jesus’ most common title for himself. Christians believe that through his
sacrifical death, Jesus gave those who believe in him an infinitely high quality of life in
living fellowship with God now and forever." Eternal life is not something to be
achieved but something to be received by faith in Christ.’2 King wove the teachings from
the New Testament together with an image from the Old Testament to demonstrate that it
is for God, not personal gain, that we should labor. In Proverbs 23:4-5 it says, “Labor not
to be rich. . . for riches certainly make themselves wings; they fly away as an eagle toward
heaven.” Altemately, labor for God’s glory and honor endures forever.

According to Hebrews 13:8, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, and to day, and
for ever.” In her life work essay King explains: “the mind centers on something that
endures—changeless forever—The end of life is not for ourselves but for him who paid
for us the ransom.”13 This is another Biblical allusion. Through death on the cross,
Christ paid the ransom price of his own life to free us from the slavery of sin. “The Son
of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for
many” (Mt 20:28; Mk 10:45), and “For there is one God, and one mediator between God
and men, the man Christ Jesus; who gave himself a ransom for all,” (lTi 2:5-6). The

 

9 King, 1858.

‘° The Holy Bible (King James Version). For Biblical quotations I have chosen to use the
King James Version (KJV), also known as the Authorized Version, because it is what
King would have read. For notes and interpretive material I depend on the New
International Version Study Bible (NIV).

" NIV, Jn 3:15

'2 NIV, Jn 6:27

‘3 King, 1858.

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Greek word ransom was most commonly used for the price to redeem a slave." King
believed Christ was her redeemer or savior, and that her work should reflect this faith.

While King draws wisdom from the Old Testament, she was clearly committed to
the new covenant where God’s laws become man’s inner principles and God and his
people have intimate fellowship. ‘5 Further into her life work essay, King states, “All men
can be good and work for good...if it be firmly written on the heart...greatness will
follow.”"’ This is taken from Hebrews 8:10 and Jer 31:33: “I will...write them [God’s
laws] in their hearts.” In contrast to carrying around laws on tablets of stone, laws
written on the heart govern one’s life.

King wished that all of her classmates had learned to submit to God and his
commandments. “We have been learning lessons that are to aid us in the contest. Some,
would that all had, have learned that great lesson which is the ‘beginning of wisdom.’”
The beginning of wisdom is the classic Old Testament statement concerning the religious
basis of what it means to be wise. For example, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of
wisdom: a good understanding have all they that do his commandments; his praise
endureth forever" (Psalm 111:10); “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and
the knowledge of the holy is understanding” (Proverbs 9: 10); and “The fear of the Lord is
the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and instruction” (Proverbs 1:7).
“Fear of God” is a convention phrase equivalent to “true religion.”" The theme of the
book of Proverbs is to have loving reverence for the Lord. Christians believe that God is

King but that even as we stand in awe of him, we can rejoice.l8

 

1‘ NIV, Mt 20:28
‘5 NIV, Heb 8:10
’6 King, 1858.
’7 NIV, Ge 20:11
‘8 NIV, Pr 1:7

49

Directly after King mentioned “the beginning of wisdom,” she said, “And we go
forth to commence the application?” King and her colleagues were leaving the Normal
School to begin the applied work of Christians. They would have to think about how
their own religious beliefs could be applied to teaching and learning in Michigan’s public
schools.

King looked to Mary Lyon, founder of Mount Holyoke Female Seminary, for

example and inspiration as she thought about her future life as a teacher.

Whose heart has not thrilled at the mention of the deeds which made up the life work
of Mary Lyon? She was a noble woman devoting time, talent, and all that she had to
the accomplishment of her work. Though she now stands among the redeemed around
the great white throne the world will reap the fruits of her labor for many harvests yet.
She toiled for good.20

Lyon stands among the redeemed because she was a Christian. The great white throne
depicts God ruling Heaven from his throne. For example, “And I saw a “great white
throne, and him that sat on it” (Rev 20:11). The fruits of Lyon’s labor include the
outstanding women’s college she founded and the many other female seminaries that
were fashioned using its example. However, in addition to the educational institutions
with which we associate her name, King credits her with “fruitful labor” which means the
spread of the gospel and the upbuilding of the church.21 For example, in Paul’s letter to
the Philippians, he says, “For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain. IfI am to go on
living in the body, this will mean fruitful labor for me” (Php 1:21-22). Fruits are also
mentioned in the book of Matthew: “Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather
grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?” (Mt 7: 16). Just as thorn bushes do not produce
grapes, bad people do not do good deeds. “By their fruits” was a passage King often

 

’9 King, 1858.
’0 King, 1858.
2' NIV, Php 1:22

50

quoted.” She believed that when judging one’s life, actions are what counts. King, like
Lyon, was a doer.

In her life work essay, King mentions only Mary Lyon by name, but she also
refers to the work of all different types of scientists: “those who have descended into the
earth and counted the strata on which we have builded our temples,” those who have
“gathered the mottled star-like agate filled with budding flowers and the shell pitted with
microscopic carvings,” and those who “have entered the chambers of the carboniferous
period and translated the wondrous hieroglyphics on their walls,” “astronomers,” and
“chemists.” She also mentions the work of poets who “poured out their souls.. .in the
subtle working of passion, the air flight of imagination or the slow steps of reason.” She
concludes that each of them has a work to do, and while “our life work need not be the
same,. . .our progress will be marked with deeds not words?” To King it was not
important what profession or endeavors one pursued, but rather that all inquiry and effort
be labor for God’s glory. '

King acknowledges that the Michigan State Normal School has been a haven for
the graduating students, and that men and women alike must venture out to work in the
world. To her classmates she wrote, “We have been at the Normal a band of brothers and
sisters. It has been a resting place. We felt secure in the shadow of its walls, but we
cannot always lurk among the hiding places while out in the open field are storms to
buffet and battles to fight?“ Men and women prepared to teach together, and King saw
them as equally well suited to do God’s will. “For whosoever shall do the will of God,
the same is my brother, and my sister, and mother” (Mk 3:35). Many of King’s
classmates and normal school professors were in this spiritual family for which

membership was evidenced by obedience to God.”

 

22 Goodrich, 1919.
’3 King, 1858.
“mmnws

25 NIV, Mk 3:35

51

‘trl

There is an urgency in King’s prose as she summons the future teachers to battle
for God. She quotes John 4:35 when she says, “Already the harvest is white.” She
doesn’t want them to put off choosing God. “Should we gird ourselves for the battle,
putting on the whole armour and fighting manfully?”" King asks. Her imagery is similar
to that in Ephesians 6:11: “Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand

against the wiles of the devil.” King continues by urging the new teachers to

Go out prepared to battle for the right, with the will within, the world without, the
seed in the hand, the dew and the rain to moisten the field, and God to give the
increase.”

God’s workers reap rewards but not immediate satisfaction or material wealth. Battling
for “the right” is synonymous with working for God. Having the “will within” is
delighting to do God’s will because his laws are within your heart.” The “world
without” is a reference not to the world of people, or the created world, but to the world,
or realm, of sin, which Christians believe is controlled by Satan and organized against
God and righteousness.” The rest of King’s cntreaty makes reference to 1 Corinthians
3:6-7 which states, “I have planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase. 80 then
neither is he that planteth any thing, neither he that watereth; but God that giveth the
increase.” The sower and the waterer do not make things grow; they are merely God’s
workers. Paul and Apollos shared the word of God, but it is God himself who brings
believers to him.30

King’s life work essay closes with a metaphorical portrayal of the joy she

anticipates they will experience as teachers—on earth and in Heaven.

Scatter the seed in the grey dawn, in the clear noon-day and the still twilight-mot
ceasing when adversity comes, but remembering that those who sow in tears shall

 

1° King, 1858.

2’ King, 1858.

2' NIV, Ps 40:8

” NIV, Lin 2: 15

3° NIV, 1Cor 3:6—7

52

reap in joy-and when our work is done, grant that it may be well done. Then shall
we return to our father’s house, and those who went forth weeping, bearing precious
seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing their sheaves with them, to
remain where there is fullness of joy forever.

The seed King wants them to scatter is the word of God." She knows there will be
hardships, but she also knows there will be a place for earnest workers in her father’s
house, or Heaven.32 Like much of the life work essay, this last paragraph is imbued with
Biblical allusion: “They that sow in tears shall reap in joy. He that goeth forth and
weepcth bearing precious seed, should doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his
sheaves with him” (Psalm 126:5-6). Even when sowing is accompanied by trouble or
sorrow, harvest brings joy.” Knowing that she was doing God’s work provided King
with the comfort, encouragement, fellowship, and compassion necessary to embark
confidently upon her teaching career.

Forty years later, she held the same principles. In a 1897 speech to the Student
Christian Association, she proclaimed: I

Christ served his time and left behind the same service for his followers. The
Christian work here and now is to serve the time as Christ would were he in your
stead... I think Christ’s first word to us would be, if the Divine Spirit be in you, the
principle of life, then daily work is religious, and in a very true sense a divine service.
No need to adjust relations between secular and spiritual matters where all is spiritual,
devotion and duty one, religion, goodness. Work, just common every day work, is
the nurse of spiritual life."4

King saw her daily work in schools as a religious calling and service to God. There was
no separation of church and state in the way she lived; everything was spiritual. King
called upon her students to take up this view of teaching. She drew from Galatians 6:7
which instructs, “for whatsoever 3 man soweth, that shall he also reap,” when she

implored her students:

 

3' KJV, Lk 8:11

32 NIV, In 14:2

33 NIV, P8 126:5'6
3’ King, 1897, p. 33.

53

J.

Fellow workers, with God there is no higher inspiration, to overcome ignorance,
prejudice, doubt, weakness, sin. ‘As you save so shall you be saved.’ . ..To raise,
reform, educate, to save men from the suspicions, vanities, enmities, jealousies—all
unrighteousness—which set him at variance with himself, his neighbor, and God, to
make the kingdom of peace, of joy, of order, of eternal truth real in the world-this is
your work.”

King had great expectations as she set out this monumental task for prospective teachers,
but, with her belief in God’s providence, this sort of labor was possible in classrooms.

The Body of Christ

Not only did King believe in the power of the example set by Jesus and his
disciples, but she was also committed to a society in which each individual sees himself
as a citizen in vital union with the community. Drawing from her religious beliefs, King

shaped her professional goals and scholarly agendas.

Spiritual life is not an isolated and solitary possession, but a citizenship in a spiritual
empire. The Christian is born into an immense company, a new race. But look at St.
Paul's figure. He sees the Christian not as one of a vast aggregate but as part of an
organic whole-the body of Christ and the members in particular. The figure is a
very strong one. There is need, never more than today, of a full, strong, masterful
organization.”

King’s understanding of what it meant to be a Christian included an inclusive view of
humanity and a desire to become an organized body—all God’s children working
together toward His will.

King’s view about the body of Christ and what Christian association should look
like are further elaborated in her 1897 address that was part of the dedication of
Starkweather Hall. After a report of the Building Committee, a response by the President
of the Student Christian Association, and a prayer of dedication, Professor Julia A. King
spoke on the subject “The Christian Association.” In opening she says:

The first Christian Association registered thirteen names—a leader and twelve
disciples. Simply organized with perhaps only two officers, no constitution or written

 

3’ King 1897, p. 3445.
3‘ Putnam, 1899, p. 247.

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creed, few regulations or by-laws, no equipment, the association began the realization
of a new idea, a new life. The outward manifestation of this new life was in no way
peculiar. The members of the association were inured to daily toil which still went
on. The association was bound together, one Lord, one spirit, one body. This
association, organized nearly twenty centuries ago, and still holding its place among
the evangelized agencies, will furnish us some suggestions helpful for the hour.”

The thirteen names were Jesus and the first group of men who followed him. Through
Jesus’ teaching they began to realize a new life; he taught them to worship one Lord, one
spirit, one body. King suggests that young people preparing to be teachers could benefit
from studying this first example of Christian community. In the Bible, the new testament
provides readers with stories and examples of how to live in relationship with others in
Jesus’ name.

King entreated her audience, “Look at St. Paul’s figure. He sees the Christian not
as one of a vast aggregate but as part of an organic whole— ‘the body of Christ and the
members in particular.’ That is a very strong figure. Read Rom. XII.”38 In the Biblical
chapter King instructs her audience to consult, it reads, “So we, being many, are one
body in Christ, and every one members of the other?” This image of Christ’s followers
being a body is further developed in Paul’s letter to the Corinthians:

For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one
body, being many, are one body: so also is Christ. For by one Spirit we are all
baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we bond or free;
and have been all made to drink into one Spirit. For the body is not one member but
many. Ifthe foot shall say, because I am not the hand, I am not of the body; is it
therefore not of the body? . .. And whether one member suffer, all the members

suffer with it; or one member is honored, all the members rejoice with it. Now ye are
the body of Christ and members in particular.‘0

 

’7 Putnam, 1899, p. 247.
3" King, 1897, p. 18

39 KJV, R0 12:5.
4oKJV, 1C0 12:12-27

55

This example illustrates the unity and diversity of the different spiritual gifts exercised by
God’s people, who are all members of the one body of Christ. As the human body must
have diversity to work effectively as a whole, so the members of Christ’s body have
diverse gifts. Each must effectively use his position for the good of the whole."1 When
the various parts of the body all work together, much can be accomplished. Indeed King
claimed, “individual effort is puny against combined effort.”42
King believed the world had too much individualism and that “he who serves the '

public wisely serves himself.”"3 This demonstrates how her view of what it meant to be a
Christian and what it meant to be a citizen in a democracy were inseparable. If you
worked for the good of the whole, the body of Christ, you also worked for the good of
yourself, not an isolated individual, but a citizen in a spiritual empire. In her
Baccalaureate Address to the Normal College class of 1915, King talked about “the
individual in vital union with society,” and she encouraged the graduates to “find for
yourself the great social need of the hour. To meet that need will be your greatest task,
its accomplishment your greatest achievement.” She also let them know that

Society needs a politics under which institutions and organizations for the well-being

of the whole may be safe. It needs a private citizenship that holds an even balance

between self and public . . . It needs such a system of corporate wealth as shall not

furnish the corporation millions to devote to private charities while the employees
suffer for the common necessities of life.“

In this 1915 address King was aware of the abuses of big business and of the negative
ways in which industrialism impacted families and communities. She advocated a

system that would prepare students for active participatory citizenship and for whatever

 

“ NIV, 1C0 12:12-14

‘2 King, 1897, p. 17.

‘3 This is the first of a collection of quotations attributed to Miss King in the program for
her Memorial Exercises, at the Alumni Meeting, Tuesday, June 24, 1919.

“ King, 1915.

56

-a

labors they chose. King’s goal was to have students develop a sense of themselves as
capable intellectuals, able to act independently and collectively as responsible citizens.

In 1900, the yearbook was dedicated to King. Her students wrote about how she
touched not only their minds, but also their souls:

Miss King has remembered, as some teachers have not always remembered, that thing
which is needed in dealing with students besides mere mental acumen and intellectual
vigor. The human soul knows and rejoices to know, but it does more than merely
know. The teacher should be able to lead the student beyond knowing alone; there is
need of feeling as well as knowing. Of this truth Miss King is fully aware; she leads
those whom she instructs in the paths of uprightness and righteousness, and keeps
constantly in mind that to lift up the soul above that which is merely temporal, is of
more value than to gain an abundance of the things which perish with the using.“

The authors who wrote this yearbook dedication to Miss King seem familiar with the
Psalms whose language they borrow from as liberally as their beloved teacher did. For
example, the dedication above draws from at least the following four Psalms: “He
leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake” (Psalm 23:3); “Unto thee, O
Lord, I do lift up my soul,” (Psalm 25:1); “Rejoice the soul of thy servant: for unto thee,
O Lord, do I lift up my soul” (Psalm 86:4); “Cause me to hear they loving kindness in the
morning; for in thee I do trust: cause me to know the way wherein I should walk; for I lift
up my soul unto thee.” (Psalm 143:8). The normal school students appreciated King’s
commitment to building and supporting their faith.

King quoted Florence Nightingale, one of the many women she admired, when
she told normal students and faculty colleagues,

To realize the kingdom within furnishes the principles of life. The Christian
Association is the organ of the school by which its religious life is realized; it is also
the organ of God through divine power and becomes a practical working factor in the
community. Among some of the conditions by which the inner life becomes an outer
force working among men, is unflinching honesty in dealing with known truth. If
every member of this association could at this moment begin to do what he himself
knows for truth, the kingdom of God would indeed appear among us and within us.
You need moral enthusiasm. Can this day with the beneficent and never to be

 

’5 Aurora, 1900.

57

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forgotten gift bring it? Can your prayers bring it? God grant that the hours be indeed
a Pentecost, and that you go in the strength of it for all days to come. Through you
may He see the travail of His soul and be glad; through you may there come a strong,
enthusiastic movement towards the Kingdom of Eternal Truth."6

This was a powerful call for young teachers to join forces and work towards “moral
enthusiasm.” King advocated a sense of self that predisposed one to be capable of
Christ’s work. Without this realization of the kingdom within she didn’t think people
could work for the community. Nowhere does she advocate being a passive teacher who
blindly follows the direction of others; instead, her Christianity requires a willingness to
be honest, self-reflective, interested in personal discovery, and willingness to share your
views. Joining the Christian Association King described would be a freeing act for many
teachers, giving them the personal sense of power to make sense of their lives and to
work meaningfully in the world. King reminded students “the lamp of devotion, burning
behind shut doors, cannot light the world.”"’ This is another Biblical reference; Jesus
said, “I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but
shall have the light of life,” and “Let your light shine before men, that they might see
your good works, and glorify your father which is in heaven.”48 Jesus and King both
encouraged their students to let their lights shine.

King found comfort and support as a student at the Normal, and she offered
students the same sort of fellowship as a professor later in her career. The class of 1902
presented a portrait of King as their class gift to the College. They thought it appropriate
that future students have her likeness hanging in their hall because,

There has never been a time when her duties as teacher have prevented her from
filling her place as friend. Her home, full of beauty, is open to those who will come.
Her life, rich in sympathy and kindness, goes out to those who know her, and
becomes an influence deep and lasting.‘9

 

“ Daniel Putnam, 1899, p. 247-8
‘7 King, 1897, p. 17.

’8 KJV, Jn 8:12 and Mt 5:16.

’9 Aurora, 1902..

58

King’s life work was driven by her belief that “one’s life among neighbors shapes the
world community.”50 The Normal School provided the neighbors with whom to begin
shaping this community.

As a Normal School professor, King attended the Ypsilanti Baptist church, was an
active member of the Sunday schools, and supported the Students’ Christian Association.
The state-sponsored normal college endorsed no particular religion, but King was
comfortable expressing her views about Christianity in intellectual forums. King also
preached about the importance of community and the need for fellowship, rather than
competition, among men. She was gravely concerned about the policies that could come
out of research on eugenics, and she counseled normal college students to consider the
ways they could contribute to children’s “social heredity,” rather than being overly
influenced by their biological traits.’l

In remembering King, Ernest Goodrich, her student, friend, and neighbor claimed,
“her motto was made the text of her Baccalaureate Address, ‘None of us liveth to himself
alone.’ Her life exemplified it. Her constant endeavor was to get her students to realize
this fact in thought and in act?”2 Paul’s letter to the Romans states, “For none of us
liveth to himself and no man dieth to himself. . .we are the Lord’s. Let us not therefore
judge one another.” ’3 Here the apostle Paul is talking about practicing righteousness
among the weak and the strong. The reference “us” is to Christians. We do not live to

please ourselves, but the Lord. Even in death, the important thing is one’s relationship to

 

solinen, 1919.

5' Goodrich, 1919; King, 1915.
‘2 Goodrich, 1919, p. 10.

’3 KJV, R0 14:7-8,l3.

59

the Lord. The message of the entire letter to the Romans—work out faith in the
world—is one that King embraced.“

King was remembered for her intense spiritual nature and for being a follower of
Jesus whom she called ‘the Greatest Teacher of all times.”’ She quoted Christ’s word’s,
“I am the Life” with the explanation that his life was one great service.’6 There were two
ways to translate the word life in ancient Greece: 1) bios: biological life, and 2) zoe: the

absolute fullness of life, both essential and ethical, which belongs to God, or life real and
genuine, a life active and vigorous, devoted to God, blessed,....’7 This second type, zoe,
is what is used in John 14:6, “1 am the way, the truth, and the life.” This is also the life
King refers to when she says, “My theme then is life, the common life whose purposes,
hopes, joys, sorrows, labors and disappointments we are all sharing?”8 Christians believe
Christ is life of a special sort; Jesus not only is life but conveys life to the believer. Jesus
teaches that he is the bread that is living and life giving.”

King’s 1919 memorial service ended with a solo called: “Thou wilt keep him in
perfect peace.” The title words to this hymn come directly out of the Bible: “Thou wilt
keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee.
Trust ye in the Lord for ever: for in the Lord Jehovah is everlasting strength” (Isaiah
26:34). This passage means that God will provide peace and strength to those who trust

Him. Through her trust in God, King was both peaceful and strong throughout her long

 

5‘ NIV, R0 14943.

5’ Goodrich, 1919, p. 10.

" Goodrich, 1919, p. 11.

’7 Bullinger, 1975, p. 453. see also Bauer, Arndt, and Danker, 2000
’8 King, 1915, p. 289.

’9 KJV, Jn 6:32-35.

life of service. Rather than feeling shackled or oppressed by school and society, King

was, as this memorial hymn teaches, “free indeed” through her faith in Jesus Christ.60

“Ministering Angels”: Michigan State Normal School and Christian Faith

As normal school student, and, later, normal school professor, King was both a
product and a creator of the Michigan State Normal School’s institutional religious
values. Most students at the mid-nineteenth century Normal School had family
backgrounds and religious beliefs similar to King’s. While there was never a particular
religion established at the Michigan State Normal School, it was taken for granted that
teachers would be religious people. A student was quoted as saying: “We have to tell
them [the faculty] . . . what church we attend while here for they say that they do not
want students who do not attend church.”"1

The Normal School building was completed, and the formal dedication exercises
took place on October 5, 1852. John D. Pierce, the first state Superintendent, spoke about
“A Perfect School System”:

What we need, and what we must have, is a perfect school system; not perfect in
degree, but perfect in kind; a system adapted in all its parts to the wants of a great and
flourishing republic,—and it is certainly a matter of just pride, that we have already
all the elements of such a system,-—a foundation of solid granite, laid in the
constitution, the fundamental law of the State....The system is comprehensive and
grand, and amply sufficient to reach every child in the State, and furnish him with all
the elements of a good education."2

Pierce was an advocate of normal education and mentioned in his remarks that teacher

training was, in his judgment, essential to the perfect educational system. His closing

 

6° Words to the memorial hymn are as follows: “Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace,
whose mind is stayed on Thee. Marvel not that I say unto you, you must be born again.
Though your sins as scarlet be, they shall be white as snow. If the Son shall set you free,
you shall be free indeed.” See http://www.breadsite.org/lyrics/622.htm

6’ Isbell, 1971, p. 320.

‘“ Putnam, 1899, p. 16.

61

311‘

'J’

statements demonstrate the ways non-sectarian Christian faith was woven into the fabric

of the original normal school.

To the guardians of this institution I would say, go on, then in the noble work; falter
not in the good cause; persevere, that teachers may be qualified to train up the young
spirits of our country to high and elevated sentiments, to form noble purposes; to act
on fair and honorable ground, leading them onward and upward to virtue and the full
enjoyment of the highest good, the To Kalon of the ancient Greeks; that ineffable
goo?3 which Christianity has fully revealed and promised to the pure in heart and in
life.

Pierce prizes nobility, honor, and virtue. Kalon is a Greek word that means morally good
or contributing to salvation.“ Pierce, like his 1852 audience, knew that a morally good
life, contributing to salvation has been fully revealed and promised by Christ. His hope
was that these newly trained teachers would inspire children to be upright Christians.
After the close of Mr. Pierce's address, others who spoke provided further
evidence of the ways in which the early founders believed the normal school would
contribute to a Christian nation. Young normal school graduates were to be schooled in,
and were then to school others in, democratic and Christian values. Hon. Isaac E. Crary,
President of the Board of Education, pronounced the formal dedication, clearly
demonstrating that, for the normal school founders, education, government and religion

were linked.

Now, therefore, in the presence of that Being who is a God of knowledge, and in
behalf of the Board of Education, I do dedicate this Building to the People of the
State of Michigan, to promote the great cause of man—the cause of God, and may
this dedication be not all in vain. May all those who shall hereafter have charge of
this Institution be endowed with the spirit of Wisdom, and may all who come up to
this high place of instruction be so imbued with that spirit as to become ministering
angels to the wants and necessities of humanity;—and may they thus continue
ministering and to minister to each successive generation until there shall not be one
solitary individual within our wide-extended borders who has not drank deeply of the
healing waters that shall gush forth from this high fountain. May the glory of the
Divine Image be ever present within these walls, not standing in a thick cloud as-in
Judah's temple of old, but gladly tabemacled in the hearts of every one who shall

 

‘3 Putnam, 1899, p. 16.
6‘ Bauer, Amdt, and Danker, 2000.

62

1.3-

come up here to teach, or be taught, until that time shall come when the lion and the
lamb shall lie down together and a little child shall lead them.“

Crary asked that God always be present in the Normal School. A “thick cloud” was the
visible symbol of God’s presence among his people.“ Rather than the earthly tabernacle
of the Old Testament, Crary wished for the students and the teachers of the Normal
School to experience the love of God, through Jesus Christ, in their hearts.”

The time when the lion and lamb lie down together refers to a future reign of Christ on
earth. This is referred to in Isaiah 11:6: “The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the
leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling
together; and a little child shall lead them.” Such conditions are a description of the
future consummation of the Messianic kingdom. This peaceful image of little children
playing with formerly ferocious animals symbolizes the fullness of life enjoyed in
complete security with Christ.“

D. Bethune Duffield, son of an influential Presbyterian pastor in Detroit and
member of the State Board of Education ( 1856), wrote a hymn for the dedication of the
Normal School in 1852.” Its content reveals the pre-eminent position God held in the
founding of the Normal School. Duffield’s hymn is a song of praise to God. He
composed lyrics about the teachers who will study at the Normal School as worshippers
and disciples who will share God’s spirit with the youth, and he asked God’s blessing on
the Normal School.”

Hon. Chauncey Joslin then delivered his commission of office to the Principal,
Mr. A. S. Welch. He spoke about how the Normal School was an experiment and its

potential influence on the development of our nation.

 

‘5 Putnam, 1899, p. 17.

”6 NIV, Ex 1:9.

‘7 NIV, Heb 9:11-15; 2 Co 5:1-5.
‘3 NIV, Is 11:6; Ez 34:25.

‘9 Putnam, 1399, p. 353, 15.

7° Putnam, 1899, p. 15-16.

63

It may savor somewhat of enthusiasm, yet in my humble judgment, this day's work
will form a prominent item in the history of western progress. This side the Empire
State it is the first experiment of a similar character made under the auspices of
legislative enactment. Who will venture to predict the influence which its success
will exert upon the educational interests of the entire Northwest."

Joslin continued his address of Welch by discussing the relationship between education
and religion and a good society. He advocated for teachers, like preachers and patriots
who are engaged in similarly important work, to be recognized for the importance of their
labor.

When a universal conviction that vice and ignorance are inseparable, shall disclose
the true position of the teacher, and elevate his profession to its true rank. 18 it not
precursory of the time when the preacher and the patriot shall regard the teacher as an
equal and indispensable auxiliary; when the evidence of such estimation shall be
visible everywhere—in the schoolhouse and the church exhibiting equally in their
structure the proofs of elegance and taste—both rising in such equal proportion
towards heaven that the last rays of the sun as he sets, shall gild alike the cupola of
the one and the spire of the other.72

The Normal School was not a partisan or sectarian effort; the institution was
“favored by all parties and all sects.”73 “Without giving political bias it shall teach the
rights and duties of an American citizen. So long as without the inculcation of doctrine
or dogma, it has for its foundation the truths of the Bible?“ The type of politics and
religion the Normal School founders wanted were those that embraced thoughtful
discourse, tolerance, and inclusion of all Christian denominations.

In Professor J. M. B. Sill’s Address to King’s graduating class of 1858, he talked
about those people who might undervalue the noble work of teachers and how Normal
School graduates should rise above their less honorable peers and look to God for their
rewards:

 

7’ Putnam, 1899, p. 18.
’1 Putnam, 1899, p. 18.
73Putnam, 1899, p. 18.
7‘ Putnam, 1899, p. 8.

If there are those who misunderstand our aims and misconstrue our motives, who,
judging our success in life by a standard mean, and alike dishonorable to themselves
and our common humanity, let us make stronger efforts, labor with more untiring
zeal, and see to it that the children of such come up to the estate of manhood with
nobler views of the highest good in life than their sordid sires. If we feel that fullness
of satisfaction which useful labor well-performed never fails to give; if we know that
we are lightening the great load of ignorance under which humanity has always
staggered, little care we for the applause of men; our reckoning is with God.”

Sill was not just concerned about those who criticize teaching from without, but he also
warns against those within the ranks of teachers who might not be suited to the “solemn
duties and obligations of our profession.” He talks about teaching as “guidance of the
deathless mind,” and he describes the mind as a “God-tuned harp whose harmony or
discord will vibrate through eternal years.” He says taking the important work of
teaching lightly is a sin, and he recommends that those who are not properly prepared for
the great task should seek better preparation or choose a new profession.

An essential part of what Sill considers preparation to teach is what he calls
“education of the heart.“5 He thinks that it is important for the Christian teacher to train
the moral as well as the intellectual nature of the young, and he advises the Normal
School graduates of 1858 to love God, take a broad view of Christianity, and stand firm
against “the powers of darkness.”

There are, in these fastidious times, parents who, under the flimsy plea of horror for
creeds and sectarian bias, deprecate all moral discipline, and exhibit an anxiety lest
the ears of their young should be assailed by the sound of God’s Word, or the voice of
prayer. Such, it is also to be remarked, generally seem to have a like fear of the
influence of purity of life and manners, and entertain a lurking dread of the pernicious
effects of a decent example. Yeild to no such sophistry. Take away cause of
reproach by avoiding in your instruction and conversation all appearance of a narrow
and degrading sectarianism. Plant your feet upon a foundation as broad as that every
man or woman who loves God may stand upon it, and then be unmoved, though all
the powers of darkness should be arrrayed against you. This you can easily do if you

 

’5 Sill, 1858, p. 375.
’6 Sill, 1858, p. 376.
'” Sill, 1858, p. 377.

65

lull

are right within, for the trarnmels of no sect, the lirrritts of no creed, can restrain the
far reaching good will of a heart which the love of Christ constraineth.78

This means either that we are compelled because Christ loves us or because we love
Christ. It is a quotation from 2 Corinthians 5:14: “For the love of Christ constraineth us;
because we thus judge, that if one died for all, then were all dead.” For those who by
faith become united with Christ, his death was their death to sin and self. They now live
in and with the resurrected Christ.”

Sill closes by acknowledging that while he has attempted to portray some of the
difficulties that will accompany teaching, he also wants to paint “the transcendent glories
of your high reward.” Sill says he is confident the graduates will “adorn the profession of
[their] choice,” offers them “the right hand of fellowship,” welcomes them “to a band
whom members are bound together by the ties of an dissoluble fraternity,” and asks that
“He who holds all destinies in his hands [God] grant that our common Alma Mater may
never have cause to blush for us.” Because he believes Christian faith is essential for
good teaching, it is not surprising that when he welcomes them into the profession, he also
welcomes them into a fellowship of Christian believers.”

In the prevailing spirit of the day, religion played an important role in campus life
from the beginning. Sarah Allen Patton, an early Preceptress at the Normal School, wrote

in her later years:

I went to Ypsilanti in the fall of 1855. . . . I found the Students’ Prayer Meeting one
of the institutions of the school, and so far as I know, its beginning was
contemporaneous with that of the School. It seemed to fit into its place and be so
thoroughly alive and efficient to meet as real a want as the recitation hours, the
Lyceum, or anything else that was an essential to the life of the school.“

Ruth Hoppin, Preceptress a few years later, wrote in a similar vein:

 

’8 Sill, 1858, p. 377-378.
7’ NIV, 2Cor 5:14.

'° Sill, 1858. p. 381.

8‘ Isbell, 1971, p. 324.

It was a joy to see all those noble young people so seriously in earnest in the great
work to which they were called, and I was sure that when the schools of the State
should go into such hands our educational interests would be safe. Very few of the
teachers attended [the prayer meeting] in those days, but no evening passed that did
not bring noble President Mayhew [1865-1870] into our midst.

The Preceptress was an advisor to the women students, a teaching faculty member, and
an active participant in campus activities. Although evening prayers were not part of the
formal curriculum, Ms. Hoppin’s comments expose the potential influence she had on the
students as they met each evening for fellowship. Principal Estabrook (1871-1879), at
the request of the students, took charge of the weekly religious meeting. A member of the
faculty at the time, Mrs. Mary L. Rice Fairbanks, later wrote:

He was a grand leader and had the rare power of securing expression from others.
There was a spiritual baptism, decisions were made that have molded lives. That old
chapel was a sacred place in which were formed some of memory’s best pictures. A
crowd of young people in the benches, the leader standing in front of the desk, what
expostulations fell from his lips, what songs, what prayers, what confessions, what
resolves responded !83

Clearly, Estabrook was a religious man, but he was also a principal who believed it was
part of his professional duty to preach and minister to students.

Later in the century, Wednesday evening prayer meetings were held in a room on
the second floor of the conservatory building. A student of 1890 made the following

appraisal of a prayer meeting:

He feels better for having gone than he would if he had stayed at home. He
accomplishes more in the two hours that are left than he would in four if he had not
gone. There is something in a prayer meeting composed of students, all of whom are
young, energetic, active workers, that inspires one. Whether a person takes part or
not, there is something in the genuineness of the enthusiasm that wakes one up. Of all
the influences with which I was thrown in contact during the first year of my student
life at Normal, none were so potent for the time being, or so lasting in its effects, as
that exercised by the Students’ Christian Association.“

 

8’ Isbell, 1971, p. 324.
'3 Isbell, 1971, p. 325.
1”Isbell, 1971, p. 325.

67

This student was more captivated by the prayer meeting than by his classes. He claims
he remembers more, and the lessons he remembers were more important, than in any
other part of his life at the Normal School. Normal students were familiar with the Bible
and held fast to its teachings when thinking about their future work. In an essay included
in the yearbook a graduate describes the advantages of being at the normal school and the
related responsibility this holds. “The Class of ‘93 feel the value of the advantages that
have been theirs... We feel that as much as given, so will much be required.” This is a
Biblical reference: “For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much
required.”ms
In 1891, the Students’ Christian Association had to relinquish their room and

became active in raising money for a building of their own. Mrs. Mary Ann
Starkweather, a wealthy and public-spirited citizen of Ypsilanti, generously donated
$10,000; the State Board of Education provided the site; the Association, to enable it to
own the property, became incorporated; and on March 26, 1897, Starkweather Hall was
dedicated with pomp and ceremony. In his presentation, the building committee
chairman, Professor Daniel Putnam, said:

While the State is wisely prohibited from making direct provision for religious

education and culture, it can well afford to permit and to encourage private

individuals to furnish means and facilities for such education at their own expense.

Indeed, by doing so the State is only fulfilling the obligation imposed upon it by the

provision of the famous ordinance of 1787 . . . that ‘Religion, morality, and

knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind,
schools and the means of education shall be forever encouraged.”’7

 

'5 Aurora,1893, p. 21.
as KJV, Lk 12:48
'7 Isbell, 1971, p. 325-326.

68

‘v-so

~¢«

Faculty members were supportive of students who wanted to continue their religious
education and it was expected that one would draw from her religious commitments and
understandings when serving the state and her children.

Faculty members made decisions based upon their own religious beliefs and
appealed to those of the citizenry as they lobbied for new programs at the Normal School.
In 1860, Principal Welch made a case for why physical education should be included in
the new curriculum: “We owe it to our children, to the cause of popular education, and
the humane spirit of our Christian civilization to remedy this too long neglected defect in
our educational institutions?” Welch was convinced that students would be healthier
and therefore more capable learners if they were physically fit. He believed that if the
hundred or so teachers which were educated at the normal each year “were thoroughly
trained in the art of physical education, they in turn would ‘diffuse the art’ to all of the
teachers in the state?” For the good of children, popular education, and Christianity,
Normal School graduates would share their ideas and innovative training with their
colleagues and the good news would eventually reach all the children of the state.

At this time in history, it was assumed by most of the educational establishment in
Michigan that public schools were, in fact, de facto Protestant schools. In an 1854
discussion of religion in the schools at the meeting of the State Teachers’ Association,
Professor Welch, President of the Normal School, insisted that the moral nature needed
development and culture as much as the intellectual. “Never attempt the absurdity of
sending the intellect of a child to school and keeping his moral sense at home; and above
all, never commit his instruction to a teacher whose prayers you are afraid he will hear...
I have yet to learn that there is anything in the constitution of the State which forbids

instruction in those religious principles upon which, most assuredly, its government is

 

”Isbell, 1971, p. 91.
‘9 Isbell, 1971, p. 92.

69

If}.
1

"11) ‘l 1'”

"1

founded?”o In 1859, another extended discussion of the same topic occurred. Professor
Gregory said, “ No danger threatens the common school system so much as that of not

being able to retain there sufficient moral influence to render them safe resorts for our

children.” The Association finally adopted the following resolution:

That we believe the education of the moral faculties to be one of the fundamental

principles of instruction—that upon this education rests the happiness and prosperity
of the State; and we recommend the daily reading of the Bible in our public schools.”

Joseph Estabrook, son of a pastor in Concord, Massachusetts, graduated from
Oberlin in 1847, taught school for several years, and, from 1853-1866, was principal in
Ypsilanti. During his tenure there he was elected President of the State Teachers’
Association in 1855.”2 In 1869, Estabrook, then of Saginaw, read a paper strongly
advocating the use of the Bible in the public schools to the annual meeting of the State
Teachers’ Association. This prompted a vigorous and protracted discussion during which
the sentiment of the Association, as a whole, was found to be strongly adverse to the
exclusion of the Bible from our schools by any legal enactments?”3 This resolution
following was passed with almost entire unanimity: “That we believe the Bible should
not be excluded from our public schools and that such exclusion would not, in our
opinion, render them more acceptable to any class of our citizens?"

Involvement in this association seems to have been a training ground for future
educational eminence, and in 1871 Reverend Estabrook assumed the Principalship of the

Normal School.” During the Spring term of 1876, members of the Lyceum”5 and

 

9° Putnam, 1876, p. 61.

9‘ Putnam, 1876, p. 62.

92 Putnam, 1876, p. 12.

’3 Putnam, 1876, p. 26.

9’ Putnam, 1876, p. 62-63; Putnam, 1899, p. 225.

9‘ Putnam, 1899, p. 145-48.

9‘ The Lyceum was the only student organization for many years. It was an intellectual
forum where students shared ideas and debated topics of political and professional
concern. More on Lyceum in chapters 3 and 4.

70

|‘

numerous faculty members at the Normal School debated a similar resolution: “That the
Bible should be retained in the public schools.” This resolution sparked animated and
lengthy debate, but was finally adopted by a vote of 110 to 27.97 While there was
discussion and debate, the majority of Michigan’s educational leaders and normal school
students and professors supported Bible reading in the state-sponsored public schools
well into the late-nineteenth century.

Julia Anne King’s beliefs about how Christianity can inform and inspire public
school teaching and educational leadership were not out of the ordinary in nineteenth
century Michigan. Leadership of the public school system was tightly coupled with
Christianity, and those evangelical Christian leaders were also connected with and
supporters of the Michigan State Normal School where King studied and taught. For
example, several of the most influential of Michigan’s early Superintendents of Public
Instruction were ordained ministers. John D. Pierce, first Superintendent of Public
Instruction (1836-41) was “cornissioned by the Home Mission Society to settle as a
missionary in Michigan” in 1831. He labored in Marshall as a missionary until 1836
when he was appointed to the Superintendency. In 1842 he “resumed his work of the
Christian ministry, and continued it until he was elected to the State Legislature in 1847.
From the 18508 to his death in 1882 Pierce lived in Ypsilanti and was “engaged in the
ministry?“ Oliver Cromwell Comstock, the third Superintendent (1843-45), practiced
medicine, was a judge, served in the House of Representatives of the United States
Congress, and was an ordained Baptist minister. He came to Michigan as a pastor. “His
educational reports are filled with practical and fruitful suggestions, bearing the impress
of the statesman and the Christian.”9 John M. Gregory, sixth Superintendent (1859-65),
“relinquished his plan of pursuing a legal profession, and entered upon the Christian

 

’7 Putnam, 1899, p. 224.
9‘ Putnam, 1899, p. 330-331.
9’ Putnam, 1899, p. 332.

71

ministry, his denominational relations being with the Baptist church....His labors in the
school room, in teachers’ associations, in the pulpit, and before Sunday schools, soon
gave him a conspicuous place among the friends of education in Michigan.”100 Oramel
Hosford, seventh Superintendent (1865-72), attended Oberlin’s Theological Seminary
and was an ordained Congregational minister. A friend said of him, “We thank God for
his life and work. His name will abide. It will shine in the galaxy of those who have
consecrated their lives to Christian learning.”‘°' Theodore Nelson, thirteenth
Superintendent (1885-86), went to Hillsdale and Kalamazoo Colleges and was ordained
as a Baptist minister. He helped found Alma College and served as president of
Kalamazoo College, “but his love of the pulpit soon led him to accept a call to
Saginaw.”102 Horace Tarbell, tenth Superintendent (1877-78), was not a minister himself,
but he followed in the missionary footsteps of his father, a Methodist Episcopal minister
in Vermont, when he led “the first successful attempt at a regularly organized prison
SChool.”"” Superintendent Henry Pattengill, (1893-96) was the son of a Baptist pastor. ‘°’
The influence of Christianity in the schools of Michigan was not limited to the
common schools or the Superintendent of Public Instruction. The University of
MiChi gan also had a reputation as a Christian university. It was understood that its
Prevailing sentiment was favorable to revealed religion, possibly because of the Christian
piety of James Burrill Angel, President from 1871-1909.105 At his inauguration Angel]
interpreted “religion” to mean explicitly Christianity, announcing that “the Christian
spirit, which pervades the law, the customs, and the life of the State shall shape and color

the life of the University, that a lofty, earnest, but catholic and unsectarian Christian tone

\

100

m Putnam, 1899, p. 335.

m Putnam, 1899, p. 337-338.

“B Putnam, 1899, p. 345.

104 am, 1899, p. 339.

m Pumam, 1899, p. 347.
Marsden, 1994, p. 167.

72

shall characterize the culture which is here imparted?“ Angell’s outspoken devotion to
faith in the academy was questioned and the separation of church and state debated, but
during his Presidency, which coincided with King’s tenure at the Normal School,
Protestantism prevailed.

Beyond Michigan

The nineteenth-century Michigan State Normal School was a state-sponsored
normal school, but it was characterized by the values and mores of its Christian founders
and preached a non-sectarian Protestantism. This Christian heritage was an essential part
of the early normal school movement in the United States and abroad. The Prussian
normal schools that so impressed Victor Cousin,”7 and many American educators, were
all religious schools. In the mid 18008, New England states were disestablishing religion,
and Michigan did not have an established religion, but this did not mean her founders
were not religious. On the contrary, it meant they tried to include all denominations of
Christianity.

Isaac Crary, one of the first members of the Michigan Board of Education, made a
study of Cousin’s report on the Prussian system of education, and was influenced by that
report when helping form the state’s early educational system. '°° M. Victor Cousin
(1792-1867), Director the restored Higher Normal School of France, was sent on a
mission to the German states to study and report on the system of elementary education,
teacher training, and educational organization and administration.”9 Cousin wrote
glowingly of the Prussian school system. Given the European system of established
churches, Pmssia’s teacher seminaries were under the sponsorship of either the Protestant
or Catholic church, or they were jointly administered. Cousin quoted from a director’s

 

’°‘ Marsden, 1994, p. 168.

"’7 Cubberiey,1934, p. 307-9.
'°' Putnam, 1899, p. 351.

’°’ Cubberley, 1920, p. 597.

report “Religious instruction is placed at the head of all other parts of education; its
object is to implant in the seminaries such a moral and religious spirit as ought to pervade
the popular schools. ”’ ‘° Cousin was highly impressed by the moral and spiritual tone of
the rural seminaries. Even when the institution was small and academics substandard,
there was an admirable commitment to serving fellow men and toiling as Christians. The
regulations for one of the Prussian seminaries read: This school is intended to be a
Christian school (emphasis in original), founded in the spirit of the Gospel. It aspires
only to resemble a village household of the simplest kind, and to unite all its members
into one family.”"’ Cousin’s Report on the Condition of Public Instruction in Germany,
and Particularly in Prussia, was published in Paris in 1&1, in London in 1&4, and in
New York City, 1&5."2 This, in combination with Calvin Stowe’s Report on
Elementary Education in Europe, in 1&7; and Alexander D. Bache’s Report on
Education in Europe, in 1&8, with their strong recommendations of the German teacher-
training system, awakened interest in the United States in teacher education.“3 A bit
later, even Michigan State Normal School Principal Welch had the opportrmity to visit
normal schools on the European continent.”

In Prussia, Karl von Altenstein was theofficial responsible for education in the
cabinet of Friedrich Wilhelm 111. He endorsed the progressivism of Postalon
pedagogy as a manifestation of Christian love. Altenstein and his colleagues in the
ministry insisted on the teaching of religion and the practice of daily prayer and worship
in school. Altenstein notified all provincial school offices to stress “the basis of all true

education: piety, fear of God, and Christian humility.”“s

 

“° Herbst, 1989, p. 36.

111 Herbst, 1989, p. 38.

112 Cubberley, 1920, p. 597.

"3 Cubberley, 1920, p. 751-752.

"‘ Annual Report of the Superintendent of Public Instructoon of the State of Michigan,
1859, p. 122.

“5 Herbst, 1989, p. 40-44.

74

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In Massachusetts, normal schools were also charged with making sure that
teachers in the district schools knew what they were going to teach: subjects of study and
“the principles of piety and morality common to all sects of Christians?“ The
Massachusetts Board of Education prescribed the Bible as a daily text for all normal
school students. The Bible, the board emphasized, gave students “the whole scheme of
Christianity-the rule of life and the means of salvation,” not some peculiar tenets of
sectarian religion. The board took it for granted that Protestant Christianity was the
common creed of Massachusetts’ citizens.”

Just like the Michigan State Normal School’s opening dedication, the opening
ceremonies for the Kansas State Normal School in Emporia in 1865 were decidedly
Christian. They were presided over by the Reverend Mr. Grosvenor C. Morse, Secretary
of the Board of Directors. Like many of the Michigan schoolmen, Morse was a minister
educated in New England; he was a graduate of Dartmouth College and the Andover
Theological Seminary as well as an agent of the American Home Missionary Society.
The parable of the sower” was read and everyone recited the Lord’s Prayer. Three years
later the board affirmed their belief in the importance of Christianity in normal education
when it resolved that it was “the duty of the faculty to impress upon the minds of the
students the fundamental principals of the Christian religion.”"’

The consensus behind the creation of public education in the nineteenth century
was based in a large part on a belief system that has been called Protestant republican
ideology. The Protestant clergy identified the Kingdom of God with the American
Republic; and the Protestant ideology thereupon attached itself to American nationalism.
Just as Protestants located potential salvation in the individual's relationship with God,

 

"6 Herbst, 1989, p. 62.
“7 Herbst, 1989, p. 63.
"3 KJV, Mt 13:3-23

"9 Herbst, 1989, p. 119.

75

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most school reformers saw good citizenship as an outgrowth of individual
righteousness. m

A tremendous wave of reform movements swept the nation between 1820 and
1850. The Second Great Awakening was a religious movement that embodied a more
personal and evangelical religion than the severe inaccessible God of colonial times. The
more p0pular new denominations, like the Baptists and the Methodists, gained many
converts and challenged the entrenched forces of the established orders like the
pmitanical Anglicansm “While older theological systems had insisted that life in this
world was sirnply a preparation for life in the next, humanitarian optimism saw man
fulfilling his destiny in the here and now.”122 Thus the way was open for social reforms
that could be accomplished in a lifetime on earth.

The Second Great Awakening spread west as communities sprrmg up across the
prairies. One of the groups with the clearest mandate to found common schools was the
corps of home missionaries sent West to the new territories by groups like the American
Home Missionary Society. “3 Teaching was often seen as a calling similar to the
ministry, and in teachers' institutes superintendents were sometimes as interested in the
religious conversion of teachers as in evangelizing for schooling.“ Biographies of
nineteenth century school leaders did not dwell on educational background or
professional training; instead, they reflected an aristocracy of character, leaders’ worth

was certified by church membership and social service.125

Public schools of the mid-nineteenth century were the product of an institution-
building social movement led by men and women who shared a similar ideology and
interests and who helped to build a common school system by persuading and
mobilizing their fellow citizens, mostly at the local level. In many respects the

 

m Tyack and Hansot, 1982, p. 21.

”‘ Cremin, 1951, p. 13-15.

”2 Cremin, 1951, p. 17.

m Tyack and Hansot, 1982, p. 38-39.
m T yack and Hansot,1982, p. 16.

“5 Tyack and Hansot,l982, p. 16.

76

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common school movement resembled the institution-building crusade that dotted the
land with Plotestant churches. Schools and churches were institutions designed to
produce a homogeneous moral and civic order and a providential prosperity.“

In the middle of the nineteenth century schools and churches were allies in the quest to
create the Kingdom of God in America. “Missionaries attempted to provide a Protestant
paideia for settlers on the frontier: a total education through the common school, sectarian
academies and colleges, Sunday schools, the pulpit, religious reading, and a number of '
formal and informal associations.” 127 Julia Anne King’s faith was nurtured and
developed in the churches and schools Tyack describes, including the Michigan State
Normal School. I

“An Iry’wious Manifestation of Ambitious Four“: The Transformation fimn Normal
W ‘0 Normal Cm

In 1899, at the end of the Michigan State Normal School’s first half century, it
entered a new era; it became the Normal College. With the name change came a
transformation—curricular revisions, administrative restructuring, and changes in both
the character and size of the faculty and the student body. The move to become a college
was generally viewed as an improvement or upgrading of teacher education, but as the
Normal moved away from the public elementary and secondary schools and toward the
university, some things were lost.

The early Normal School was a Christian institution. But the Normal School,
founded by ministers and statesmen who believed that it was their duty to educate all
children and to commit public flmds for the purpose of training common school teachers,
shifted its ideology. Early Normal School-educated teachers were often more
missionaries than professionals. Only gradually was this evangelical frame of mind
replaced by a contrasting ideology of teaching as a lifelong professional career that drew

 

‘3‘ Tyack and Hansot, 1982, p. 19.
”7 Tyack, 1966, pp. 448 and 453.
I” Sill, 1893, p. 273.

upon science and expertise and took place in large bureaucratic institutions.129 By the end
of the century, the emphasis on evangelical religion and community-building in the new
republic had given way to an emphasis on science and management in an emerging
industrial power.

Emphasis in the new Normal College, with its gaze toward the university, rather
than the common school, was on the scientific, not the theological or metaphysical.
University researchers valued secular ways of understanding and organizing society, and,
as the Normal School became a college, its purposes became more like those at the
university. Education departments at universities were interested in public schools as
markets for clients or laboratories for research. The emphasis was not on serving the
common schools, as the normal school had, but on molding them according to new
theories of scientific management. m Minister principals were replaced with scientists of
education, and academic employment was increasingly seen as corresponding to the
situation in the larger employment world.m Instead of preparation for a religiously
inspired vocation, normal education became secular job training.

The move away from explicitly Christian religious values was also seen in the
common schools. For example, in 1837 William McGuffey, an ordained Presbyterian
college educator, producesd the first edition of his now famous Readers. They spoke of
God’s creation and Providence, the sinfulness of humans, the primacy of salvation
through Christ for the next life, and the necessity of righteousness and piety in this life.
By 1879, when McGuffey no longer controlled the content of his books, all the earlier
emphasis on Christian salvation and piety had disappeared. Stories now emphasized the
rugged Victorian virtues of hard work and self-denial as keys to success. 0f biblical

 

“9 Tyack, 1989, p 417.
‘” Clifford, 1986.
'3‘ Clifford, 1983, p. 9.

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selections only the Sermon on the Mount and the Protestant version of the Lord’s Prayer
remained.132

The shift in focus at the normal school also paralleled developments at the
University of Michigan and other up-coming research universities. Julie A. Reuben notes
in her book on eight elite universities, that, in the nineteenth century, “intellectuals
assumed that truth had spiritual , moral, and cognitive dimensions,” but that by the early
twentieth century, they abandoned this broad conception and embraced a view of
knowledge that drew a sharp distinction between “facts” and “values.”133 The old “rarity
of truth, encompassing both knowledge and morality, included a set curriculum which
culminated in a senior year course in moral philosophy. The Michigan State Normal
School fit this mold; in King’s day, the capstone course, taught by the Principal, was
called Intellectual Philosophy and was paired with a set of lectures on the philosophy of
education.134 These courses embraced a view of knowledge that held Christian religion
and scientific inquiry as compatible, but the new curriculum and instruction at the
Normal School (which will be discussed in greater detail in chapter four), mirrored the
reforms at the universities. Specialization, rather than intellectual synthesis, was
encouraged. ‘35

King used her old supports to sustain her and help her negotiate the new
institutional culture. The ideologies that were no longer valued had prepared her so that,
at the height of her career, she could adapt her practice and promote her commitments,
even in the new social order that the college had created. Even though the institution

changed around her, King still had academic freedom behind her classroom door, and she

 

”2 Marsden, 1994, p. 89-90.

‘33 Reuben, 1996, p. 2. Reuben studied Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Johns Hopkins,
University of Chicago, Stanford, University of Michigan, and University of California,
Berkeley.

‘3‘ Putnam, 1899, p. 49.

"5 Reuben, 1996, p. 3.

was relatively free to teach and conduct her professional life as she always had. While
King survived the first phase of a transformation, the young female teachers who came to
study in Ypsilanti in the twentieth century would have more challenges and less
foundation.

In the late 1950s, the Normal College changed its name to Eastern Michigan
University, and, at least in name, it was officially the multipurpose university it had been
struggling to become for half a century. Eastern Michigan University still educates a
huge number of teachers every year, but it is no longer solely devoted to this purpose, nor
does it enjoy the position it once held as the crowning glory of Michigan’s public
schools. There are student organizations organized around particular religious faiths, but
a Christian faith system is no longer the authority when it comes to questions about
teaching and learning. King’s life makes one wonder if the teacher education one receives
there, or at other similar institutions, today is better or worse than what King encountered
one hundred and forty eight years ago, and on what basis we should judge the quality of
teacher education. In the following chapters I explore how-when Christianity slowly
slipped from its revered position, and religion lost at the Normal School—women,
pedagogy, and powerful teacher education suffered too.

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Chapter 3
“Neither Male Nor Female”:
Rethinking Gender

“You will never, I trust, be among the number of those who
render themselves ridiculous by clamouring for rights.”2
Abigail Rogers, 1853

“Give her the fruit of her hands; and let her own works praise her in the gates”3
Proverbs 31:3 1

King’s conceptions of gender and beliefs about women’s roles were based in her
Christian faith. In the previous chapter, I established that King’s faith in Christ permeated
her whole life. In this chaper focus specifically on what King believed about gender and
how she viewed her various leadership roles. I introduce this chapter by looking at King’s
Biblically based assumptions about gender equality and by exploring the Christian concept
of achieving freedom through servanthood. I then look at several of the roles King occupied,
and what her position, and how she and others thought about it, can teach us about the social
construction of gender in nineteenth century teaching and teacher education. In particular, I
draw from her work as Superintendent of the Charlotte Public Schools, Preceptress at the
Michigan State Normal School, President of the Ladies Literary Society of Ypsilanti,
History Department Chair at the Normal School, and the domestic roles she occupied as
daughter, sister, and aunt. King served in ways that demonstrated her belief that women’s
intellectual and professional capacities were equal to men’s, and that women, like men, had a
responsibility to be a positive influence on the world. While King’s stance often challenged
social norms, it was most often rooted in Christian faith rather than an effort to gain political

power or pcrsOnal prestige.

 

' King, 1897, p. 8 (reference to Galatians 3:28)

2 Rogers, 1853, p. 146. (Rogers was the first Preceptress at the Michigan State Normal

School). ‘

3 Proverbs 31: 31 “Give her the fruit of her hands; and let her own works praise her in the
.” This scripture regarding women of faith was quoted in a newspaper article about

King (The Charlotte Republican, 1877).

81

As in the previous chapter, secondly, I move beyond King and look more broadly at
how gender was enacted at the Michigan State Normal School during King’s lifetime.
Specifically, I concentrate on the development of the coeducational Lyceum, the first student
organization, and the words of Abigail Rogers, the first Preceptress. Following that, I
further expand my field of inquiry and look beyond the Normal School. Understanding
that the orientations toward gender that existed, and the issues regarding women that were
being debated, at other institutions in the mid-nineteenth century could help us make sense
of King and the Michigan State Normal School, I focus on brief gender stories from
institutions that were connected, in someway, to King and/or the Normal School. In this
context, King’s approach and attitudes match many mid-nineteenth century Christian social
reformers, leaders of female seminaries, and the first generation of professors at women’s
colleges. Additionally, King had many like-minded colleagues at Kalamazoo College, and
she would have felt at home at Oberlin College, where many of her colleagues studied or
taught. Men and women who shared her beliefs and commitments also surrounded King as
a member of the mid-nineteenth century Michigan State Teacher’s Association. Some of
her contemporaries from this organization rallied for the admission of women to the
University of Michigan; however, even after women were admitted to the University of
Michigan, there was a different, less religious, construction of gender there. As the
nineteenth century closed, a university mentality, accompanied by new ideas about
masculinity and femininity, also began to emerge at the Michigan State Normal School. I
conclude this chapter by looking at the unintentional and negative gender effects of the
Michigan State Normal School becoming a college.

We are One in the Spirit

In King’s 1897 address to the Student Christian Association, at the dedication of
Starkweather Hall, she described Christ’s church: “In vision, it was an Empire wherein
dwelt righteousness and peace, wherein were neither male nor female, bond nor free, Greek

82

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an.

nor barbarian, but one universal brotherhood.”4 King paraphrased from Galatians 3:26-28:
“For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as have
been baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is
neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.”
Unity in Christ transcends ethnic, social, and sexual distinctions.’ We are all baptized by
one Spirit, into one body of Christian believers, and we are all on the same footing as far as
salvation is concerned.6 King was empowered to pursue a life of service equivalent to that
of any man. She knew no gender boundaries when it came to loving God and doing

his will.

In talking about her desires for the growth and potential influence of the Normal
School’s Student Christian Association, King says, “Animate this association with such
power, let such divine life, as the vital flame in our bodies, become immanent in it, and
nothing could stay the mighty moving of men and women, mastered by these invisible
influences, towards God.” Both men and women are in on this mighty movement she
envisions. God does not have a subordinate or separate sphere to which women must be
confined. In fact, if King’s dreams for the Normal School were to come to pass, she
believed the whole organization, not just half its members, would need to work as one body.

King thought of Jesus as “the greatest Teacher of all time?“3 Like King and her
colleagues, Jesus taught both men and women. The rabbis of Jesus’ time would not teach
women, but women in the Bible who followed him, such as Martha, also called Jesus
“teacher.”9 There are many Biblical references to women who were believers or followers

of Christ, and men and women are often mentioned together, as equally well suited to do

 

7 King, 1897, p. 24.

8 Kin 1915, p. 289.
9 NEE, Jn 11:28

83

God’s work. For example, “more and more men and women believed in the Lord,” and

“they were baptized, both men and women)“

In Bonds to Christ

The fact that women were equally valued in God’s eyes didn’t mean they were
liberated without cost. In fact, Christians, regardless of sex, are free from sin through their
acceptance of Jesus and his sacrificial death, but only because they are also Christ’s
servants. Even Paul, the author of many books in the New Testament, whom King refers to
as “an ancient Roman jurist who lived the truth,”11 is described, in his letters to the
Romans and the Corinthians, as “a servant of Jesus Christ,” and an “ambassador for
Christ.”12 The word for servant in Greek means 1) a slave who completely belongs to his
master and has no freedom to leave, and 2) a servant who willingly chose to serve his
master. This word, “servant,” was also used to describe God’s chosen people, Moses, and
King David, as it can mean “one who has the status of a high official in the Lord’s kingly
administration.”l3

There are many references in the Bible to how Christians must be in bonds to Christ
in order to enjoy the freedom that Christ gives. To non-Christians this essential teaching
seems paradoxical. For example, in Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, he says,"For
though I be free from all men, yet have I made myself a servant unto all, that I might gain the
more.” Gain the more means brings more people to Christ.” When he addresses the
Galatians, Paul instructs: “Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherwith Christ hath made us
free, and not entangled again in the yoke of bondage.” In this case, the word liberty or
freedom is emphasized in the Greek and this passage means that believers in Christ gain
freedom from the burden of the rigorous demands of the law as the means of gaining

 

1° KJV, A018 5:14 and 8:12

” King, 1915, p.289.

'2 KJV, Rn 1:1 and 2C01' 5:20.

’3 KJV and N1V,Is 41:8 Ex 14:31, and P818.
M KJV and NIV, 1C0! 9:19.

God’s favor." Yet another example can be found in his letter to the Ephesians: “I may
open my mouth boldly, to make known the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an
ambassador in bonds.” An ambassador in bonds is one who shares the gospel with others
because he or she is bound and indebted to Christ. It is a service of love and worship,
which Christians are called to do boldly.l6

The relationship between freedom and servitude that King understood to be part of
life as a Christian informed her views of gender. First, men and women were in this
together, equally blessed by Jesus. Second, men and women alike were indentured to Christ
but also gained liberation through their relationship with Christ. This is explored
throughout the New Testarnent.‘7

King was a Christian, and because she studied the Bible and used it as a lens
through which to view and compose her life, there was no contradiction in being both
subordinate and empowered. Men were, for example, to lead women, just as God leads the
church, but at the same time women were to be respected and loved just as Jesus loves his
people. For King and her contemporaries, most of whom were Christians, it was not a
question of whether they were feminist activists or victims of a sexist institution. These
labels and categories would have been meaningless to them (and in fact are meaningless to
many Christian teachers and teacher education students today). King viewed her life as one
great service to the Lord. She was His, and she did not revel in her accomplishments,
because she believed that any good that she did was Him working through her. She did not
complain about her many burdens; she accepted them as part of the struggle, the toil
required of humans on earth. She did not feel slighted, or as if she needed to march for
‘5 KJV and NIV, Gal 5:1
1‘ KJV and NIV, Eph 6: 19-20.
’7 KJV, For example,”Being then made free from sin, ye became the servants of
righteousness... for when ye were the servants of sin, you were free from righteousness . . .
For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our
Lord.”Rom 6: 18-23. "There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ
Jesus, who walk not after the flesh but after the spirit. For the law of the spirit of life in
Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death for to be carnally minded

is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. And if Christ be in you, the body is
dead because of sin; but the Spirit is life because of righteousness.” Rom 8:1, 6, 10.

 

85

equal rights, when her male counterparts led the school and assumed the more prominent
leadership positions; she knew that there was much important work for her and other
women to do. King and her contemporaries were not women who shyly moved into the
background or men who forcibly kept them out of positions of power. For example, the
men and women who pushed for women to be admitted to the University of Michigan were
Christians who wanted women to have all the same opportunities as men, so that they might
do the Lord’s work as competently as possible.18 Some see the ways the Bible talks about
men’s and women’s roles and the ways they are to relate to each other as sexist, but King
and her colleagues accepted this order for living and saw their place in it not as one of
oppression but of opportunity.

For King, both the power to teach or administrate, and the limitations on what a
woman could do were bound up in her faith. She knew the Bible well enough to quote it in
her speeches and correspondence, and she expected her audiences to know it well enough
that she need not provide reference to particular chapters. She easually used phrases from
scripture as if everyone would know to what she was referring and would accept its
authority. Because she believed the Bible was the word of God and fashioned her life
around this word, King was not confused or conflicted by what seems to a modern, non-
Christian reader as contradictory. She was both saved and a sinner, both unconditionally
loved by an awesome God and unworthy of his love, both respected by and subordinate to
men. Because of her faith, laboring was both her burden to bear and her most freeing
expression of holiness. To teach was not construed as an underpaid job for second-class
citizens, nor was it seen as an ernancipatory occupation that allowed her to cast off the yoke
of patriarchical oppression. It wasn’t even a combination of these things. To understand
her view one must get inside her world view which was shaped by her Puritan upbringing,
her constant involvement in church and community, and her view of teaching as vocation or

calling. Neither money and material possessions nor pride and earthly rank were the goal.

 

‘3 see discussion later in this chapter of coeducation at U. of M.

86

,J -)F l'

That “God’s will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven?” was her desire. In choosing
teaching as her vehicle for serving the Lord, King also did not focus on the emancipatory
nature of her profession or the oppression she experienced as a woman professor and
administrator. She was already free; Jesus had liberated her. The idea of needing more
“rights” was not a concern of hers; she knew she had a place in the Kingdom of Heaven.
King died in 1919 a month before the United States Senate passed the suffrage
amendment that eventually gave women the legal right to vote. Her life was not a struggle
for equality of rights or privileges, but an opportunity for social service. The work of many
women has been considered feminist or reformist because they struggled for rights or
privileges their sex was denied. King did not see her lifework this way. Instead, she was
thankful to be God’s servant, and she was willing to accept the challenges that came her
way. She lived according to her belief that “the world has had too much individualism
already. The need is men of affairs living in the recognized relation of brotherhood and
under the divine law.”20 She used men to mean both men and women, and brotherhood to
mean sisterhood as well. She thought that under the divine law we were all equal, and that

we should figure out how to live as God wants us to.

“Woman’s Kingdom” or “School Home”?: King as Superintendent

In 1875 King was called to be principal in Charlotte, Michigan. At the end of
King’s first year as principal in Charlotte, the community fired the unpopular male
superintendent and asked King to take his place. She chose another woman, M. Louise
Jones, to be head of the high school, and they led the Charlotte Public Schools from 1876-
1881. During King’s tenure she also served as librarian and upgraded their collection. Her
work in Charlotte also included the grading of the schools and the introduction of a new

 

'9 from The Lord’s Prayer
20King, History as a Umfying element in a course of study, 1894.

87

course of study. During her tenure, the Union School was expanded and became Charlotte
High School.21

King wasted no time as the newly appointed educational leader. Having served as
principal under her sometimes unpopular predecessor, she knew that if she were to serve
successfully she would need to educate the community about what role she expected them
to play in the operation of the schools. She published a column in the local paper titled
“The People and the Schools.” Not willing to let community leaders dump responsibility
for student tardiness, attendance, and discipline into teachers’ laps, she made a bold appeal
to parents and other community members to take responsibility for the training of the
young. “The school belongs to the people...True their work is concurrent but lacking this
concurrence, the teacher is in a great measure defeated.”22

When King was appointed Superintendent of the Charlotte Public Schools, her
professional colleagues, the Association of City School Adrrrinistrators, called her district a
“Woman’s Kingdom.”23 In contrast, a special report of the Charlotte Republican,
referring to King’s superintendency, claimed that, with a woman at the helm, those who
answered the morning bell, called it a “school home?“ These two descriptors: “a
woman’s kingdom” and “a school home” demonstrate the gendered nature of King’s
work. She chose a profession within the private and emotional feminine sphere but her
professional position afforded her a platform from which to share her views and be actively
involved in more public and intellectual arenas. Even as she worked her way up the
educational hierarchy, King maintained her “proper” sphere. Even as a professor and
scholar, jobs that were considered masculine, King maintained a feminine focus by working
with teachers and writing about children. There is no evidence in her papers that working in
this borderland, in between where women teach and men manage, was intentional or
politically motivated. Rather than being a savvy feminist, working the system to her
2' Paton, Aurora, p. 38
22 The Charlotte Republican, 1877, p. 8.

23 Charlotte Leader, 1887, p. 1820.
2‘ Charlotte Leader, 1887, p. 18-20.

 

88

[10,.

"‘1.

.‘- ‘.
'31 'l

advantage, King was simply doing her job. She did not see herself as the ruler of a
kingdom; instead, she saw her work, whether she was a teacher, librarian, or superintendent,
as service in God’s Kingdom.

Several years after King left the superintendency of the Charlotte Public Schools
there was an article about the history of the schools in a special issue of the Charlotte
Leader.

Charlotte points with just pride to the fact that she was the first city in Michigan, and
one of the very first in the United States, to recognize that the qualities of successful
leadership and powers of wise su rvision are not the exclusive property of one sex, and
in 1877 she honored her recognitlon by asking Miss Julia A. King, then principal of the
high school, to accept the superintendency of all her schools. To Miss M. Louise Jones
was intrusted the high school, and the state turned its eyes upon Charlotte to see what
sort of a school these women would keep.

The section of the newspaper article concerning King and Jones ended with this
quotation, “Give them of the fruit of their hands and let their own works praise them in the
gates?“ This is taken from Proverbs 31:30-31: “A woman that feareth the Lord, she shall
be praised. Give her the fruit of her hands; and let her own works praise her in the gates.”
It seems the reporter understood the important role King’s faith played in her leadership of
the Charlotte Schools. Perhaps he knew that this woman of faith would be blessed by the
fruits of her labors whether she managed an academic kingdom, lead social causes, or
simply loved children.

“ Ideal and Inspiration”: King as Preceptress
The Preceptress, the highest-ranking woman on the normal faculty, was extremely
influential in shaping the lives and experiences of the young women at the normal school.

The position of “Preceptress” was included from the very first in the organization of
the Normal School. The title “Preceptress” was widely employed in female
seminaries and in high schools at the time, carrying with it special responsibility for the
deportment and character development of the girls. The need for such a position in a
teacher training institution was enhanced by the general assumption that the teacher
must be a model of upright Christian character, but the title also had an academic
connotation. The history of the term reveals its traditional significance, that of an older
or superior practitioner who undertakes the tutoring of the neophyte. In the area of

2’ Charlotte Leader, 1887, p. 18, 20

 

89

medical training the Preceptor was the practicing physician who accepted the young
student as an assistant and gave him personal training. In the area of higher education,
he was the faculty member who undertook to direct the reading and study of a small
group of students in his field.26
The preceptress position presupposed that the girls had special and distinct needs with
respect to deportment and character development. In addition, the Preceptress had an
academic role; she was to mentor the neophyte teachers using her wisdom as an older
practitioner. The training of the mind and of the spirit were wrapped up in one, as the
Preceptress was expected to help the female teachers mature in all aspects of their
professional lives. There was no question that the professional was also spiritual.

When King entered the Normal School in 1855, a woman named Sarah A. Allen
was her Preceptress. Miss Allen, the second Preceptress of the normal school, graduated
from Oberlin College’s 'Literary’ course, in 1854. Immediately after her graduation she was
employed as a high school teacher in Canton, Ohio; but early in the spring of 1855, she
went back to Oberlin to take the place of Assistant Principal of the Ladies' Department in
the college. Allen remembers that the work of the College year of 1855—6 was only fairly
commenced when a very solemn-looking man called at the Lady Principal's office.

This gentleman said he was in search of some one to take the place of Preceptress in the
State Normal School at Ypsilanti, Michigan. It seemed to be the opinion of my friends
that I could fill that place and as they thought it a very desirable one they urged my
acceptance of it. I had taught quite a little in public schools and in private school, having
entered the 'profession' at fifteen years of age; but I knew little about normal schools
and nothing at all about the Normal School at Ypsilanti. Naturally I felt very great
hesitancy about making the venture that my friends so warmly advised. I did however,
settle the matter before Mr. Mayhew left, and a week or two later I was in my place in
the Normal School.27

Allen was only eight years older than most of her girls at the Normal School.
Although she had taught school and gone to college, she still faced her responsibilities with
a great deal of trembling. Her reflection on the inadequacy she felt demonstrates the nature
of the position, at least as she conceived it.

It was a very responsible position and I never for a moment got out from under the load.
I tried to do good work in the class room and in this I was, perhaps, fairly successful,

2‘ Isbell, 1971, p. 305.
’7 Putnam, 1899, p. 162-4.

 

Lam

but my great anxiety was to do what one in my position ought to do for the young
ladies, and be to them what one ought to be; and for all that I sorely felt my inadequacy.
My successors have all brought to their work riper experience and maturer judgment,
and so I trust their work has been better done and its fruits, in the growth of Christian
and womanly character, have been richer. Sure I am that no one has put more heart into
her work than did I.28
Miss Allen’s heartfelt efforts were rewarded, as forty years later King still spoke fondly of
her. Reminiscing on her normal school days, King said, “I cannot forebear confessing my
debt to Miss Allen, a debt which every woman owes to that one who is both her ideal and
her inspiration. Miss Allen’s influence was far-reaching and permanent She made a
difference in my whole life.”29 In correspondence with the normal school late in her life
Allen also remembered King, “Miss King may still be with you. She was one of ‘my
girls.”’3° The fact that Allen refers to King as “mine,” and that she knew what King was
doing forty years later, suggests an almost maternal familiarity.

When King became Preceptress at the normal school she continued in Allen’s
footsteps. Even as she led, she learned from her students and her colleagues. The student
newspaper in 1893 described King, in her role as Preceptress, as “the confidential advisor
of five hundred young ladies.”31 A former student remembered, “any disregard of those
regulations which had been instituted for the best protection of the young women students
irked her.” The seriousness with which King took her job, and the strictness of her
discipline, reflected a belief that female students had special needs, but it also demonstrated
her respect for the rules and policies of the institution. “In all things she was a firm
believer in obedience to vested authority.”32 This was not submission based on her sex, but
rather Biblical instruction that all people should honor. “Let every soul be subject unto the
higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of

God.”33

 

2" Putnam, 1899, p. 162-4.

29 Biography. (September, 1895) Normal News, vol. 15, no. 4, p. 8.
3° Putnam, 1899, p. 162-4

3' Biographical sketches. (1893) Normal News, vol. 12, p. 295.

3’ Goodrich, 1919.

3’ KJV, Romans 13:1

91

It was not only King’s personal interpretation of her Prceptress job that brought this
moral tone. Indeed, her superiors chose her for this work because they wanted a woman of
high moral standards who would lead the female students toward more Godly lives, thereby
making them more worthy and effective teachers for our nation’s children. King’s duties
as Preceptress were described broadly by President Willis:

The preceptress has the special charge of the ladies, as regards their deportment, etc.,
which makes it advisable that at least once a day she may see them all at one time alone.
Matters which have to be repeated 1n three or more different rooms lose much of their
force, and the effect rs to distribute that personality which ought to be a unit.”

The meetings King ran evolved into her famous weekly sessions known as her
‘Conversations.’ These Friday meetings were attended by female normal students and the
women of Ypsilanti. The student newspaper paper claimed that the Conversations were
“the means of untold good in the development of the hearts as well as the intellect?”5 The
yearbook claimed, “Here [in the Friday conversations] the girls are brought into closer
touch with her [King’s] best and noblest thoughts, and in these informal meetings many an
otherwise thoughtless girl has been led to be an earnest seeker after Truth.”36 King’s
colleague Daniel Putnam described them as “a most important feature of her work. .. In
these she has attempted to supply a want which all connected with the institution have felt.
She has sought to furnish the girls with an ideal after which they can model their lives and
their work.”37 King understood life and work to be part of one integrated whole, and she
did not consider there to be great distinctions between private and public. In 1900, in the
student yearbook, which was dedieated to Miss King, the students wrote about the
Conversations:

All who have attended feel" c.lose friendship, and heart to heart talks, as the

conversations were, with a strong character having high ideals, 1s a help and inspiration
greater than any book can grve.

 

3" Isbell, 1971p. 309.
”Biographical sketches. (1893) Normal News, vol. 12, p. 295.
3‘ Aurora, 1898.

’7 Putnam, 1899, p. 171.-
” Aurora, 1900 (dedicated to Miss King).

I",

,f\

Clearly, King’s professional work involved building relationships and providing moral
instruction. Perhaps more important than the disciplinary knowledge she imparted, but
definitely intricately connected to it, were the character lessons in Christian womanhood that
King led.

King’s Friday Conversations inspired “a feeling that one’s life among neighbors
shapes the world community,” and were the precursor to the weekly ‘Faculty Chat’ that
later and for many years brought students and faculty together in weekly discussion of
some topic of broad interest.39 These conversations play prominently in King’s life, and in
the lives of her students, giving us a lens into the normal school of the times. That women
met regularly with other women students, women from the community, and a woman
professor to discuss issues related to women, seems interesting enough. But that these
Conversations were co—opted by the larger faculty and student body and institutiormlized for
both sexes shows the respect others had for their content and impact.

“Salt and Light”: King as President of the Ladies Literary Club

King’s early efforts as Preceptress also influenced the women of Ypsilanti, as they
organized into one of Michigan’s earliest woman’s clubs: The Ladies Literary Club."0
The Ladies’ Literary Club of Ypsilanti, organized in 1878, is among the ten oldest women’s
clubs in the state of Michigan." ' In its roots and early years it had close informal ties to the
Michigan State Normal School. As early as 1861 a group of women in Ypsilanti got
together to read “Hume’s History of Englan ” and later studied the plays of Shakespeare.
Many of the women members were also active in the Home Association organized in 1875
to help the needy. They established a library in Ypsilanti, and, as they worked in the
library’s rooms, furnishing them with chairs, rugs, and bookcases, they discussed the
possibility of organizing a literary club. Mrs. Daniel Putnam belonged to a literary society

 

’9 Isbell, 1971, p. 309-310.
4° King’s obituary in Ladies Literary Society news
’1 Martin, 1987.

93

l...

4'

‘.

'1: '1‘

in Kalamazoo that was led by Lucinda I-Iinsdale Stone. When her husband moved from his
faculty position at Kalamazoo College to the Michigan State Normal School, Mrs. Putnam
led the effort to found the Ypsilanti Ladies’ Literary Club. She became the first president or
“Club Mother.”"2 Other members affiliated with the Normal School included: Miss Helen
Post, a teacher with the Normal School Training School; Mrs. Fannie Cheever Burton,
Assistant in Physical Training; Miss Florence Shultes, Assistant in History and Civil
Government; Miss Julia Anne King, Preceptress and Professor of History and Civil
Government; Mrs. Austin George, whose husband was a Normal School professor and the
Superintendent of Ypsilanti Schools; Mrs. Gorton, whose husband was an Assistant in
Natural Sciences; and Mrs. Rexford, whose husband was a local doctor instrumental in
securing Ypsilanti as the site for the State Normal School, and whose son served on the
State Board of Education."3 King served as President of the Ladies’ literary Club from
1903-1905.“

In the 1880s and 18908 the ladies studied the French Revolution, Germany, Tudor
England, Rome, Spain, Greece, Italy and Egypt. For several years they ealled their studies
“Journeys through Britain,” and they learned abom the authors, geography, cathedrals, and
people of Great Britain. In 1896 the club joined the National Federation of Women’s
Clubs and the Michigan State Federation. The Club began to broaden its activities to
include civic affairs and political issues. There was a change in the programs as members
discussed “Equality,” “The Kindergarten,” “Shall the People Own the Telegraph?,”
“Sanitation in the home,” “Manual Training in the Schools,” “University Extension,”

and “Our City Charter.” From this time on the members acting as a group began to try to
shape public policies."

 

‘2 The Ladies’ Literary Club, 1978.

’3 Putnam, 1899, p. 196, 198, 199, 284, 354; The Ladies’ Literary Club, 1978.

‘“ List of Past Presidents, provided by Mary Claire Anhut, member LLC, August 8, 1997.
’5 The Ladies’ Literary Club, 1978.

King encouraged the membership, “Ye are the salt of the earth; you are a city set on

a hill because you hold in your hearts the love of hurnarrity.”"6 This is a direct reference to
the Bible where Christ says:

Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be

salted? It is thenceforth good for nothing but to be cast out, and to be trodden under

foot of men. Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hid.

Neither do men light a candle and, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it

giveth light unto all that are in the house. Let your light so shine before men, that they

may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven. (Mt 5: 13-16)
This is part of the famous Sermon on the Mount that Christ gave as an ethical admonition
and standard for all Christians. King, like Christ, called her associates to responsibility, to
influence the world for good. The value of salt was abundantly referred to by classieal
writers‘as well as scripture. Salt preserves, adds flavor, creates thirst, prevents infection, and
was even used as money. When salt is mixed into a dish, it is hidden, but it can have a
powerful effect. King called her sisters to have a savory effect on this earth. If the ladies of
the Literary Club were truly a “city on a hill,” they were conspicuous and stoOd out in their
community. As lights they had the ability to dispel darkness and reveal truth. King
encouraged the women to be a blessed influence on others, not so that they would gain
recognition or achieve civic power, but so that God would be glorified. This group, who
initially was seeking self-improvement, eventually extended their interests to include national
and even worldwide affairs.

Shortly after King’s death, Sarah W. George spoke of her at the Ladies Literary

Club annual meeting: “She [King] was a woman of culture and broadmindedness, with a
rare faculty of drawing out what was best and deepest in her friends, and her rule of life was
Service.” George continued, describing King as someone who had more power and
responsibility than most women, but whose gifts enabled her to handle the load gracefully.
“Her work was on a larger scale than usually falls to the lot of women in our time but her

wide vision was equal to its rounded completeness?”

 

’6 The Ladies’ Literary Club, 1978.
‘7 George, 1919. (obituary of King, read before the LLC)

95

“Something Besides Mere Mental Acurnen’”: King as History Department Chair

King worked cleverly within the Michigan State Normal School to promote women.
For example, as a teacher and advisor she was able to build relationships that sponsored her
ideals with students and colleagues. Those she mentored most often commented on how
her life was an example to them or how she was an influence on their whole way of living
rather than simply a teacher of subject matter. For example, Bertha Buell, King’s student
and then colleague, claimed that King’s life made the lives of hundreds of men and women
“truer, saner, more courageous.”49 Studying under Miss King did not simply make you a
better person, she also provided numerous female students with the skills and dispositions
to pursue advanced study. For example, King’s student Bertha Buell became one of her
colleagues at the Normal School but not without a year off to study at Radcliffe College.’0
King helped make possible for her students that to which her generation of women did not
have access.

In addition to developing relationships with other women and encouraging them to
continue their edueation, King provided employment to dozens of young women. In her
role as head of the history department, she hired numerous professors and assistants—all
women (see chart).51 There was not a male professor of history at the Normal School until
shortly before King’s retirement. So when King rallied for history as a crucial part of
normal education, she may have been supporting a secondary cause. King never mentioned
that she was lobbying for women, and she was not known as a woman’s rights agitator. In
her own quiet way, she sponsored many young women, mostly her former students, who
needed jobs and a place where they could thrive as intellectuals. As department head, she
was able to provide this for them as long as history was valued within the institution. After
having apprenticed with King for a few years, many of these women went on to become

 

‘8 Aurora, 1900, dedieated to King.

‘9 Buell, 1919.

5° Aurora, 1909, p. 31.

5‘ See Putnam, 1899, list of faculty, and Aurora (yearbooks) 1883-1915.

96

professors at other nomral schools or colleges and influential members of the history
teaching community.

King also valued women’s roles and contributions when making teaching choices.
One hundred years before the field of inquiry called “women’s history” became popular
across university campuses, King used and recommended texts by and about women in her
history classes. For example, in her book-length manuscript, An Outline Course in History,
King’s recommended texts for the section on the “New England Home” include Margaret
Smith ’3 Journal and the Diary of Grace Anna Wilson. In the study of “Neighborhoods”
she recommends Addams’ Hull House in Chicago. Throughout her extensive list of topics
and books for elementary social studies, there are selections about girls’ and women’s lives
and experiences.152 In King’s 1889 series of articles in a journal for Michigan’s teachers
called “Method Applied to Teaching History,” she criticized the quality and quantity of
history textbooks available to teachers, but she did mention a few books she liked. One of
the good ones focused exclusively on women: Mrs. Ellet’s Women of the American
Revolution.53 King did not raise questions about whose history was being taught or the
lack of women’s voices in the historical record when she taught, wrote, or spoke about the
philosophy of history.“ When she asked the question “What is History?” attention to
gender was not part of her analysis, but before there was much of a literature to draw from
or a trend promoting it, King incorporated works by and about women into the curriculum.
King’s courses were not explicitly about women’s history, but she did think it was
necessary to include women in the history curriculum. She thought it was necessary, not
just to round out the historical record, but to help young women identify with some of the
figures in the past. For this she recommended using Mrs. Ellet’s three-volume set titled:

Women in History. This is a collection of mini-biographies of over 25 heroic women."’5

 

’2 King, An Outline Course in History, p. 27.

’3 King, Moderator, 1889, p. 251

5‘ King’s interest in the discipline of history—its nature and its methods—is discussed in
chapter four.

5‘ King, 1989.

“Graciously Hospitable”: King as Daughter, Sister, Aunt, and Neighbor

In addition to all of her professional roles, King was also a family member. She
combined the roles of daughter to an invalid mother, sister to a widowed brother, and aunt,
with her jobs as teacher, principal, and professor; she was at once respected professionally
and cherished domestically. In True Sisterhood: Michigan Women and Their Kin, 1820-
1920, Marilyn Ferris Motz examines the kinship systems to which women belonged and
shows how women's duties as sister and daughter continued, after she assumed the roles of
wife and mother. Even if a woman remained single, she could remain an integral part of a
larger familial network and thereby insure lifetime security."5 King did not need the
security some families might have offered, as she was the primary breadwinner in her home
(her father died when she was thirteen, and she never married), but King was still active in
family matters.

Growing up on the frontier, King took on family responsibility at a young age and
endured many hardships. Three of King’s siblings-Eliza, Sarah, and Ransom—died as
young children.‘7 King remembered being awakened one night by her mother’s anxious
voice. The baby was sick, and since her father had a broken leg, little Julia was the only one
able to go down the dark forest road for the doctor.58 Reflecting on King’s childhood, her
mother claimed that the little girl with twinkling blue eyes and chestnut hair “had enough
energy for two.”’9 King lived with her mother, Charlotte, until she died. King depended on
her mother for support when she was young and cared for her in old age. A contemporary
speculated about the important role King’s mother must have played in her life work: “A
loved mother who had accompanied her from place to place, who has cheered and comforted
her in perplexities and trials and provided the quiet home in which the regular habits must in
no small degree have contributed to her success.”‘50 King never had children of her own,
“Motz, 1983.

’7 Like many pioneer families whose children died prematurely, King’s family named their
first son Ransom, and, after his death, when they had another son, they used the same name.
’8 Lord, 1954, p. 306.

’9 Aurora, 1893, p. 37.
“Paton, p. 40 in Aurora

 

98

”V.

but King’s niece, also named Charlotte, lived with her for many years. Clmrlotte also
attended and then taught at the Normal School. Charlotte’s father, Ransom, sent her to
Aunt Julia, his sister, when his wife died prematurely. Widowed Ransom also lived with
King after his retirement.

Colleagues described King’s home as “graciously hospitable,” and claimed this
was proof that “a delightful home is not incompatible with professional work for
women.”" Although the degree to which King was accepted as a proper woman was
probably related, in part, to the domestic roles she did play, King was not considered
abnormal or inappropriate because she held powerful professional positions.

King was part of a female community, but she did not live with a woman, other than
her family members. Whether or not she had an intimate relationship is not something she,
her students, or her colleagues discuss in the written record. If she did have a domestic
partner, the most interesting thing about the relationship that I can discern was that it was a
non-issue. In her professional writing, King never alluded to the fact that she had or did not
haveapartnerorthe factthat she chose nottomarry and have children. Contrarytowhat
one might expect, given much literature on Victorian America,“2 her colleagues and students
respected King as a single, professional woman.

King’s professional papers reveal little about her private life, so we have no way of
knowing how she felt about being single. However, she must have been familiar with the
Biblical teachings of the Apostle Paul that portray marriage as a distraction from faith. “The
unnrarriedwonmncarethfortlrethingsofthelcrd,thatshe maybeholybothinbodyand
in spirit: but she that is married careth for the things of the world, how she may please her
husband.”53 Paul instructs the Corinthians in the virtues of not marrying: troubles will
spare you, and you ean be devoted to the Lord’s affairs in body and Spirit.

 

"Goodrich, 1919, p. 12.
‘2 Smith-Rosenberg, 1985.
‘3 KJV 1 Corinthians 7:34

A

D“

0,1J(

OJ

Through her education, King acquired the knowledge and skills necessary to
construct a successful professional life, and, by remaining in edueation, and never venturing
into the wodd of marriage, King maintained access to the equal opportunity environment of
the coeducational public schools. Alexis de Tocqueville portrayed the relative freedom and
boldness of American girls who were educated alongside their brothers, but noted that girls’
youthful independence was lost in the bonds of matrimony. Although considered the
intellectual equals of men by advocates of coeducation, women were considered nonetheless
different and destined to exercise their influence in different ways.“ Rather than graduate
into a home where she might be resu-icted in her adult life, King entered the schoolhouse
where she could continue to develop her capacities. In woman’s “true” profession,“ King
worked at developing the capacities of others in an effort to serve God and society, and, in
this sense, her work was not so distinct from that of her sisters who chose motherhood
rather than a career.“

King’s school home was both literally and figuratively close to her real home.
When King walked out of her office at the Normal School, across the road, and down Pearl
Street to her lovely house and garden, she felt as intellectually vibrant and as passionate
about individuals and society as she had minutes earlier when she was called “Preceptress”
and “Professor King.” But now she was Julia—a neighbor, a daughter, an aunt, or a
hostess. King passed back and forth between the professional and the domestic, blending
the two in ways with which many women are familiar.67

King’s neighbor and former student, Ernest Goodrich, claimed that,

As a neighbor she was all that Christ’s parable might imply...Her house had a rear
extension terminating in a gable end which was a frequent perch for birds. They were
thus wonderful targets for testing the Indian skill of green apple throwing.
Unfortunately a window existed in the gable end which was broken at least once by
some faulty aim. The resulting interview was simply a business transaction, coupled
with no recriminations, whereby an understanding was reached that the same small boy
was to defray the expenses of the same. This business like and eminently human

6’ Tyack and Hansot, 1990, p. 30.

6’ Hoffman, 1971.

“Tyack and Hansot, 1990, p. 34.
‘7 Grumet, 1988.

 

 

100

quality of his neighbor impressed itself strongly upon the boy who had his regard
greatly strengthened by a shortly subsequent event. Miss King in an entirely human
and natural course of events one day forgot her latch key and locked herself out. The
porch climbing by the small boy from next door, the entry of the quiet house through a
second story window, and the opening of the fiont door to the rightful owner was an
adventure sufficiently full of interest to be compensation in itself, but when that episode
was also made a matter of business and the recompense offered was more than
sufficient to restore the depletion of the boy’s bank account by the broken window, then
the austere preceptress of the boy’s imagination was completely changed to a feeling
including admiration and love, which has grown from that day to this.
His story of King illustrates how the skills and dispositions that made King a respected
professional were intimately connected to her personal identity and domestic activities.
Like the neighbor boy, King’s students did not find it difficult to accept her as both
a warm hostess and a challenging teacher. They were able to appreciate how her pedagogy
was intimately connected to the way she lived her life. The graduating class of 1902
presented a portrait of King as their class gift to the College. They thought it appropriate
that future students have her likeness hanging in their hall beeause,
There has never been a time when her duties as teacher have prevented her fiom filling
her place as friend. Her home, full of beauty, is open to those who will come. Her life,

rich in sympathy and kindness, goes out to those who know her, and becomes an
influence deep and lasting.69

Gender at fire Michigan State Normal School

At the 1848 Woman’s Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, New York, the delegates
listed their grievances in a Declaration of Rights and Sentiments which claimed that man
denied woman “the faculties for obtaining a thorough education,” and endeavored to
destroy woman’s “confidence in her own powers, to lessen her self-respect, and to make
her willingly to lead a dependent and abject life.”7° Fifty years later Charlotte Perkins
Gilman wrote Women and Economics, a feminist assessment of women’s position in
America. At the heart of Gilman’s analysis was her contention that all the roles a woman
was permitted to play derived from her sexual functions. “Men worked to live... [but]

 

‘8 Goodrich, 1919, p. 2-3
‘9 Aurora, 1902.

7° mm 1990, p. 63.

101

Ind

women mated to live...” For woman there was “only a single channel, a single choice.
Wealth, power, social distinction, fame. . .all, must come to her through a small gold ring.”'”

While these important glimpses into the history of women in the United States may
have captured the general state of afiairs and reflected the experiences of most women, not
all women’s experiences are represented by the image these documents create. Julia Anne
King's case suggests that some women born in the 1830s and 1840s (thereby graduating
from high school in the 1850s, before women were admitted to coeducational universities
and before women's only colleges opened) could obtain a thorough education, develop
confidence and self-respect, and lead an independent and rewarding life. King’s
experiences also suggest that women could live without marrying, and that a woman could,
through professional rather than sexual achievements, gain moderate wealth (King
summered in the White Mountains, owned a second home in the Port Huron area, enjoyed a
sabbatical trip to Europe, etc.), power, social distinction, and fame through a normal school
education.

Rather tlmn limiting her professional aspirations or excluding her fiom public life,
King’s normal school edueation provided her with power and opportunity. Coeducation
sponsored her growth as a critical thinker and provided her with experiences that made her
feel part of, rather than excluded from, the system. Well-connected and liberally-educated,
King continued to benefit from the supposedly feminine aspects of teaching and the
ambiguous position school administration and teacher education occupied in a society
which was otherwise separated into male and female spheres.72 By coming up through the
ranks as a schoolteacher she remained in an arena considered proper for women, but she
used her education and experience to propel her into management positions where she
demanded a competitive salary, had a voice in administrative decision-making, was respected
as an authority on history teaching, and made a significant contribution to public education.
Instead of operating on the margins, like many reformers who felt excluded from public life,

7’ Chafe, 1991, p. 7.
72Sklar, 1976. ,

 

102

King was at the center of a respected social institution.73 King believed that “the individual
will learn to meet his part in life by sharing in the interests and cooperating in the effort of
the social whole of which he is only a part?" King valued and respected the will of the
whole community; perhaps because, unlike many women, she felt like she was part of public
life. King taught social responsibility and, through her own example, challenged the roles
mainstream culture had appropriated for nineteenth century women.

In 1849, the Michigan State Normal School was established to instruct “both male
and female in the art of teaching, and in all the various branches that pertain to a good
common school education?" “Men and women were admitted together. Each member of
the House of Representatives was authorized to appoint two pupils (one of each sex) in his
district?” Like common school boys and girls, these “ministering angels” learned their
craft in a coedueational environment of relative gender equity.

Significantly, none of the speakers at the opening ceremonies for the MSNS
differentiated a subordinate role for women teachers. The assumption at the Michigan State
Normal School was that both men and women could teach; the numbers of students of each
sex enrolled in the early classes were almost identical. Several speakers spoke explicitly
about the normal students being both men and women, indicating that the founders thought
both sexes were equally capable of teaching and that they could prepare for, and eventually
carryout, their lifework side by side.”

“Breaking Down the Barriers’“: Women in the Normal Lyceum
A month after the opening of the first term of the Normal School, the teachers and
students of the institution came together to discuss the organization and management of a

society to promote the literary improvement of the students. Professor Welch was elected

 

73Walters, 1978.

7‘ King, History as social education, no date.
”Isbell, 1971, p. 8.

76Putnam, 1899, p. 42

77 Putnam, 1899.

7’ Putnam, 1899, p. 222.

103

President, but, in the spirit of faculty-student collaboration with which the society was
founded, students, including women, were elected to other offices.” The first and only
campus organization was called the Lyceum and devoted itself to the discussion and debate
of political, philosophical, and literary topics.“

During the years that King was a student at the Normal School (1855-58), the
Lyceum, of which she was a member, debated and then adopted the following resolution:
"That for ladies to speak in this Lyceum is right, proper, and expedient.”81 Professor
Putnam believed that sentiment in the Normal Lyceum regarding the position of women
manifested the same stages of growth as sentiment in the community at large. With respect
to the Old Lyceum, which was in existence from 1853-1880, he says:

The barriers which had hitherto limited and hedged in the so-called sphere of woman
were being gradually broken down. The doors of higher institutions of education and
of the “learned professions” were being thrown open to her; in some cases, it must be
admitted, grudgingly and with very bad grace, but never the less they were opening
wider and wider year by year. A somewhat similar process of enlargement is observable
in the exercises and management of the Lyceum. At first, and for several years lady
members of the society read essays, served on committees, and held minor offices. But
they did not act as presiding ofiicers, nor take part, to any considerable extent, in
extemporaneous debates.82
Professor Putnam advocated for women to be admitted to the university of Michigan, so he
was familiar with breaking down barriers. He recognized that the Lyceum, while
coeducational from the beginning, did limit women’s participation to some extent. As he
notes, this quieter participation matched social expectations for women at the time.

In 1870 the following resolution was discussed and adopted: “That the ladies ought
to be allowed to debate; that the interests of the society and its existence depend on their
debating.” In the records of the following years ladies are listed as “debaters” and also
among the Vice Presidents of the Lyceum.83 Gender at the Normal School reflected the

separate spheres ideology of the larger society, but also challenged that ideology, as men

 

7’ Putnam, 1899, p. 215-16
8° Putnam, 1899, p. 218.

8' Putnam, 1899, p. 218.

8’ Putnam, 1899, p.222.

8’ Putnam, 1899, p. 222-223.

104

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and women prepared together to enter their shared profession. Since the only student
organization in the early years had an academic and vocational focus, gender equality was
fostered and women’s voices respected

“No Noisy Crusades”: First Preceptress, Abigail Rogers
The first Preceptress at the Michigan State Normal School, Abigail Rogers,
combined
refined worrmnly tastes and occupau'ons with more active and public pursuits, and found
pleasure in a life of study and thought attractive to an earnest mind, irrespective of sex...
Of her religious life it would be impossible to speak apart from her regular daily life and
work, since it was all permeated with the same deep and abiding principle for love for
God the Father, and for men his children.“
Rogers, who served as Preceptress while King was still in high school, was typical of the
women who taught King and who mentored her as she became part of the teaching
profession. Stereotypically womanly tastes and occupations mingle with public pursuits as
well as an active life of the mind, and all of this in a deeply religious female teacher. The
interconnectedness of Christian faith and teachers’ work that Rogers’ biographer describes
characterized many of the outstanding female teachers of this time.
Rogers addressed her charges regarding the opportunity to teach in winter school
and, by so doing, prove woman’s competence and thereby be in a position to challenge the
low wages women were being paid
Upon your success in the profession you have chosen depends more than perhaps you
at present realize. Although there are many who doubt the success of the experiment,
still female teachers are now not unfrequently sought to supply our winter schools, and
it is for you to establish your position, and demonstrate by your success in these
schools that you are quite capable of teaching them; for, as one has said, “doing a thing
well proves your right to do it.” Having established this vital point, it will not be
difficult for you to change that of which you now with so much reason and justice
complain, the low rate of female wages.

Rogers explained to her students that by hard work they would earn the right to demand an

increased salary. She continued, “You will thus find that in the quiet, unpretending

 

8" Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections, VI (1883) “History of the Michigan
Female College and a sketch of the life and work of Miss A.C. Rogers.” p. 289

105

discharge of your daily duties, you have secured your rights, which is very unlikely you
would have ever succeeded in doing by those noisy crusades and course clamourings, which
in this age of the world are unfortunately bringing so much discredit upon our sex.”85
Rogers was an advoeate of change and worked tirelessly so that women could have equal
educational opportunities, but she did not believe it was appropriate for women to
“clamour” for rights.
Rogers recommended a quieter approach to gaining power and influence. She
advised:
You will never, I trust, be among the nmnber of those who render themselves ridiculous
by clamouring for rights. You will feel that you have already all the rights you desire to
exercise. You will be content quietly to enlarge the sphere of your exertions and
influence by enlarging the area of your intellectual vision, and increasing your own
moral strength.“5
Increasing one’s own moral strength and intellectual vision seems more of a call for service
than for rights. It was this self-improving, rather than self-righteous, orientation toward life
work that Rogers, King, and many of the early Normal School men and women shared
Perhaps because of her moral strength and lack of clamouring, Rogers’ male colleagues
supported her ideas and were known to advocate for women. Dr. E. O. Haven of the State
University, who collaborated with Welch and Gregory to produce and edit the first
Michigan Journal of Education, makes special reference to female teachers’ salaries in an
1854 article:
The profession of teaching is of especial importance to woman. Well—qualified female
teachers are far more numerous than heretofore, and there are many schools and many
departments 1n larger schools, particularly adapted to them. We could never see any
good reason why the compensation offered to them should not be precisely the same as
that offered to men in the same stations. Nor can we see why they, too, should87 not
qualify themselves for the highest success and the most responsible positions.87
Rogers was able to make the strides she did with respect to female education because men
such as Haven sponsored quality teacher education, pay equity, and professional
advancement for female teachers.
8’ Rogers, 1853, p. 143- 144.

8’ Rogers, 1853, p. 146.
’7 Haven, 1854, p. 48 The Michigan Journal of Education and Teachers’ Magazine, vol I.

 

106

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In the years after Abigail Rogers and before Julia Anne King (1855-1881), three
women served as Preceptress of the Michigan State Normal School. All of them were
graduates of, and two had been teachers at, Oberlin College. A vibrant and expansive
definition of the female role emerged from institutions like Oberlin and, subsequently, the
Michigan State Normal School. The Preceptresses significantly shaped the experiences of
young women at the normal school and contributed to the special care they received. The
mere existence of her position was based on separate spheres ideology, but in practice the
Preceptress’ influence was quite liberating for the young female teachers in her charge.

Looking at the life choices and career trajectories of the women who served as 1
Normal School Preceptress allows us to better understand who these women were, what
they valued, and how they may have viewed their work at the Normal School. Abigail
Rogers, the first, left after two years to be an activist for women’s education and to start a
female seminary in Lansing. The second and third, Allen Patton and Aldrich—Ripley, left,
after three and eight years respectfully, to marry ministers. Ruth Hoppin, fourth
Preceptress at the Normal School, left to assume a position as “Teacher of Physiology,
Biology, and Botany,” at Smith College in North Hampton, Massachusetts. Smith College,
founded by Miss Sophia Smith of Hatfield, Massachusetts, had been established as an
“institution for the higher education of young women, with the design to furnish them
means and facilities for education equal to those .. .afforded young men.”
Nondenominational, the college nevertheless had a strong religious emphasis, as had the
Oberlin where Miss Hoppin spent her earlier years. Smith, like most of the early women’s
colleges, was “not intended to fit woman for a particular sphere or profession, but to perfect
her intellect by those methods which philosophy and experience have approved, so that she
may be better qualified to enjoy and to do well her work in life, whatever that work may
be.”88 Hoppin’s work included social reform; she was, from her early teaching days,

 

3' Alford, 1974, p. 24. Quotations from the Smith College Official Circular, 1881.

107

\

In the years after Abigail Rogers and before Julia Anne King (1855-1881), three
women served as Preceptress of the Michigan State Normal School. All of them were
graduates of, and two had been teachers at, Oberlin College. A vibrant and expansive
definition of the female role emerged from institutions like Oberlin and, subsequently, the
Michigan State Normal School. The Preceptresses significantly shaped the experiences of
young women at the normal school and contributed to the special care they received. The
mere existence of her position was based on separate spheres ideology, but in practice the
Preceptress’ influence was quite liberating for the young female teachers in her charge.

Looking at the life choices and career trajectories of the women who served as 1
Normal School Preceptress allows us to better understand who these women were, what
they valued, and how they may have viewed their work at the Normal School. Abigail
Rogers, the first, left alter two years to be an activist for women’s education and to start a
female seminary in Lansing. The second and third, Allen Patton and Aldrich—Ripley, left,
after three and eight years respectfully, to marry ministers. Ruth Hoppin, fourth
Preceptress at the Normal School, left to assume a position as “Teacher of Physiology,
Biology, and Botany,” at Smith College in North Hampton, Massachusetts. Smith College,
founded by Miss Sophia Smith of Hatfield, Massachusetts, had been established as an
“institution for the higher education of young women, With the design to furnish them
means and facilities for education equal to those . . .afforded young men.”
Nondenominational, the college nevertheless had a strong religious emphasis, as had the
Oberlin where Miss Hoppin spent her earlier years. Smith, like most of the eariy women’s
colleges, was “not intended to fit woman for a particular sphere or profession, but to perfect
her intellect by those methods which philosophy and experience have approved, so that she
may be better qualified to enjoy and to do well her work in life, whatever that work may
be.”88 Hoppin’s work included social reform; she was, from her early teaching days,

 

8“ Alford, 1974, p. 24. Quotations from the Smith College Official Circular, 1881.

107

identified with the prohibition movement. Many Michigan newspapers published her pleas
for prohibition, sometimes in metrical form.89

Some of the Normal School Preceptresses chose to marry and continue their life
work in ministry as preachers’ helpmates. Others devoted themselves to social reform,
activism, and all-female education environments. If the job of Preceptress prepared women
for the roles they chose, then the job was undoubtedly a mixture of special female-centered
education and spiritual guidance or, even, evangelism.

The commonly held assumption that young women were indeed different than
young men was not cause for alarm at the normal school, as it was at the University of
Michigan,90 but rather a factor which contributed to the serious consideration of what it
would take to educate young women well. Women at Michigan State Normal School in the
early years reaped the benefits of their common school forefathers’ attention to educating
the masses in the interests of democracy and their female seminary foremothers’ attention
to edueating girls. The separate spheres legacy of single-sex education environments, even
in the coeducational normal school, and the belief that women were special, even if it meant
restricted opportunities, created an approach towards education much like that at all-girls’
aeademies and seminaries where the female student was the focus of academic purpose.91
Women’s historians have noted that “the very symbolic and social conceptions that appear
to set women apart and to circumscribe their activities may be used by women as a basis for
female solidarity and worth’”2 and that some nineteenth century women developed their
own ways of challenging the conventions of deference and silence.93 “The notion of female
moral superiority received further reinforcement as the ideals of femininity and of

Christianity appeared to coalesce.”°"

 

8’ Alford, 1974, p. 28.

9° Bordin, 2001.

9' Solomon, 1985.

”Deborah Gray White, Ar’n ’t I a Woman? Female Slaves in the Plantation South, p. 119,

guoted from Michelle Zimbalast Rosaldo, in Women, Culture, and Society, p. 39.
Hoffman, 1971. See especially Emma Willard and Catharine Beecher.

9" Evans, 1989, p. 73.

108

Women and Gender Beyond the Normal School
King attended and taught at coeducational schools, but, for a woman born in 1838,
hers was a relatively privileged educational past. Even though she was a pioneer farmer’s
daughter, who started in a one room log school, she did get to attend one of Michigan’s
earliest coeducational high schools and one of the nation’s first normal schools, in an era
when many girls had no educational options at all. Few colleges admitted women.
Scattered small Christian colleges and the more rigorous female seminaries—like Mount
Holyoke Female Seminary where women students studied the same curriculum as the men
at liberal arts colleges—were the only higher education available to women in the United
States at the time. Only a small percentage of girls could afford to leave home to attend
such schools, and they were the only females who had access to a college curriculum.
Coeducational high schools opened in the large cities in antebellum Michigan, but
women were not admitted to the University of Michigan until 1870. The general sentiment
among teachers and school officers in relation to coeducation may be inferred from replies
to a circular of inquiry sent out by the State Superintendent in 1856. The principal of the
Ann Arbor schools said:
In the intermediate and high schools the different sexes occupy different study rooms;
but they meet at all general exercises, and so constantly for instruction in classes, that
there is scarcely an hour when pupils of both sexes are not occupying every room. The
advantages of the coeducation of the sexes, which are too great to be sacrificed from
regard to mere convenience, are thus secured; while on the other hand, the ladies of the
school can receive from a Precepuess many a useful lesson, and consult with her with a
fieedom which would otherwise be wanting.”
Educators believed that at the high school level girls should have access to the same
education as boys, and it was more efficient to educate them together, but girls did have
special needsthatcouldbeattendedtobyaPrecepuess. Thiswasalsotherationaleatthe
coeducational Michigan State Normal School.
During the mid-nineteenth century, Protestant reformers made a strong case for the

equality of the sexes and the edueation of girls and women. For example, the political

 

9’ Putnam, 1904, p. 191-2.

109

philosopher, Edward D. Mansfield, believed men and women were equal before the law of
God, and that under a republican government males and females must have the same
edueational rights. “It is the idea of moral right, founded in the nature of the soul, and
derived from the Bible, which is the sole foundation of republican government, and the sole
evidence that women have equal rights in the social system, and are equal partners in
whatever benefits society might convey.””‘5 Female seminary founder and teacher educator
Emma Willard wrote that “reason and religion teach that we too are primary
existencies...the companions, not the satellites of men.”"7 In 1837 , anti-slavery activist and
daughter of a preacher, Sarah Grimke wrote:
The Lord Jesus defines the duties of his followers in his Sermon on the Mount. He
lays down grand principles by which they should be governed, without any reference to
sex or condition. I follow him through all his precepts and find him giving the same
directions to women as to men, never even referring to the distinction now so
strenuously insisted upon between masculine and feminine virtues: this is one of the
anti-Christian “traditions of men” which are taught instead of the “commandments of
God.” Men and women were CREATED EQUAL; they are both moral and
accountable beings, and whatever is right for man to do, is right for woman.

How monstrous, how anti-Christian is the doctrine that woman is to be dependent
on man! Where, in all the sacred Scriptures is this taught? Alas! she has too well
learned the lesson which MAN has labored to teach her. She has surrendered her
dearest RIGHTS, has been satisfied with the privileges which man has assumed to grant
her; she has been amused with the show of power, whilst man has absorbed all the
reality into himself" .No where does God say that he made any9 distinction between us,
as moral and intelligent beings (italics and eapitals m on grnal)

Grimke criticizes men, and her contemporary culture at large, for distorting God’s word and
making a big deal of the differences between men and women when her read of the Bible
reveals a God who values all humans equally. She is offended by the idea that women
should be dependent on men, and she regrets that women are satisfied serving men instead
of God. In 1853, she was more optimistic about women’s futtues because of the success of
the coeducational common school movement led by Horace Mann. She claimed, “He

[Horace Mann] will not help the cause of women greatly, but his efforts to educate her will

 

9‘ Tyack and Hansot, 1990, p. 29.
Tyack and Hansot, 1990, p. 28.
’8 Rappaport, 1990, p. 57-58.

110

do greater work than he anticipates. Prepare woman for duty and usefulness, and she will
laugh at any boundaries man may set for her)”9

At this time there was little separation between those who advocated “coeducation”
and those who advocated “women’s education.” The debate rages today about whether or
not it is better to educate girls with boys or separately in all-girls’ classes; contemporary
educators assume that girls should be educated and ask where and how. In the mid-
nineteenth century there was still not a consensus that girls should be educated beyond the
basic subjects, and those who advocated coeducation and those who advocated women’s
separate education were often allies against those who worried that educating women,

anywhere anyhow, might be injurious to the women and to the larger society.

Female Seminaries ‘

King’s pedagogy, in the classroom, professional association, or woman’s club, was
rooted in the ideas and influence of the female seminaries. Preceptress Abigail Rogers and
many of King’s classmates and colleagues had attended or taught at female seminaries. It
is important to understand the history of the female serrrinaries in order to have a better
sense of the ideas that shaped the early Normal School.

. Many advocates of women's education were activists in the evangelical religious
movements that swept the nation in the first half of the nineteenth century. The confidence
with which women asserted their moral mission to teach and to engage in social reform
outside the home was rooted in their participation in a powerful religious revival known as
the second Great Awakening.'°° These religious revivals have been described as:

a response to the increased marginalization of both women and religion in American
politieal and economic life. As the growing commercial economy surged to meet new
demands and opportunities, older, artisanal ways of living and working were slowly

crushed. The boom and bust of capitalist expansion sidelined both home and religion
which had previously been at the center of political and economic life. In alliance with

 

9’ Bimey, 1885, p. 275.
"’° Evans, 1989, p. 72.

111

-.

-“-~I

ministers, middle class women resisted this process and reasserted moral values through
the process of conversion.”1

The most persuasive and influential justifications for women's education came from those
who created female senrinaries: Catharine Beecher, Emma Willard, and Mary Lyon.102
They wanted to train women to exercise their influence over children not only as republican
mothers but also as enlightened teachers. Thus, the teaching profession enlarged women’s
public activities in the name of their domesticand moral responsibilities.103

Catharine Beecher believed that it was women's moral mission in a democratic
society to extend their sphere beyond the home and into the public arena. Mary Lyon,
founder of Mount Holyoke Seminary, now College, drew on women's religious and gender
solidarity to fund schools for teachers. She proposed a school for girls, “based entirely on
Christian principles” and intended for “those who are in the middle walks of life.” She
argued: “this work of supplying teachers is a great work, and it must be done, or our
country is lost, and the world will remain unconverted.”‘°" Sanctified by religious and
political values, teaching offered a meager but respectable livelihood for single women.
Mary Lyon and other founders of female seminaries saw teaching as a sacred cause for the
evangelical young women they trained.”

The women who ran female seminaries sought to extend the scope of women's
contributions to society, and to employ their talents wisely, while still preserving Victorian
notions of women's sphere.”6 Emma Willard argued not only that women were
“naturally” suited to teach, but also that they could be hired at lower salaries in the
common schools and that their employment would free more men to increase the wealth of

the nation.’°7 “The successful rationale for improving women's minds thus was founded

 

1‘” Evans, 1989, p. 73.
"’2 Tyack and Hansot, 1990, p. 37.
"’3 Evans, 1989, p. 70.
'0’ Evans, 1989, p. 72.
“’5 Tyack and Hansot, 1990, p. 43.
"’6 Tyack and Hansot, 1982, p. 67.
“’7 Cott, 1977, p. 121.

112

on, not opposed to, women's domestic occupation and maternal destiny.”"’8 In 1818 in her
bold appeal to the Legislature for public support for a female seminary, Willard claimed that
nature had designed women to be teachers of the young: “She has given us, in greater
degree than men, the gentle arts of insinuation, to soften their minds, and fit them to receive
impressions...a greater quickness of invention...and more patience.” Unlike men, women
had no “higher pecuniary object” or ambition than to teach and “could afford to do it
cheaper.”"’9
The quality of seminary education varied greatly, but some of the best schools
offered a rigorous curriculum, featuring reading, writing, scriptural study, grammar,
mathematics, composition, arithmetic, history, geography, French, Latin, and natural history.
They gave young women “a strong sense of the strength of their minds, the duties imposed

”110

on them by religion, and the empowering ideal of sisterhood. The devoutly religious
founders of many women's academics and seminaries demanded high standards of conduct
and disciplined students sternly. “Antebellum academies trained women to think and
reflect, gave them access to books, companionship, and the example of their teachers, while
preparing them to earn a living.”1 ”
Rev. Samuel Fisher of Lyman Beecher’s Lane Seminary spoke at the first
anniversary of the founding of Western Female Seminary in Oxford, OH. He described the
type of woman and education the Female Seminary provided. This sort of education was
for the “earnest—minded woman, inspired with lofty aims, conscious of power for good . . .
no longer a passive recipient or a partially developed flower, but part of the active forces
which work for a grand end.”l ‘2 Female seminary women were to be active participants in

shaping God’s kingdom.

 

”8 Cott, 1977, p. 125.

“’9 Tyack and Hansot, 1990, p. 42.
“° Tyack and Hansot, 1982, p. 67.
111 Gordon, 1990, . 15.

“2 Nash, 1996, p. .

113

The alumnae of the most influential female seminaries created and sustained a
women's network that stretched across the country. As Anne Error Scott has shown, Emma
Willard

_ deliberately organized and kept alive a network composed of a ‘series of concentric
circles,’ with herself at the center and formalized in the Willard Association for the
Mutual Improvement of Teachers. The hub of the group was the small circle of faithful
teachers at Troy Female Seminary; next came the women who had themselves founded
or taught in girls' aeademies; and finally, there were thousands of former students,
scattered across the nation and often active in common-school associations in their local
communities while raising families or pursuing careers.113

Female seminaries pioneered training teachers for the public schools well before the first
public normal schools were established. Willard opened her Troy Female Seminary, now
Emma Willard School, an elite college preparatory boarding school for girls, in 1821.
Through their widespread networks of educated women and their male allies, the women
founders and principals placed their graduates in teaching positions and encouraged the
creation of secondary schools for women and the spread of coeducational public schools.
“These women and their alumnae were pedagogical Jenny Appleseeds, planting schools

across the nation.”1 1"

Kalamazoo, Oberlin, and the “Dangerous Experiment” at the University of Michigan
In 1863 King left her job as Principal in Lansing because she was not willing to do
“a man’s work for women’s pay.”l ‘5 King accepted a job at Kalamazoo College.’ ‘6
James Andrus Stone and Lucinda Hinsdale Stone had been asked to leave Kalamazoo
College, and John M. Gregory, State Superintendent of Public Instruction, took over the
Principalship and called upon King to become Ladies’ Principal. The Stones had been in
charge of the Baptist college since the days when the Kalamazoo school was one of the
University's branch schools. It is likely King knew the Stones through mutual friends.
King, Gregory, and Daniel Mam, a professor at Kalamazoo, and later at the normal school
"3 Tyack and Hansot, 1982, p. 66-67.
“‘ Tyack and Hansot, 1990, p. 43

“5 Normal News, 1895.
“6 Kalamazoo College Catalogue, 1865-6.

 

114

in Ypsilanti, were associates of the Stone’s through the State Teachers’ Association.
Gregory and King were not chosen to make changes at Kalamazoo College but to continue
the good work that the Stones had started. King, a single woman teacher, was able to do
things that Mrs. Stone, a wife and mother, could not.117

The Stones were advocates of coeducation and strong abolitionists. Lucinda Stone
was principal of the Ladies Department until her husband's ouster. Mr. Stone was accused
of inappropriate behavior; it seems he was having an affair with, or at least making advances
toward, a female student. He and his wife denied that this was true, and she wrote a scathing
and extensive letter detailing her analysis of his unfair dismissal. Her thesis was that people
who could not abide their feminist beliefs and practices wrongly accused him.1 ‘8

Whatever the case about Stone’s alleged improprieties, he and his wife had many
allies in the education community. Even directly after the scandal, Kalamazoo College
continued to be well run, and the cause for coeducation at the University of Michigan only
grew stronger. The whole scandal with the Baptists seems to pale in comparison to the
politieal fight for coeducation at the University. Dr. Stone became editor of The
Kalamazoo Telegraph and continued his spirited defense of coeducation, and in 1867, he
“roundly criticized the University of Michigan’s President Haven's scheme for a
segregated women's college)” '9

The debate about whether women should be admitted to the University of Michigan
was a hot one, but it was rarely mentioned that the state was educating men and women
together quite nicely fifteen miles down the road in Ypsilanti. “The fact that coeducation
existed in the primary and secondary schools of the state was dismissed as a simple matter
of economy. For the same reason, the report pointed out, women were admitted to the State
Normal School: it was cheaper to hire them as teachers.””° Economic efficiency made
higher education possible for women who wanted to teach. Beeause the Normal was
“7 Goodsell and Dunbar, 1933.
“3 Stone, 1868.

“9 McGuigan, 1970, p. 29.
m McGuigan, 1970, p. 19.

 

115

considered “sub-collegiate” it was able to serve girls in the fashion of the common schools
without calling attention to itself as a place that provided higher education to women.
Students who used the Normal as post-high school professional education were able to
prepare for public and professional life in a nurturing coeducational environment,
reminiscent of the common schools. This situation allowed women teachers to prepare for
potentially liberating intellectual life in a seemingly conservative place.

This is not to say that the Normal School was immune from gender-based
stereotypes in the larger society. For example, the railroad was easily able to secure funding
early on for a line between Ypsilanti and Ann Arbor, because the men at the University of
Michigan wanted to travel to the Normal School for dates)“

In May of 1855 the liberal-minded State Teachers’ Association in Michigan held
their annual meeting in Ann Arbor. It was reportedly “the most interesting and important
ever held by this body.”122 Many female secondary school teachers were among its
members. Professor Daniel Putnam of Kalamazoo presented all the arguments against
coeducation, which he preceded to refute one by one, concluding with a ringing
recommendation that “the system...be allowed to have a fair and impartial trial in the highest
institution of the State,” namely at the University.”3

Through the next two decades, the regents, legislature, and people of the state
debated the issue. The regents appointed a committee to study the advisability of
coeducation. They wrote for advice to college administrators across the country. It might
not come as a surprise that the administrators at Harvard, Princeton, and Yale did not
support the idea. But even Finney, president of Oberlin, and Mann, president of Antioch
(both coeducational institutions), issued warnings. They indicated that their efforts to

elevate college life through women's superior morality were unsuccessful, and that constant

 

'2‘ as per Maria Davis, archivist, EMU
122 McGuigan, 1970, p. 16.
123 McGuigan, 1970, p. 16.

116

..,‘

vigilance was needed to supervise the women. Frnney doubted the success of coeducation
in any atmosphere less evangelical than Oberlin's.”"

In 1837 Oberlin College in Ohio had enrolled four female freshmen and thus
inaugurated coedueational higher education for women'” Many Oberlin graduates taught
at the Michigan State Normal School, and in the early years the two institutions shared the
same evangelical commitments. For example, Normal School Professor Frederic H. Pease
was son of Peter P. Pease and Ruth Crocker Pease who were among the founders of
Oberlin College. At the age of eighteen Young Pease left Oberlin and traveled with E. M.
Foote, an early Normal School Professor in the department of music, holding musical
conventions. In 1859 he settled in Ypsilanti as teacher of the piano, and, in 1863, he was
appointed Professor of Music in the Normal School.”° His parents, and their colleagues
who founded Oberlin, wanted men to live up to women's higher social and moral
standards.127 The evangelical college, with its philosophical commitment to equality of
intellect, while still respecting the doctrine of separate spheres, provided a social and
edueational atmosphere different from, and perhaps superior to, that in men's colleges or
women‘s seminaries. At coeducational Oberlin they created the intellectualism and scholarly
atmosphere of the all-male college, and avoided what they considered the immoral social
atmosphere often associated with the all-male fraternity. At Oberlin, “religious comrrritrnent
and an ethic of simplicity dominated, [and] men and women students enjoyed an informal
social life, unencumbered by the college way.”128

By including women, the college did not lower the academic requirements.
Women’s admittance simply justified the strict rules and Christian deportment the college
required Women were not completely integrated, and separatism indicated respect for
women's special qualities.”9
124 Gordon, 1990, p. 22.

”5 Rudolph, 1962, p. 31 1
'26 Putnam, 1899, p. 173.
”7 Gordon, 1990, p. 18.

”8 Horowitz, 1987, p. 123-4.
'29 Gordon, 1990, p. 18.

 

117

To its militant Christian founders, Oberlin College in Ohio was “God's College.” Here
men and women, white and black, were to be edueated together to carry out God's cause
on earth. Even though coeducation seemed an aberration to those who believed in
maintaining the separate male and female spheres of society, Oberlin's academic
community operated as a religious family in which both sexes retained their distinctive
roles. Not all classes were joint; a less demanding literary course was usually taken by
the women, but it was still superior to that of most academies. Significantly, Oberlin
had a Female Department, whose heads had trained in New England academies under
Mary Lyon or Zilpah Grant.”°

Oberlin supported the creation of a woman’s culture typieal of the all-female seminary that

valued women’s needs and interests as learners and teachers.

When Oberlin’s President Finney responded to the regents at the University of
Michigan, he seemed to frown upon coeducation, but he was head of a school that had
admitted women decades ago and had a proud coeducational heritage. His support of
coeducation at Oberlin but not at the University of Michigan makes me wonder if he was
commenting on the nature of the university and the orientations of the faculty and
administration more than on the nature of woman or problems inherent in coeducation.
Perhaps if he had been asked what it would take to build an institution that took coeducation
seriously, rather than what he thought of adding women to the existing institution, he would
have answered differently. Was the regents’ decision “dangerous” because of what
women might do to the university or beeause of what the university might do to women?
When Frnney was asked if he thought coeducation would be “successful,” what did his
definition of successful include? Did he think they were asking him if women could handle
the academic rigor? Did he think they were asking him if he thought women should be
subjected to the sexist orientations of collegiate men and their professors? Did he think they
were asking him if he thought the university could handle what it would need to do in order
to do coeducation well? One interpretation is that Oberlin could do what they needed to do
in order to do coeducation well, but, given what Finney knew about Ann Arbor, he did not

think they could.

 

‘3" Solomon, 1985, p. 21.

118

Even though “the State Superintendent of Public Instruction earnestly advocated the
right of women to a university education, on the ground that the founding state statute
opened the university “to all persons resident of this state,” and claiming that women were
“persons,”131 at first the University of Michigan decided not to admit women. The regents'
report on the Admission of Females in 1858 stated, “It is regarded as a doubtful
experiment, by some as a very dangerous experiment . . . certain to be ruinous to the young
ladies who should avail themselves of it .. . and disastrous to the institution which should
carry it out.”‘32 The debate revolved around three main questions: 1) whether the intellect
of woman was capable of advanced learning, 2) whether women's physical constitution
could stand the rigors of higher education, and 3) whether it was both a mistake and a waste
to educate women for anything but their proper sphere.133 On October 2, 1858, The
Detroit Free Press summarized the committee's findings on the probable results of
admitting women: “It would tend to unwoman the woman and unman the man—it would
tend to produce confusion, and all confusion produces corruption.”'3"

This sort of view was wide spread and supposedly research-based. In 1873, Dr.
Edward H. Clarke, a Massachusetts physician, formerly on the medical staff at Harvard
College, wrote Sex in Education or A Fair Chance for Girls, a book which detailed how
women's health suffered from the strain of competitive study with men.135 He claimed that
a girl could not endure the rigors of coeducation “and retain uninjured health and a future
secure fiom neuralgia, uterine disease, hysteria, and other derangements of the nervous
system, if she follows the Same method that boys are trained in.”‘” Scholarship such as
this served to reinforce conservative worries that coeducation of the sexes was associated
with the woman's movement, unconforming women, the free love movement, and, eventually,
women’s suffrage.

”‘ McGuigan, 1970, p. 19.
'32 McGuigan, 1970.

”3 McGuigan, 1970, p. 3.
‘3‘ McGuigan, 1970, p. 22

”5 Clarke, 1875.
'36 McGuigan, 1970, p. 54 quoted from: Edward H. Clarke, 1875 p. 47.

 

119

e-x

There was a large informal network of educators and activists working across the
country to establish common schools, normal schools, and colleges that served boys and
girls together in a way that the reformers understood to be in the best interests of the
democratic nation. For example, Richard Edwards, graduate of Bridgewater Normal,
Principal of Salem Normal (two of the country’s first normal schools, both in
Massachusetts), founder of St. Louis (Missouri) High School’s Normal Department, and
President of Illinois State Normal University, was an outspoken advocate of coeducationm
In Michigan, Abigail Rogers, first Preceptress at the Michigan State Normal School,
established the Michigan Female Seminary in Lansing where she prepared girls for
advanced study.’38 Daniel Putnam, professor and principal at the Michigan State Normal
School, worked with Rogers and the Stones from Kalamazoo in their campaign for
coeducation at the University of Michigan.

By the time women had been admitted to the University of Michigan, King was
teaching at the high school in Flint. She served on the State Teacher’s Association at the
same time as Alice Freeman Palmer, a young teacher who went on to graduate from the
University of Michigan and become President of Wellesley College.139 One of King’s
students in Flint, Angie Chapin, was also one of the first women admitted to the University
of Michigan. She subsequently taught Greek as one of Wellesley College’s many early

professors from Michigan.”0

Reformers

Some women were truly the companions, not the satellites, of men. King was
directly and indirectly mentored by a generation of highly skilled and confident women who
were active in social movements, taught and managed schools, and wrote and spoke
publicly. The one monument to ante-bellum Adrian, Michigan, where King spent her
'37 Loomis, 1932.
’38 Rogers, Famous Michigan Women.

”9 Bordin, 1993.
"° Aurora, 1893, p. 38; Palmieri, 1995.

 

120

adolescence, which stands in the city today, is a statue of a woman-anti-slavery leader

Laura Haviland'“ Haviland’s friend and co-worker on the Underground Railroad, poet

Elizabeth Margaret Chandler, made it clear that it was appropriate, and maybe even God’s

design, that women be involved in public debate about slavery:
To plead for the miserable, to endeavor to alleviate the bitterness of their destiny, and to
soften the stern bosoms of their oppressors into gentleness and mercy, can never be
unfeminine or unbefitting the delicacy of woman! She does not advocate Emancipation
because slavery is at variance with the political interests of the state, but because it is an
outrage against humanity and morality and religion; because it is criminal, and her own
supineness makes her a Sharer in crime; and because a great number of her own sex are
among its victims...”2

King’s reform-minded foremothers worked for humanity, morality, and religion.

Not only in Adrian, but also across the country, a generation of men and women
were agitating for change during King’s formative years."3 In addition, the work of
women like Sarah and Angelina Grimke, Sojourner Truth, Dorothea Dix, Elizabeth Cady
Stanton and Susan B. Anthony could exercise a powerful influence, even from afar, on a
young woman with access to newspapers and traveling orators.‘“

Sometimes directly, through the pursuit of education for socio-economic
advancement and personal fulfillment, and sometimes indirectly, through participation in the
single-sex activities of the woman’s sphere, many young women became educated, taught
school, and were active in public life. Lynn Gordon explains how the separate spheres of
Victorian culture never fully described the realities of life, even for the white urban middle
classes of the northeast, but they represented important cultural norms.

Out of women's domestic work and family concerns grew a women's culture,
oppositional to the cult of the self-made, individualistic, aggressive nineteenth century

 

l"'Haviland, YEAR, A Woman ’s Lifework, (her autobiography).

1“Written in 1829, quoted in pamphlet fiom Hazelbank (reference to Lundy, The Poetical
works of Elizabeth Margaret Chandler, 1836.) (?)

“'3 For example, all of the following were born within a couple of years of King: Henry
Adams (historian), John Muir (naturalist), Liliuokalani (Hawaiian queen), Victoria
Woodhull (reformer, suffragette, mystical socialist, first woman to run for US president in
1872), John D. Rockefeller, Frances Willard (W CTU), J .P. Morgan, Grover Cleveland,
Rebecca Ann Felton (first woman seated in the U.S. Senate), Andrew Carnegie, Mark
Twain, William Torrey Harris (edueator/philosopher), Charles Kendall Adams (U of M
historian— communicated with King). and Charles Elliot (president of Harvard).
1""Walters, 1978, Rappaport, 1990 and Du Bois, 1978.

121

male. Victorian women's culture upheld religion, emotion, community, and the ties

among generations of female relatives and friends. Eventually, some used the values of

women's culture to enter social reform and women's rights movements by arguing that

women's values would benefit the larger society as well as the home. Victorian

separatism thuslgrovided a power base and rationale for middle-class women's entrance

rnto public life.
Many middle class white women entered into public life in the second half of the nineteenth
century. Joyce Antler claims Lucy Sprague Mitchell subscribed to “feminism as life
process”--a personal, rather than collective, attempt by women to mold their destinies in the
world and achieve autonomy.“ Dorethea Dix, proponent of asylums, who won many of
her victories by skillful agitation, trusted politicians and the polities] system and was very
good at working through it. Her respectability and moderate demeanor drew, rather than
alienated, influential people.147 Geraldine Clifford’s study of Maria Louise Sanford
revealed that she viewed woman's suffrage not in terms of equality of rights or privileges but
as another opportunity to be of better service in the cause of social reform.148 Women’s
historian, Mary Beard remarked that the notion of “careers” for women trivialized their
operations. Instead of choosing a term that connoted “capitalistic entrepreneurs or retainers
of the bourgeoisie,” Beard preferred to think of her “life work.””9

The 1830s, when King was born, is a decade which women’s historian Nancy Cott

tells us presents a paradox in the “progress” of women's history in the United States.
During that time, an argument surfaced between what Cott calls, “two seemingly
contradictory visions of women's relation to society: the ideology of domesticity, which gave
women a limited and sex-specific role to play, primarily in the home; and feminism, which
attempted to remove sex-specific limits on women's opportunities and capacities.”'5° Cott
divides feminist historians' work into three successive interpretative camps. The first,
primarily derived from published didactic literature about woman's place and the home, saw

 

”5 Gordon, 1990, p. 4.
1“ Antler, 1992, p.110.
'47 Walters, 1978, p. 201.
“8 Clifford, 1989, p. 62.
14’ Cott, 1991, p. 339.
'50 Con, 1977.

122

women as victims, or prisoners, of an ideology of domesticity that was imposed on them in
order to serve men's view of social utility and order. The second, primarily derived from the
published writings of women authors, observed that women made use of the ideology of
domesticity for their own purposes—to advance their educational opportunities and gain
influence or satisfaction. The third, primarily derived from the private documents of non-
famous women, viewed women's sphere as the basis for a subculture among women that
fortned a source of strength and identity and afforded supportive sisterly relations.” 1

At first glance, my work on King fits into both the second and third categories, as
my research was derived from both the published writings and the private documents of a
not-so-famous woman author. And, as Cott predicts, King advanced her educational
Opportunities, gained influence, was confident, and participated in multiple communities,
single-sex and coeducational. However, one essential difference exists. King’s strength
did not derive from a subculture of women, nor did she make use of the ideology of
domesticity for her own satisfaction. Instead, King’s strength came from the Lord, and

Whatever work she did was for His glory. King tells us,

He who habitually turns to the Divine Spirit had laid hold of infinite resources.
Judgment, reason, sense, will all have their natural play, but no one can know what
quickening and renewing power works through them. The faculties are not dwarfed but
enlarged, the personality is not destroyed but intensified and made luminous with the
shining out of the truth. . . .If everyone could recognize the spirit of God within as the
all-formative power of his life. . .the power of life would appear most gloriously."2

King’s religion, more than her relationships with other women, fueled her. Being in
community with others was an important part of her religion, so the friendships she
deVeIoped and the mentoring she performed was significant. mm, because she believed
that the Divine Spirit was in her, King’s daily work was religious, and, in a very true sense, a

divine service.”3

\

151

152 Con, 1977, p. 197.
153 I(arrg,189’7,p.29-30.UM
ng, 1897, p. 33. UM

123

“An Unfortunate Oversight in One Direction””‘: The Transformation from Normal
School to Normal College

The way King thought about teaching and life was reflected in the organization and
‘ management of the mid-nineteenth century Normal School, but by the turn of the century, as
the School became a College, the structure and purpose of the institution had changed. It is
worthwhile to look at the changes that occuned at the Michigan State Normal School
around the turn of the century and to ask how these changes influenced the educational and
professional lives of women teachers and what these changes reveal about changing notions
of masculinity and femininity and their effect on teacher education. Professor Isbell wrote
about the changes at the Michigan State Normal School:
The spirit of the school was from the first marked by a strong sense of pride of mission.
In the earlier years, this was colored by a moral and religious zest. As the curriculum
grew and the social climate changed, the emphasis became more secular, the spirit of
scientific inquiry more pronounced” ..Though the faculty aspired for years to make the
institution a strictly professional school“ ..tlre experiment failed, and the school
developed a high grade liberal arts curriculum that lead to its becoming a college.”
Adaptability and willingness to meet the needs of the state are cited as reasons why the
Normal School changed. While these changes have generally been considered positive
progress, they might also signal a lack of emphasis on meeting the needs of individuals,
especially women, and therefore be, in one sense, actually a step backwards. Tyack and
Hansot claim that some reforms that supposedly had little to do with gender actually
significantly altered the two sexes’ educational opportunities.”6 The decision to move from
normal school to college was one of these reforms; it yielded unintended gender effects.
Changing conceptions of gender in the 18908 were concurrent with changing
conceptions of teacher education. Joan Scott claims that “attention to gender is often not

99157

explicit, but it is nonetheless a crucial part of the organization of equality and inequality.

 

”“ Putnam, 1899p 1.25
"5 Isbell, E. (197 1) A History of Eastern Michigan University. p. xiii
"6 David Tyack and Elisabeth Hansot, “Silence and Policy Talk: Historical Puzzles about
gender and education. ” Educational Researcher, April 1988, p. 3341.

7Joan Wallach Scott, Gender and the Politics of History, (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1988). 48.

124

At the tum of the century, the Michigan State Normal School, like many of the old ante-
bellum colleges, declined in some respects, mostly those that came to be associated with
femininity. However, in other respects, mostly those that came to be associated with
masculinity, the Normal School, like the newly formed research universities, thrived.

In 1928, Robert Cooley Angell, a young sociologist at the University of Michigan,
published The Campus: A Study of Contemporary undergraduate Life in the American
University. He noted “There is also a subtle feeling that a person who is meek, gentle, and
unusually religious is in some sense effenrinate and unfit to cope with the problems of full-
blooded men.” He also observed: “service has been felt in our civilization to be a
particularly feminine function.” In fact, campus women remained more active in their
religious practice and slightly more conservative in their religious and social views, but in
the emerging hedonistic student culture men’s dominance was still widely assmned, so that
men were seen as setting the trends.158

Surveys, like James Leuba’s 1916 study, consistently showed substantially higher
rates of active church participation among college women than among college men or, for
that matter, among American women generally, compared to American men. Leuba’s
interpretation was simply that, for whatever reasons, “during the years of adolescent self-
affirmation the desires for intellectual freedom and for a rational organization of opinions
and conduct are in young women more effectively balked than in young men by the tender
ties of the home and the authority of the church?”9 Leuba found that the rate of belief was
considerably higher in the one teacher’s college he studied than at other leading colleges.
Rather than pursue this, he was tempted to throw out the data from the normal school.160
Investigation of the religious persuasions of Normal College students and their professors
is beyond the purview of this study, but if, in 1916, at the Michigan State Normal College,

 

"8 Marsden, 1994, p. 344. '

"9 Marsden, 1994, p. 295. James Leuba was a professor of psychology at Bryn Mawr
College, had been a student of G. Stanley Hall, and, in 1916, published The Belief in God
and Immortality: A Psychological, Anthropological and Statistical Study.

16° Marsden, 1994, p. 295.

125

or

there were still many Christian women who viewed their life work through the same
religious lens that King did sixty years earlier, then they lost as the Normal School became
a college.

The early normal school was a place where women students could receive an
education that provided them with a wide range of career opportunities and the possibility
for advancement in the field of education. For example, with only a normal education King
served as an elementary and secondary teacher, college professor, principal, superintendent,
librarian, preceptress and scholar. The institutional changes associated with the move from
normal school to college limited, rather than expanded, the educational and career

opportunities for women teachers.
At the same time that the nature of normal education was changing, the educational

system was changing. Many districts began to require normal education and/or certificates
in order to teach. By the turn of the century, there were separate requirements for
elementary, rural, secondary, and urban teachers, and even others for administrators. These
still varied a great deal throughout the state, but the general movement was toward more
credentialism. At the time that this hierarchical categorizing of positions within the schools
was taking place, the Normal School was also sorting people by their intended positions.
When the sorting was finished, more women ended up on the bottom, in rural elementary
schools, and more men on the top, in city high schools and as administrators."51
Additionally, the system became less fluid; it was harder to switch from being a teacher in a
0ne-r'oom school to being a principal and back to a high school classroom and on to
s“Perintendent, as King had done. With increased requirements and degrees necessary to
take on additional responsibilities, educators’ professional options began to be defined by
what education they received rather than what experience they had or how successful they
Were. The changes that took place as the Normal School became a college made it difficult

 

l\
6 1

126

(‘0’—

I;

for women to receive an equal teacher education, and, as a result, the changes also limited
women’s career options.

The early history of schools of education in elite, graduate—oriented universities is
closely related to the history of the normal schools, as these research universities are the
models toward which the new normal colleges gravitated.162 The major theme of Clifford
and Guthrie’s Ed School is the lack of fit between schools of education at elite research
universities and the teachers and the schools that they supposedly serve. Clifford and
Guthrie argue, “Schools of education...have become ensnarled improvidentially in the
academic and political cultures of their institutions and have neglected their professional
allegiances.”“53 Additionally, becoming more distant from public schools did not ease
teacher educators’ entry into the scholarly community of the university. Shunned by their
colleagues in arts and letters, “schools of education have had to cope as ‘feminine’

agencies in a masculine dominated world?”4
As normal schools became more multi-purpose, they became more masculine.‘°5
The Michigan State Normal School was once not such a masculine dominated world; in the
early days it was a place where men and women together could pursue a profession that was
not yet “feminized,” in ways that were, at the time, more gender neutral. As masculinity
became to be associated with the values and outlooks of the modem university, the older
Ways of knowing and qualities of normal education became associated with femininity.
When the normal college became a masculine dominated world, its feminine aspects were
devalued. At the turn of the century Michigan State Normal College students were more
likely than their earlier Normal School counterparts to be divided by sex. This was not
because a separate spheres ideology that sought to serve the special needs of each group
fomd their division, but because there were certain majors and extracurricular activities that
S"ilpposedly appealed more to women than to men and vice versa.

\
l ‘2 Clifford, 1986, p. 427- 466 and Clifford and Guthrie, 1988.

f ‘3 Clifford and Guthrie, 1988, p. 3.
CliffordandGuthrie, 1988, p. 325. .

l
'55 Altenbaugh, 1990, p. 179.

127

 

L. 4'

New “natural” sex differences are another kind of specialization. All of this was

very different than the early Normal School where men and women together studied the
exact same course of study. In the 1890s single sex fraternities and sororities replaced the

only student organization of the 1850s—the coeducational Lyceum.

With the rapid growth of the College [Normal School] the purpose of these

organizations seemed to be more suitably filled by oratorical and debating classes, and

socially their place has been taken by the sororities and fraternities.166
Charlotte, King’s niece, joined Pi Kappa Sigma, an all women’s sorority."S7 On the Zeta
Phi page of the 1899 yearbook it states, “Greeks and Barbarians [students who are not in
fraternities or sororities] already divide the Normal College world.” The students
characterized the changes in their school as “advances in pedagogic and scholastic lines,”
but they realized that “new ideals in social college life” came also.168 Rather than the
serious devotion to teaching and learning that pervaded the early Normal School, young
peOple who came to study at the Normal College around the turn of the century experienced
dances, football games, and other aspects of what has come to be expected on United States
college campuses. A decline in the life of the mind, at least for women, accompanied the
social division by sex.

During the last two decades of the nineteenth century, as the Michigan State Normal

801100] became a college, it no longer provided special mentoring for women. Instead of
Pursuing a life of the mind and of service to others in an environment of relative gender
eqllity, women in the twentiethocentury college experienced subordinate roles as Greek
organizations and collegiate men’s athletics began to define student life.

King’s professional life spanned the decades from the early normal—where women
Stu<.‘lents’ separate sphere made possible not only their entrance into the teaching profession
but their special care as normal students—to the coeducation of the normal college—where
women’s special supports were abolished and coeducation included sex—equity in rhetoric

 

N
66
l 67 Seventy-fifth Anniversary, 1927. p. 20.

l 68 Aurora, 1899.
Aurora, 1899.

128

but universalized men’s experiences in practice. In 1893 King’s Friday Conversations,
which had come to be a favorite of normal school women and ladies of Ypsilanti, were
discontinued. It is not clear in the documentary evidence why King’s conversations were
abolished, but the students, who dedicated their yearbook to her, made it clear that they were
missed. “It is regretted most sincerely by the young ladies of the College that they have

been discontinued. They feel they have suffered a great loss.”"9
As the school evolved into a college, the vestiges of women’s separate spheres were

no longer deemed necessary or desirable. The Normal College welcomed women, in fact a
vast majority of the students were women, so it wasn’t that they didn’t want to educate
women, it was just that the ways in which they thought it was appropriate to educate women
were changing. If this frustrated King, she did not leave any professional records that reveal
her dissatisfaction. My sense is that she believed she could serve women in the ways she
attempted to through these Conversations whether or not the college sponsored them. She
was known for inviting students to her home, and she remained active in the Ladies Literary
Society in Ypsilanti until her death.

Several years after the Conversations ceased, as part of the restructuring to become a
college, the position of Preceptress was also dropped. King remained an important member
01’ the faculty, but the female students no longer had a woman on the faculty assigned to
their special needs, and the principal/president no longer had a woman with whom he shared
administrative power and decision-making. Professor Daniel Putnam who was King’s

c0] league and friend in the State Teacher’s Association, at Kalamazoo College, and at the

Michigan State Normal School, wrote:

the study of the development of the intemal administration of the school leaves the
Impression of an unfortunate oversight in one direction. The first formal code of
regulations for the management of the institution provided that “the more immediate
Charge of the female pupils, in all matters pertaining to their sex, was confided to the
receptress.” In subsequent formal revisions and additions little or no direct allusion
been made to the special duties of the preceptress or to the special care and

 

EN
Aarora, 1893.

129

oversight of female students. At the same time the relative proportion of ladies in the

school has greatly increased.”°
It is ironic that the normal college became less interested in women students’ needs as they

got proportionally more of them.
Preceptress was a title associated with female senrinaries and other earlier forms of

women’s schooling, so it is understandable that as the Normal College grew figuratively
closer to the university it would want to drop its association with these supposedly inferior
forms of schooling. However, as the N ormal College apparently prospered, its young
women had to fit in, without the guidance and mentorship they previously enjoyed. In
coeducation women were supposedly equal, so it would have been contradictory to talk
about their “special care and oversight.” However well-intentioned this change in the
approach to educating female students, it may have been an oversight which made it harder
for women to develop the skills and dispositions necessary to excel as classroom teachers
and to advance to positions of power within the public school system.

Twelve years later, the old position of Preceptress was redesigned, a new woman
hired, and the title changed to Dean of Women. Professor Isbell explains, “The
Preceptress at the Normal School was first a teacher, then a counselor. The emphasis on
rules and regulations, discipline, and social counseling was to come much later, and with it a
Change in title from Preceptress to Dean of Women.””‘ The women of the Normal
COIIege got a Dean to manage them rather than a Preceptress to sponsor their growth as
women. Rather than admitting there were some differences between the sexes and letting
the Preceptress address the special needs of women, the college took away the only

uniquely woman’s job, refashioned it into a stereotypically-male management position, and,
to remain in the spirit of coeducation, hired a woman to fill it. Tyack and Strober have noted

that. “Women Teach and Men Manage,” but with regards to the Preceptress in the Normal
College, women were no longer allowed to teach, they too had to manage. Without women

m
x 7 . Putnam, 1899, p. 125.

Isbell, 1971, p. 305.

 

130

like King leading conversations or serving as Preceptress, one might think female students
would turn to the women on the faculty for support and guidance both in and out of the
classroom. However, across the country, the percentage of women faculty positions shrank

with the transition to universities.172

m
Altenbaugh, 1990, p. 1504.

131

Normal School Faculty, 1852-1899

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

RankI73 Men Women % Women
Professor 37 2 5%
Instructorm 15 18 55%
Assistant 20 33 p 62%
Lecturer 1
Assistant Teacher 1 4 80%
No Title Listed'" 2 4 67%
M.D./ Doctor 1
Reverend 1
Training School Asst Director 1
Training School Asst 4 100%
Training School Critic176 1 21 95%
Training School 4 100%

 

 

 

 

 

Table 2. Normal School Faculty

\
173

l 74 Adapted from Putnam, History of the Michigan State Normal School, lists pp. 197-202.
It is not clear what the distinction was between a lecturer, assistant, and instructor. All of
tohese positions were lower in rank than professor but required similar teaching duties. All
f the training school positions involved teaching little children and supervising student
Section.

f It is likely that the people whose titles were not listed were parttime teachers or adjunct

l 76 ully
A critic teacher was a combination of a mentor teacher and a field supervisor.

132

77 Men Women %women

       

Table 3. Department Breakdown

 

”7 Adapted from Putnam, pp. 197-202. Some teachers taught in more than one department,
thus the total number represented in this chart is larger than the total number of teachers,
and the true percentages may vary. Departments were added and department names
fhanged over this period, sol have grouped departments into areas of study for comparison.
8 All of the women in the Civil Government department were also in the History
department, chaired by King. I did not calculate the percent change in women over this time.

133

..e‘

-M-‘

Chapter4

“Control Over Her Own Powers“:
History, Pedagogy, and Professional Education

“The human mind is not a room finished and furnished at the outset,
neither a granary to be filled, but it is a power to be developed.”2

“There is no science which does not contribute its aid to professional skill. 'Everything
throws light upon on everything.‘ The great object of a collegiate education, preparatory
to the study of a profession, is to give that expansion and balance of the mental powers,
those liberal and comprehensive views, and those fine proportions of character, which are
not to be found in him whose ideas are always confined to one particular channel.”
The Yale Report of 18283

King’s thoughts about the purposes and goals of education, for common school
children and their teachers; her attention to disciplinary rigor; her desire to make history
come alive for her students; and the zeal with which she approached her professional life
all stemmed from her belief that she was answering God’s call and working out His will
in her life. Her moral comnritrnents did not impede her intellectually. Instead, her
religious faith provided a firm foundation from which she was able to pursue historical
analysis, interrogate texts, and construct pedagogical theory and practice.

In this chapter I begin by establishing once again the importance of the spiritual,
and specifically the Christ—centered, life for King. I then look at her beliefs about
teaching and learning. From here I move to her special love and professional focus—the
study of history. In particular, I establish that she was part of a diverse intellectual
community, both literally, through professional associations and journals, and
figuratively, through her extensive reading of history. I investigate how her ideas about
the philosophy of history informed her teaching practice and reveal that she was not only

¥

' King, 1893a, p. 17.
2 King, 1869, p. 61.
3 Goodchild and Wechsler. 1989, p. 174.

‘134

implementing ideas in her classroom well before they were articulated by other scholars,
but that she also published writings about her innovative pedagogical approaches.

Next I switch from a focus on King’s words to a look at King’s classical
curriculum and professional connections. What topics or ways of knowing might she
have been exposed to, and what people might she have had the occasion to meet, as a
Normal School student or public school teacher? In an effort to understand what helped
shape her academic and professional orientations, I investigate the ideas of three of the
original faculty members at the Michigan State Normal School and one of King’s female
classmates. Finally, 1 focus, yet again, on the changes that took place in education at the
end of the nineteenth century. I look at the changes in the Michigan State Teachers’
Association, the evolving institutional purpose(s) of the Normal School, and the
subsequent changes that took place in the history department and in the school as a
whole. I conclude this chapter by acknowledging that by the turn of the century Normal
School teachers and students would have understood the words “liberal” and “technical,”
even though their mid-century predecessors would never have carved up preparation for

their sacred profession in this way.

Christian Foundations

King was a Christian and she viewed teaching as her calling; therefore, Normal
School education was preparation for discipleship. King opens her 1869 article,
“Education Outside of Books,” in The Michigan Teacher with these remarks,

God seldom repeats Himself, yet is always repeating. The variety of His works is
equaled only by His power, yet it is a variety controlled by unchanging principles. In
the plant world, every flower has its own feature and expression, every tree its
characteristics which constitute its self. Among the many breathing things, the
variety is still more apparent. Every little fly and buzzing creature has its way of
expressing its own peculiar I. In the realm of the mind, the same truth is no less
evident. The thinking, willing, feeling human minds are no less diverse than the
bodies which enshrine them. Extravagant diversity! (emphasis in original)

135

Christian belief in a divine creator who is both powerful and endlessly creative forms the
basis for her investigation into how we can best encourage the development of the mind.4
King made it clear that while she believed “all nature was full of God,” that
loving nature and seeing God’s majesty in it was not enough.
I would not for a moment intimate that the heart of the child is regenerated when you
have awakened his love for or his appreciation of God in nature. “Ye must be born
again,” is written too plainly elsewhere.’
This quotation is written plainly in the Bible. In John, chapter three, verses five through
seven, Jesus explains to a man named Nicodemus that no one can see the kingdom of
God unless he is born again. In King’s Bible it read:
Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he
cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and
that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be
born again.6
Jesus teaches Nicodemus that he is not talking about physical life and death, but spiritual
life in relationship with the Son of God. When a person is born again, God brings life
into the inside of that person where meaninglessness has previously resided Life, in this
sense, is an eternal gift from above to the believer now. When life is born within
someone, fear is changed to trust, loneliness to companionship, pretense to openness? In
order to enter the kingdom of heaven you must be baptized and your heart renewed by the
Holy Spirit. ’
King also used the phrase “born again” when delivering her speech regarding

Christian Association. “How many Christians in our school-community hold St. Paul’s

¥

“ King, 1869, p. 61.

5 King, 1869, p. 68.

‘ KJV, John 3:54

’ Wilke, R. and 1., 1993. p. 162.

136

"1.:

conception? If any do not, they need to be born again out of still deeper depths of their
nature.”8 She means that if there are people who do not have a right understanding of the
gospel, they need to gain spiritual life through a relationship with Christ. The conception
of St. Paul’s that she refers to is “citizenship in a spiritual empire.” Paul saw the

Christian as “not one of a vast aggregate, but as part of an organic whole.”9
She goes to explain that religion, the ultimate goal, can be encouraged through

introducing the child to the beauty of the natural world around him. In this case, nature

study or scientific inquiry is also religious education.

Religion, pure and vital, is something more than sympathy with nature, or a devoted
love for all her forms. But the man’s character is formed by his loves. These loves
are awakened mainly by the tendency given to the motion in the heart of a child.
Before he can love God he must know him. The Christian teacher who sees God
everywhere, loves him in everything, whose life pulses beat in deep sympathy with
life in nature, must be able to lead the child to understand the thoughts of God as
written in the alphabet of nature. '0

King closes her article by saying that through observation of nature children may acquire
the gift from God of eternal life through Jesus Christ.“ “This positive knowledge gained
by observation, may prove the basis of that right knowledge which is life eternal; may
awaken a love which shall be the constraining power in the heart of the man.”12 When
King talks about life eternal she means that when a person has a relationship with Jesus
that they will live forever with Him, while they are on earth and when they are in heaven,
and they will not ever have to experience spiritual darkness or death. “For God so loved

the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not

\

8 .
9 King, 1897, p. 18
King, 1897, p. 18. King recommended reading Romans 12 to get a better understanding

,0 . s.
l 1 King, 1869, p. 68.
, Romans 6:23b. “the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

.113, 1869, p. 68

12

137

perish, but have everlasting life.”13 Clearly, if King believed this gospel message was

possible, she would want it for her students.
King taught, “The nature of Christian power is two fold. In the gospels it is

figured under the leaven and the mustard seed.”“ This is a direct reference to two
Biblical passages. First, “The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven, which a woman
took, and hid in the three measures of metal, till the whole was leavened.”‘5 leaven, or

yeast, is a symbol of growth. As it permeates a batch of dough, so the kingdom of
heaven spreads through a person’s life.16 The second follows:

The kingdom of heaven is like to a grain of mustard seed, which a man took and
sewed in his field: which indeed is the least of all seeds: but when it is grown, it is
the greatest among herbs, and becometh a tree, so that the birds of the air come and

lodge in the branches thereof. ‘7

This means that although the kingdom will seem to have an insignificant beginning, it
will eventually spread throughout the world. The mustard seed was the smallest seed
used by Palestinian farmers, and under favorable conditions the plant could reach ten feet
in height. Like the mustard tree, the kingdom of heaven will grow and expand So that it
can offer rest to all people.‘8 “The law and material of Christian Life is the Spirit of God
in the soul. The building up and the perfecting of life is the work of God. The only
l“fiasonable attitude of man towards this truth is unconditional acquiescence in the work.
While he ‘cannot add one cubit to his stature,’ he can secure the conditions favoring

growth and for this he alone is responsible.”19 King’s quotation is from Luke 12:25:

\

i: KJV, John 3:16.
King, 1897, p. 21.

13

,6 , Mt 31:33
1., , Mt 13:33.
,8 , Mt 13:31-32.
.9 , 13:31-32

King, 1897, p. 24.5.

138

“And which of you with taking thought can add to his stature one cubit?” Jesus tells his
disciples to stop worrying and give their lives over to God, as he is the one who must
direct them. King notes that although God is in charge, men are responsible for creating
the conditions that favor spiritual growth.

Teachers have a professional duty to create these conditions. The first condition
necessary for growth in Christian life, she claims, is “unflinching honesty in dealing with
the known truth.” It is dishonest to hold a spiritual truth as an intellectual conviction and
“not venture upon it as a rule of conduct.” “The lack of correspondence between truth
professed and truth lived is a fearful hindrance to growth in Christian life.”20 King
implores each student to be a truth-doer. “A second condition of growth in Christian life
is sustenance. . .The source of quickening, the source of renewal is the Divine Spirit in the
soul. Once this thought it realized in a man’s consciousness, he no longer finds himself
empty but rather ‘filled with the fullness of God.’”2'

King believed that what the prospective teachers needed was a deeper
Consciousness of Christ. “It is not belief about Him, but knowing Him that gives the
Power of life its impulsive force.”22 “It is not studying the word, or observing facts, or
bestowing alms, or making prayers that constitute the power of life. All these things—we
Strangely call them Christian duties—cannot in themselves sustain life. They were at

first as part of the ceremonial religion, only open doors whereat truth might enter. St

Paul calls the law a schoolmaster to bring us to Christ and adds that when we have Christ

r

2, King, 1897. p. 25.
22 I(ing, 1897, p. 26.
King 1897, p. 27.

 

139

we no longer need a school master.”23 King alludes to the ceremonial religion of the Old
Testament or the time before Christ. She then references Paul’s letter to the Galatians in
which he says, “Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we
might be justified by faith. But after that faith has come, we are no longer under a
schoolmaster?“ The expression schoolmaster translates the Greek paidagogos from
which the word pedagogue is derived. It refers to the personal slave-attendant who
accompanied a freebom boy wherever he went and exercised a certain amount of
discipline over him.” The teacher’s job is to bring the student to Christ, and, thereby,
render herself unnecessary, as the student now has his own relationship with Christ. This
sounds similar to King’s claim that “the whole aim of the Normal work is to give the
pupil control of his own powers?” Teacher educators should help future teachers
understand how to help themselves and to tap the power within themselves.

Goodrich closed his Memorial Address in honor of Julia Anne King by
Proclaiming that, “Her life, as I knew it, holds for me, as I believe it does for many
Others, a burning suggestion and bright inspiration to “Go thou and do likewise.”27 This
means that King inspired Goodrich to live according to Christ’s will. In the Parable of
the Good Samaritan, Jesus demonstrates what he means by, “love thy neighbor as
‘il'lyself?28 In the story, a Jewish man is robbed and badly wounded, and several people

Pass by and offer no assistance, but, finally, a Samaritan has compassion for him. It is

23\
King, 1897, p. 27.
, Gal 3:24-25
. , Gal 3:24.
11g, 1893a, p. 17.
OOdrich, 1919, p. 13.

KJV, Lk 10:27.

 

2.4
B
26
27
28

140

significant that Jews and Samaritans were openly hostile toward each other.29
Nonetheless, this Samaritan bandaged the wounded man, put him on his donkey, and took
him to an in where he paid for his lodging. Jesus explains that even though the
Samaritan is a hated foreigner, he is the one who is a true neighbor. Then he instructs:
“Go thou and do likewise.” 3° 2

King was a Christian who considered teaching her ministry. God’s word
permeates all of her writings, and in the piece I quote below she specifically calls on all
people in the community, not just parents of school children, to care about the schools.
She believed it was the responsibility of the entire body, working as an organic whole, to
educate children—not just our biological children, but all of God’s children. On August
1 7, 1877 , in The Charlotte Republican, Superintendent of Schools, Julia Anne King
Wrote an article titled, “The People and the Schools.” It posed the question: “What shall
a community do for its schools?” She then proceeded to answer the question. She

Wanted financial support from the community, but that was not her main point. Instead,

She wanted positive attitude and commitment.

The lack of adequate means of support to carry on the work is a damaging thing, but
it is not the most serious evil with which the schools have to contend. The success of

a school depends upon the public sentiment which expresses itself by other means
than appropriations. The prevailing sentiment of a community should be one of

interest and helpful sympathy.

She made it clear that you could not turn away from the schools once your own children

graduated. It was your duty, if not as a Christian, as a grown-up in a democracy, to

Support the children in your community.

 

;\
3o NIV,Lk10:31-33.
,Lk 10:37.

141

J (Ur

v“.

No citizen can well afford to say, “I have no interest in school matters because my
children are grown up.” Were his then the only ones? Has the man no neighbor’s
children? Can he afford to pay a premium on ignorance and consequent crime? For
self and humanity take an interest. The public school has to a certain extent the
making of the coming citizen. Support it even more by your hearty interest than by
the prompt payment of your school tax. By your involvement help and incite to

greater diligence."
King believed we must work out our faith in the world. Citizens, regardless of whether

they have children enrolled in school, have a responsibility to be involved in the lives of
the children in the community. It is not just a matter of being willing to sacrifice a little
property tax; it is a matter of fulfilling the call to be a good neighbor, humbling oneself,
and doing whatever one can to raise up children in the best ways possible. Teachers and
administrators cannot do the important work they are called to do without the financial
support of the entire community. Her motto was made the text of her baccalaureate,
“None of us liveth to himself alone.” Her life exemplified it. Her constant endeavor was
to get her students, and her community, to realize this fact in thought and in act.”32

King’s students carried her spirit with them as they went out into the professional
World of teaching. Because she cared about who they were as people as much as she did
about what scores they earned, she had a lasting influence. Her students described King
as “a gifted teacher with a sense of high vocation and a high sense of the vast importance
0f the educator’s work in creating high ideals, and giving form and substance and spirit to
the life of the day and the life yet to be.33 When remembering her life, two of her
StUdents and closest friends both commented on how she saw education as a redemptive
f0l‘ce. “Miss King constantly insisted on the supreme value of education as a redemptive

f0l‘ce in society. . . She was not wholly unconscious, moreover, that her best work lived in

the Spirit of her students.”34

\
31
32 771e Charlotte Republican, 1877, p. 8
33 Goodrich, 1919, p. 10.
34 Aurora, 1910, p. 32.
hell, 1919. In Memoriam.

 

142

King on Teaching
In King’s classes she taught history and teaching together. She started her courses

with a lesson titled “What is History?” and taught students about a variety of historians’
answers to this question.” Having examined philosophy of history, her classes delved
into the content that they would have to teach at various grade levels. For example, King
believed that elementary students should first study “primitive” societies, then, as the
students became more advanced, they would learn about more complex developments.
So in her classes they studied early hunter-gatherer groups first, then the rise of
agriculture and the beginnings of cities. Later they learned about the nation state,
monarchy, etc. While contemporary historians would no longer describe the progress of

civilization in these terms, King was applying what she knew about the discipline to her

classroom.

In 1878 the attempt was made to confine the work of the Normal School more closely
within professional lines. The “School of Observation and Practice” was constituted
a graded school, and, in its higher grades, was to do the academic work before done

in the Normal. This scheme, however plausible in theory, was found unsatisfactory in
practice, and after a trial of two years was abandoned. It was found impractical to
divorce the academic from the purely professional studies, as the element of training
gained from a model teacher in regular academic classes was lost. Since that time,
the academic and professional studies have been pursued side by side in the Normal.”6

Clifford found this to be true in her studies as well. “The earliest advocates of the
Systemic study of education possessed an organic view of the task before them: that the
academic pursuit of science and all that it promised was consistent with, and indeed
necessary to, strictly professional ends?” The normal schools’ model lessons and
Pl‘aCtice schools were closely connected to the master-apprentice system and to learning-

by ~in1itation, but this does not mean they emphasized teaching strategies devoid of

 

\

3s

36 Corbin, E. BHL

37 withington, 1893, p. 20.
Clifford, 1986, p. 427- 466.

143

u O'w

intellectual content. A good demonstration teacher would, through her example, teach

subject matter as well as method.

In 1883, a few years after King returned to the Normal School to teach, there were
beginning to be more debates about the proper ways to educate teachers. Universities
had new department of education, normal colleges were opening all over the country, and
there was tension about what good teacher preparation entailed. A member of the
Normal School community in Ypsilanti wrote an article to the school paper clarifying

what the issues were and accusing those who were critical of normal education of being
ignorant of its goals, purposes, and reality.

The nature and character of work done by Normal Schools seems to be generally
misunderstood. This is apparent from the fact that men occupying positions in
prominent educational institutions give expression to the idea that in Normal work the
empirical or mechanical element is uppermost in thought. Such conceptions of
Normal work display great ignorance of the fundamental laws which regulate the
training of teachers. The first essential of a good teacher is a thorough knowledge of
all subjects which he may be called upon to teach, and such other subjects as will give
a broad, deep and comprehensive idea of the nature of a true education. Thorough
Academic training then forms the foundation for future instruction.

A firm foundation in academics was valued by the Normal School, but clearly some
people had misrepresented this. The article goes on to describe how young teachers

Should learn about child psychology and then enter the practice school.

What the young teacher needs is to embody in an actual experience, under the
guidance and criticism of competent instructors, the knowledge of the principles of
teaching and managing acquired. We need in our schools teachers who can do, who
can bring results to pass, as well as those who know (emphasis in original). This
class of teachers is not the produCI of simple book learning, or of a knowledge of how
things should be done, but of well defined knowledge transformed into power by
actual practice, resulting in habits of systematic work and tact in making the best use
of all appliances within their reach.38

Knowledge transformed into power sounds like contemporary scholar Lee Shulman’s

“Pedagogical content knowledge.”39 King’s colleagues understood the importance of a

\

38
39 7714! Normal News, 1883, p. 9.
Wilson, Rickert, and Shulman, 1985.

 

144

In

1".

teacher developing a set of skills and dispositions that would allow her to blend that
special mix of knowing children, knowing methods, and knowing subject matter.
Learning the content, or even memorizing “how to” is not enough. The teacher must be
steeped in actual practice.
Teaching at the early Normal School, or teaching done as a result of a Normal
School experience, was lively and innovative for its time. King acquired her orientations
toward teaching at the Michigan State Normal School, and she further developed her
ideas about teaching children and teaching teachers as a Normal School professor. She
advocated a child-centered, inquiry-oriented, and socially transformative pedagogy for all
types of learners. King was respected for her “new methods.”“0
Common school students memorized The New England Primer, an early school
book meant to promote morality and indoctrinate children to religious belief and the
authority of God, family, and government. King’s students would have recognized these
values, but their understanding of them would have been much deeper and their sense of
why they were important would have been much more highly developed than the word
“indoctrinate” implies. King demanded that her students understand the things they were
studying, she attempted to connect subject matter with their interests, and she encouraged
them to think for themselves. This is a much different image than the hick’ry sticks and
rote lessons that characterize the lore of this era in educational history."l
King contributed to a discourse that took place in early teacher magazines in
Michigan about temhing composition. King believed teachers should build school

curriculum and instruction around children’s interests and activities. As an experienced

 

‘° Goodrich, 1919.

’1 For example, Barbara Finkelstein, who has written the most extensive examination of
nineteenth century pedagogy, claims “only rarely do we find allusions to the writing of
compositions, and in no instance could I find a description of a teacher who even hinted
to his students that writing was an instrument for conveying thoughts and ideas.”
Finkelstein, 1989, p.67.

145

teacher, writing to her colleagues in the State Teacher’s Association in an effort to help
them understand her position regarding the teaching of writing, King recalled her own
high school experience. She was called upon to write a composition on a subject with
which she was not conversant, so she boldly copied an extract from Longfellow and
handed it to the teacher.‘2 King claims,

If one has an experience of being taught in this way, he will at once agree that the

plan is futile. . . [the student] regards the requirement with perfect disgust, and

probably at last, in desperation or total depravity, quotes an extract. ..It is undeniably

difficult to know just what to say, and how just to say it, on a subject in which one

has not the slightest interest, and about which one knows next to nothing."3
The child’s ideas were of primary importance to King. King often remembered a
quotation she attributed to Webster when teaching composition: “All true power is in the
idea, not in the style.”“ Her experiences convinced her that “style is a dead thing to a
child, but wake him up with something to tell, and almost instinctively his thought puts
on a seemly garb of words?“ King believed that children’s ability to write well would
follow if they were genuinely interested in the subject matter. She advocated for having
children write about things they knew and cared about and then teaching them proper
usage, grammar, and such.

An example of this type of teaching follows. One fall morning King brought a

bunch of oak leaves into her class. On each leaf was a small gallnut. For several days
her students observed, compared, and questioned. They found the insect in its three

stages of growth, and were, with very little help, able to reach correct conclusions. King

chose not to have the students consult encyclopedias or other authoritative sources

 

42 Aurora, 1893, p. 37.
‘3 King, 1875. p. 76.
“’ King, 1 875.

‘5 King,1875.

146

because she found that it was difficult for students “to give their own forms to the thought
when the expression is once fixed.” But, when she finally asked them to write

something, every student was “eager to write all they knew about this queer little fly
living in a ball?“

Deve10ping thinking power was King’s primary objective. Her students enjoyed
writing because she created an environment that sparked their curiosity, and she allowed
them to develop their own ideas and express themselves in their own style. In her
composition class children had fun writing about ‘how to do your hair,’ ‘how to make
pumpkin pies,’ ‘colds,’ and the like. She demonstrated her respect for young people and
her appreciation of the unique qualities children possess when she asked, “Who wants to
see boys and girls in dress coats and court trains, aping grown folks?”"7 King knew the
subjects were puerile, but she thought they fit the writers.

In her pedagogy, King drew from her early experiences on the frontier. King’s
education began well'before her formal schooling as she enthusiastically explored her
natural surroundings and learned to read on her father’s knee. Growing up in the
wilderness, she became a keen observer of the flora and fauna around her. King believed
education and growth were synonymous. She claimed, “The human mind is not a room
finished and furnished at the outset, neither a granary to be filled, but it is a power to be
developed.”"8

She drew from her knowledge as a naturalist when thinking about her

teaching— not so that she might make students memorize all that she knew about the

 

4° King, 1875.
‘7 King, 1875, p. 78.
‘8 King, 1869, p. 61.

I47

natural world, but so that she might understand their process of understanding and
exploration better. “Bury a tiny seed in the ground; let the rains fall upon it and the suns
warm it. There in the dark it begins to swell with the expanding life in its heart. A little
sprout pushes its way up into the sunlight, and another creeps down deeper into the dark.
Care for and shield the tender plant, and very soon it will grow into perfection.” King
looked at the natural world as the revelation of God and viewed the study of nature as the
best way to learn more about His world.so

Because King cared for it so lovingly, the vacant lot next to King’s home was
often mistaken for a public garden.SI She shared the bounty of her harvests, both fruit
from her trees and the wisdom of her years, abundantly. She had no sense that either of
these gifts were something one might own and keep to oneself.‘2 She nurtured her
students as she did the flowers, seeing the process of their growth as beautiful and
mtural.

King believed that children’s powers of curiosity and investigation were not taken
manage of in school. She believed education was for citizenship, and, that in order to
meet this end, children should “become a little discoverers’”3 King drew from her own
experiences as a child as she imagined nature beckoning to little ones, “Come and see my
birds and their queer little nests, come, and they shall sing for you; my flowers are all in

bloom, come and gather them; my insects are all at work, come and watch them; my

 

‘9 King, 1869, p. 63.

5° King, 1869, p. 68.

5’ Goodrich, 1919.

’2 Goodrich, 1919.

5’ King, 1869, p. 65. King published these words in 1869. Lucy Sprague Mitchell, of
Bank Street College of Education, who is often credited for coining the term “discovery
learning,” wasn’t even born until 1878.

148

‘0

l

squirrels are playing in the woods, come and play with them.”" King emphasized
building curiosity in her learners. Nature also beckoned to King, causing her to reflect on
its beauty and abundance.
This evening time there is a gorgeous picture in the West. The clouds like a golden
purple veil closed at evening round the sanctuary of rest. The white smoke from
burning home fires curled through the still air and the snow lay on all the fields. How
beautiful, how calm, how pure. Is there no lesson in it? Nature has her galleries of
art, pictures, and statues of the rarest. The door is always open, but how few the
ingoing feet.”
King believed that if children were allowed to learn about things of interest to them,
within the bounds of their experiences, they would cultivate early on “habits of accurate
observation and cleamess of comprehension, which is the basis of after attainments?”6
King believed that important concepts could be presented, in meaningful ways, to
even the youngest children. King claimed “in the bended bow on the cloud, nature has
her easy lessons in form and color for the child, and graver questions for the philosopher.
There is mathematics in the stars for the simple and the sage. The boiling kettle and the
floating bubble hold their treasures for each?” King was a naturalist and a philosopher,
and she enjoyed hearing students’ ideas about natural phenomenon. Rather than force a
curriculum about clouds or stars on children, she drew out of them what they were
curious about and what their hypotheses were, and she taught them to observe carefully.
King did not advocate just letting children alone, but she wanted teachers to

consider themselves facilitators rather than fonts of knowledge. “The traveler in a

strange land needs a guide; so the child. But it is quite possible to guide without

 

5" King, 1869, p. 64.
’5 King, 1869, p.67

5‘ King, 1869, p. 65.
”King, 1869, p.63.

149

carrying, to direct without doing, to pilot without rowing?“ King wanted her students to
be able to give form to their own thoughts—not just soak up the thoughts of others.

King opposed the then common practice of beginning the study of history by
memorizing an outline. “It puts before the pupil a task uninteresting and difficult because

it requires at the same time so much and so little; so much of the memory and so little of

any other faculty?”9 She believed that,

memorizing an outline at the outset is like teaching the boy the names of all the tools

in a great machine shop before he is put to using any. A practical man would call it
all lost time. When the pupil knows the events, the names and dates fall in naturally.

He would thus make his own outline, which it would require very little effort to
memorize, and thus save time.

King advised teachers to design activities and make available readings that allow pupils
to become familiar with events. Following his own investigation, the student “can
combine them into natural groups and subdivisions, and so produce an outline which will
fairly represent the whole of his knowledge. . .better that the pupil be led to take the steps
rather than be carried over the whole distance?“ King wanted her students to be
Powerful knowers, to understand how they got the answers they did, and to be able to
exPlain them to others. Her students claimed, “Miss King taught me how to think’”2
Her interest in the centrality of the student did not prevent her from being a much-
limbued disciplinarian. A young student of the late 1890’s, commenting some sixty
Years later, said of Miss King, “Julia Anne King was a beautiful woman as well as a very
StfiCt disciplinarian. She could hold a study hall of one hundred fifty giggly girls in
complete silence by one well-aimed remark. She was feared but much respected.” An

awe-inslaired young man just entering the normal school asked,

:gng. 1869, p. 63.
:King. 1889.
as. 1889.
:King. 1889.
”LON. M. 1954p. 308.

150

Who is that woman with her hair combed straight back and dressed in

plain black? Why, was the answer, that is Miss King, teacher of

History. They say that she makes her classes work awful hard, and

then there are lots of them who don’t pass; and I wouldn’t wonder if it

were so, too, judging by the looks of her.
He later added, “so remarks a student who is not yet acquainted with one of the grandest,
noblest hearted women that ever lived?”

King, ever holding the belief that “not failure but low aim, is crime,”64 inspired
her students to have high aims. She kept in touch with hundreds of them, some of whom
became influential leaders. For example, in 1952, New York Senator Royal S. Copeland
paid tribute to King. “I am thankful for the privilege of having been in her classes. She
was outstanding in her field and in my opinion one of the greatest teachers of history that
the world will ever know.” Copeland was a student of King’s until he left the Normal
School in 1887 to study medicine at the University of Michigan.“ Perhaps it was King’s
requirement that he think and make sense of things for himself that provided the Senator
with the orientations toward knowledge which he needed to get ahead later in life. When
criticizing the cominon practice of having students memorize outlines in history classes,
King suggested that if outlines be used, the students make them themselves, after
studying a particular topic, “it certainly would be better that the pupil be led to take the
steps rather than be carried over the whole distance?“ Guiding rather than carrying

students was a trademark of King’s pedagogy.

 

6’ Isbell, 1971 p. 309.

6" Normal News, September 1895.
‘5 Copeland Praises, BHL

6‘ King, 1889, p. 252.

151

One of the reasons King made such an impression on her students is that she went
beyond what was in the book. She tried to figure out what her students were interested in
and to make her lessons relevant and interesting to them. King stated,
I think often a mistake is made in that effort is centered upon the mastery of facts
rather than upon the needs of the child-mind. The arrangement of the schools is
directed to the learning of the book. Reading and numbers, writing and language are
the absorbing interest, whereas the truth is they are only means and not end. The
book lessons in school are often so far removed from the vital interest outside that
their moral teaching is insignificant.”

In an effort to offer students significant lessons, King also struggled to understand who

her students were and what they could handle emotionally. In her baccalaureate address,

King told the graduates teaching stories about children who “acquire feelings of ought in

relation to others.” The children King described have conflicts and are
torn by strong desires and emotions pertaining more or less to the self-sentiments; at
the same time other desires and emotions, less intense as facts in experience, prompt
in final decision the sacrifice of self in favor of others. In the interplay between
personalities, self and the other, such a consciousness of self is realized as to insure
the highest moral conduct. The idea of self in relation to others is the root of moral
action."8 '

King constantly sought to make her classroom a place where students would learn how to

live in relationship with others. She taught the pre-service teachers she worked with the

same precepts as she did the little children they were going to teach.

Pestolazzi, Diesterweg, and the Object Method
As a teacher, eleven years into her profession and thirty-one years old, King
wrote: “The schools, as a rule, trained only the receptive faculties, to the destruction of

individuality and self-reliance.” Most students “found the second hand knowledge which

 

6" King, 1915, p. 292.
‘8 King, 1915, p. 294.

152

ho

they gained at the schools was dead leaves that fell to dust when wanted for use.” She
was a bit perplexed by the lack of sound pedagogy, given that Enlightenment thinkers
had proposed theories that could inform practice years earlier.

In carefully noticing the steps in the progress of education, it seems a little strange
that the practical conclusions should have been so long missed. Nearly one hundred
years after BACON demonstrated the principles of induction, JOHN LOCKE first
applied these methods of observation and experiment to the obscure workings of the
mind. In his remarkable essay he showed with cleamess that all ideas are the
offspring of perception or conception. His Essay on Education had undoubtedly a
practical bearing, and may be said to have largely contributed to bringing about the
revolution which has taken place in the training of the young.69

She credits Locke with helping bring about changes in practice that show more respect
for the pupil. In this essay, which she wrote for her teacher colleagues in The Michigan

Teacher, King goes on to write,

Two hundred years after that the ideas which he [Locke] only half comprehended
were successfully worked out by Pestalozzi. I should have loved to have been among
the little company of students which he gathered at Burgdorf. Without books, he took
them out into the fields and the forests of the hill-sides. Wonderful lessons, those!
full of all the freshness and beauty of nature. His aim was not so much to store their
minds with facts—that was the old way—but by the potent spell of the magic word
exercise he evoked mental power.7o

Johann Pestalozzi (1746—1827) developed an educational philosophy and put it into
practice in Switzerland. He viewed education as a gentle, enjoyable process by which the
child developed naturally under the influence of a good, sound, and healthy environment.
He did not believe in innate ideas, but advocated “sense realism,” which held that the
mind is blank at birth and that the individual acquires his ideas through sense
experience—through seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, feeling, and doing.” King
believed Pestalozzi built on Locke’s theories and made them more accessible to teachers.

King wishes she could have studied with the influential Swiss teacher and educational

 

6’ King, 1869, p. 62.
7° King, 1869, p. 62.
7' Cremin and Butts, 1953, p. 218-219.

153

theorist. Inspired by Rousseau’s writings, spent the early part of his life serving to the
poor and the later part working out a theory and method of instruction based on the
natural development of the child. He ran an orphanage on his farm, taught school, wrote
influential books about pedagogy (Leonard and Gertrude, How Gertrude teaches her
Children, Book for Mothers, Guide for teaching Spelling and Reading, etc.), and Opened
his own school and teachers’ training school.72

King was constantly reading, observing, applying theories, and developing new
approaches as she endeavored to teach children and teachers in ways that were both
effective and affective. Another one of the European educators who influenced King’s
thinking was Friedrich Adolph Wilhelm Diesterweg (1790—1866). Diesterweg was
principal of a Prussian normal school, wrote numerous articles in teachers’ journals,
founded and supported teacher associations, and as a member of the Prussian Parliament
contributed to the improvement of training and working conditions of elementary
teachers.73 Diesterweg was Director of Teacher Seminaries at Maurs (1820-33) and
Berlin (1833-49), and he has been called the German Pestalozzi.” Like King, he
“preferred the Socratic method which he himself experienced in Schleiermacher's lecture
at Berlin University. He reproached teaching that goes in a dictating way where
knowledge is transmitted and not developing?”

In her essay What Is History? Answered, King wrote that Diesterweg believed the
task of History is “to become the exponent of and bring to our comprehension the
development of the human intellect up to the present time in the prosecution of its labors

and the realization of its ideas.”76 This means that history is a record of the development

of the human mind, including the work men have done and the ideas they have generated.

 

7’ Cubberley, 1920, p. 539-543.
73 Menck, 1997.

7" Cubberley, 1920, p. 571.

7’ Menck, 1997.

7" King,1893b.

154

a.“

King referred to Diesterweg in an effort to support the argument she was building about

why history was a science.

A science is a branch of knowledge whose subject matter is either ultimate principles
or facts as explained by principles. History, treating of the evolution of humanity
according to underlying principles, becomes a science. This being admitted, it
follows that history must be taught by the “scientific method.”7

King and her colleagues in the History Department, Mary B. Putnam and Florence
Shultes, prepared this paper in 1893 for the Pedagogical Society of the State Normal
School. It seems that since history was a new department at the Normal School, and a
fledging discipline everywhere, they felt compelled to defend it as a legitimate field of
inquiry and distinct branch of knowledge.

Right from the beginning normal school men and women advocated approaches
to teaching that draw from Pestalozzi’s ideas. The first state-supported normal school
was opened in Lexington, Massachusetts, under the leadership of Cyrus Peirce, in 1839.
In a letter to Henry Barnard a dozen years later he reflected on his aims, and sounded

themes that defined the whole normal school movement:

I answer briefly, that it was my aim, and it would be my aim again, to make better
teachers, . . . teachers who would understand, and do their business better; teachers
who should know more of the nature of children, of youthful developments, more of
the subject to be taught, and more of the true methods of teaching; who would teach
more philosophically, more in harmony with the natural development of the young
mind, with a truer regard to the order and connection in which the different branches
of knowledge should be presented to it, and of course, more successfully.78

That teachers were to “understand, and do their business better,” implied that teaching
was a business that required special understanding. Peirce assumes that this business
requires one to know about “the nature of children” and how they develop, “the subject to

be taught” and the “true methods of teaching.” He assumes teaching is a philosophical

 

7’ King, 1893b.
7’ Borrowman, 1965, p.65.

155

endeavor and that successful teachers consider how the “different branches of
knowledge” harmoniously connect to the child’s mind.

These goals are similar to those held by Horace Mann who gave Pestalozzi’s
work strong support and wide publicity. Mann's Seventh Annual Report as the secretary
of the Massachusetts Board of Education, 1843, summarized a visit to and survey of the
Prussian School System. He expressed tremendous enthusiasm for the new instructional
methods based on sense realism, and thought the European system was far ahead of those
in New England because the teacher student relationship seemed founded on love rather
than authoritarianism.”

Altenbaugh and Underwood claim that, “the school founded at Oswego, New
York, in 1866 [sic], with its reliance on Pestalozzi's ‘object lesson,’ appeared to be the
only exception [to the rule that normal schools did not concern themselves with
intellectual matters].”8° However, Cremin and Butts claim that numerous New England
educators took up similar ideas during the second quarter of the nineteenth century, and
that even though it was largely through the work of Edward A. Sheldon at the Oswego
Normal School that the method became popularized, it was enthusiastically taught in
other normal schools, such as New Jersey and Michigan."

Sheldon was the Superintendent of Schools in Oswego. He visited Toronto and
saw a display at a museum regarding Object Teaching. Sheldon was taken by this

revolutionary idea which he wanted put into practice in K-12 schools, so he founded a

 

7’ Cremin and Butts, 1953, p. 220.

3° Altenbuagh and Underwood, 1990, p. 140. Note: The exact date that the Oswego
Normal opened is disputed, but based on the reunions they had, the faculty believed their
institution opened in 1861. If we use the 1866 date, Oswego is not only not the only
place where Pestalozzi’s ideas and “object teaching” were in force, but it is not even the
first.

8' Cremin and Butts, 1953, p. 437.

156

t ,

school for teachers to staff his schools. He imported a teacher named Miss Jones from
Canada and set about introducing teachers to these methods.82

Adonijah Welch, the first principal of the Michigan State Normal School, was
also impressed with the educational philosophy of Pestalozzi. In 1862, he published a
book titled “Object Lessons Prepared for Teachers of the Primary Schools and Primary

Classes.” In the preface he wrote:

The first instruction to a child in school should be based on the fact that his
intellectual activity consists in seeing and hearing rather than in reasoning and
reflection . . . equally natural, also, is his aversion to abstract thinking. Any mode of
teaching, therefore, which thwarts the former while it seeks to overcome the latter, is
false in it philosophy and bad in its results.83

Welch was clearly interested in children’s intellectual activity and in preparing teachers
to develop children’s senses. King was one of the teachers Welch prepared. He was her
principal from 1855-1858, and he lectured to his students on the Theory and Practice of
_ Teaching. ’

Welch was aware of developments elsewhere, and he was in communication with
other educators who were rallying for the same cause. In his annual report for 1861,

Welch said:

The objective methods of training the senses of the child and the more natural order
of studies adopted here and recommended by those high in authority as educators, are-
gradually finding their way into the primary schools, and we are glad to know that our '
theories of education, in general, harmonize with those of prominent teachers in other
institutions.“

In 1863, the course of study at the Michigan State Normal School was reorganized to
give all students instruction in the Pestalozzian system. This was reported by the State
Board as follows:

 

“2 Rogers, D. 1961.

831811611, 1971, p. 21.

8‘ Superintendent of Public Instruction Report, 1861, p. 103 “Object lessons and
objective training” were part of the professional training at that time.

157

The Board of Education are now convinced that the time has come, when the school
can render no greater service to the State, than to so modify its course of study that all
its pupils may receive thorough instruction and practice in the Pestalozzian system of
Primary Training.85

Superintendent of Public Instruction John Gregory officially ushered in a new approach
to teaching—teachers were to learn about how to teach observation and inquiry, rather
than simply the acquisition of knowledge.

Pestalozzi’s ideas were considered most appropriate for elementary students, and
so the Michigan State Normal School reorganized its curriculum and designated one set
of courses for those intending to teach elementary school and another set for those
intending to teach high school. The First Course, called the Normal Training Course,
prepared teachers for the primary school. The Second Course, called the Higher Normal
Course, ran parallel to the first but prepared teachers for the union or graded school. In

an official circular the State Board of Education explained the new courses.

Prominent Educators of the West are aware that a radical change is taking place in the
methods of Primary Education. In our best schools there is a growing conviction that
the old routine of early studies, and old methods of teaching, are out of harmony with
the wants and instincts of childhood. Many parents are beginning to inquire, why is it
that their little ones, though kept faithfully at school most of the year, make no
satisfactory intellectual progress.“

As educators learned more about childhood, and began to conceive of the elementary
school years as developmentally different than adulthood, teachers were expected to
know more about children, their activities, and their thoughts. By 1868, normal students
were expected to know a formula called “The Educational Principle”:

Thorough knowledge of subject; presentation in logical order; the Pupil’s degree of
Maturity; the Pupil’s self-activity; the Pupil’s progress from the Known to the
Unknown, from Easy to Difficult, from Simple to Complex, from Single to
Combines, from the Concrete to Abstract, from the Empirical to Rational.87

 

"5 State Board of Education Report 1863 , pp. 129-130.
3‘ Isbell, 1971, 52-53.
“7 Isbell, 1971, p. 53.

158

These principles were adopted from Pestalozzi’s works and were considered cutting-edge
teaching methods at this time.

Leaders in women's education criticized the mechanical method of instruction
common in men's academies and colleges. They believed mere memorization and
recitation killed interest and failed to develop reasoning and imagination. They
questioned the value of competition and rejected corporal punishment. Francis Willard
and Catharine Beecher wrote textbooks demonstrating their new methods and described
their methods of teaching and discipline in leading educational magazines.“ Tyack and
Hansot note that the schools of Willard, Lyon, and Beecher were “far more experimental
in methods of teaching and discipline than the Latin grammar schools that prepared boys
for college and more academically rigorous than many of the colleges that those boys
attended,”89 but they do not compare the pedagogical styles of the female seminaries to
those of the early normal schools.

Jo Anne Preston claims that Horace Mann's concept of a woman teacher's
education differed radically from that advanced by Beecher, Lyon, and Willard. She
says, Horace Mann “foresaw state—controlled and financed teacher training schools
confined to a curriculum on pedagogy, whereas Beecher anticipated women-run, liberal
arts institutions on par with those attended by men.”9° Perhaps Preston is correct about
Mann's aims, but the way teacher education first got enacted in Michigan looked much
more like Beecher's model. In the 1850s, men and women at Michigan’s only state-
sponsored normal school could study a rigorous classical course, similar to those at men's
liberal arts colleges. Pedagogy was not taught as a separate feminized subject or a
narrow set of skills, it was the underlying aim of the entire institution. Women did not

run the institution, but a woman, the preceptress, was given authority over all the women

 

'3 Tyack and Hansot, 1990, p. 40.
'9 Tyack and Hansot, 1990, p. 42.
9° Preston, 1978.

159

..l‘

in the normal school, and they developed their own version of woman’s culture and
female professional fellowship. King helped implement a mid-westem, coeducational,
public institution model which borrowed from both Mann’s and Beecher’s ideas. It turns
out that when men, as well as women, could be concerned with building communities and
pursuing religious vocations, women, as well as men, could study academic subject
matter as preparation to teach.

Good teachers were constructing their own theories, drawing from other
theorists’ ideas, and putting theory into practice, long before universities created
pedagogy departments. Anna Paton, first King’s student and then her colleague, wrote
that King “has never ceased to be a hard-working student, and has kept herself in touch
with the modern trend of thought?”1 Early education professors, like John Dewey, are
given credit for ideas that are strikingly similar to those developed by King and her
fellow teachers in Michigan. Progressive theories of education did not become widely
, known at the university until the early twentieth century, but teachers like King had been
designing and implementing lessons driven by similar theories for years. King must have
been surprised to learn that professors in the new university departments of pedagogy
achieved national acclaim for the innovative ideas that she and other normal school
leaders and women teachers implemented in the 18609 and 18708.

King was a virtuoso teacher, characterized by her modesty. In a thank you note
she wrote to her classes after they sent her a note of praise, she wrote, “but for whom did
you write it? Not for me in truth. . .if ever I find the woman of whom it is true I’ll
whisper to her what you thought of her?”2 King did not seek acclaim for the pedagogical
and historical principles that informed her teaching. Under King’s picture in the 1898

yearbook were the apt quotations, “No life can be pure in its purpose and strong in its

 

9‘ Paton, 1893. p. 39.
9’ Letter to classes, EMU.

160

0—3

‘ ‘
r
f' .
C
~'d- ‘/
1 no;

if"

strife, and all life not be purer and stronger thereby?”3 and, in 1906, “One cannot look
upon her face with its halo of silver hair, without reading the depth of character so plainly
written there?“ King’s students appreciated her efforts and believed that she genuinely
improved their lives and the lives of their future students. In their yearbook they wrote:

Miss King has remembered, as some teachers have not always remembered, that
something is needed in dealing with students besides mere mental acumen and
intellectual vigor. The human soul knows, rejoices to know, but it does more than
merely know. The teacher should be able to lead the student beyond knowing alone;
there is need of feeling as well as knowing.”

The Conversations [which King led as Preceptress] were held in the study hall of Old
Main, and dealt with matters of conduct, social forms, and religious ideals. “This social
emphasis carried over strongly into Miss King’s teaching, creating a unity in what
otherwise might have been two distinct and disparate positions?”6 It was not specific
teaching techniques or professional accomplishments that King’s colleague in the History
Department, Miss Bertha M. Buell, enumerated when remembering King; instead, she
simply but powerfully stated that King’s students “live more courageously, more truly,
more fully because of having known her?”7

History and Its Relation to the Normal School

King believed that “the whole aim of Normal work is to give the pupil control
over his own powers.” This was not for self-serving purposes but to enable future
teachers to be able to serve children and communities well. King considered social
responsibility and unity with others as paramount, and she believed that the way to
develop those sorts of skills and relationships was through an education that challenged

 

”Aurora, 1898.

9‘ Aurora, 1906.

9’ Aurora, 1900.

9‘ Isbell, 1971, p. 309-310.

’7 Buell, June 11, 1919. BHL
9‘ King, 1893a, p. 17.

161

“V"

.-.l

students to solve problems, engage in inquiry, and defend their views. It was her belief
that “he who serves the public wisely serves himself?”9

King sought to liberate the powers of her pupils in a classroom community where
social interaction, communication, and cooperation were all part of the curriculum.
King’s attention to individual children was tempered by her commitment to the larger
community and her desire to “put the individual into possession not only of his individual
self but also of his social self.”100 King believed it was “the business of the schools...to
shorten the process by which the individual recognizes the import of society and his place
in it.”'°l So, while King sought to respect individual children and listen to their ideas,
she was constantly, directly and indirectly, teaching them how to live together and be
responsible members of our society. “Her aim was to make her department one affording
culture rather than fact, an exact scholarship coupled with thorough professional
training?”2

Usually modest, King occasionally boasted that she had taught everything in the
curriculum except Greek and that she never taught a class the same way twice.”3 King
took into consideration who her learners were, not just what her subject matter was. She

was conscious of all the different kinds of things one would have to think about when

teaching a topic to little children versus teaching the same thing to teachers-to—be.

For example, a course of instruction appropriate for a class in a normal school would
not be at all adapted to a class in a grammar school. The normal class is a class of
student-teachers. That they may become teachers is one great object of the study.
The instruction, then, to meet the demand must be technical, professional. It must
deal with method and above all must exemplify a philosophical adaptation of a means
to an end. Such a class must be given a broad knowledge so that when they come to
teach they may do it with a wide margin. They must understand principles, laws,

 

9’ This is the first of a collection of quotations attributed to Miss King in the program for
her Memorial Exercises, at the Alumni Meeting, Tuesday, June 24, 1919.

100King, History as a Means of Social Education

101King, History as a means of Social Education

“'2 Goodrich, 1919, p 7.

m Normal News, 1895, p. 8.

162

causes, as well as fact. They must be taught to read the idea which gave rise to and
shaped the fact. They must be trained to look upon the fact as the visible embodiment
of an idea. Only so can they be sure of a just appreciation and a right apprehension of
that which they will need to teach. ‘0’
King planned her syllabi with attention to the fact that her students would become
teachers. When she spoke of method, she didn’t mean simple teaching techniques; she
referred to the methods and philosophical underpinnings of the discipline. In order to be
good teachers of a subject she thought they needed to know about the rules of the
discourse community. She also wanted them to know the topics they would be teaching
in depth, not because they would share the in-depth study with children, but because she

believed that in order to present the content in meaningful ways the teachers needed to

understand it inside out.

King spent most her career as a history teacher. She practiced what she preached .

and learned everything she could about her discipline. She read American historians
works but she also read the histories, historiographies, and theories about doing historical
work from the European continent. In many of her papers she makes references to the
ideas of historians. She had read and quotes the works of classical authors such as
[Homer Thucydides, Livy and Xenophon. She also referenced the works of Hume,
Gibbon, Macaulay, Bancroft, Motley, Conybeare, von Ranke, Hegel, Rein, Kant, von
Humbolt, Droysen, Lotze, Harris, Diesterweg, Hall, Freeman, Schlegel, and many others,
including her neighbor at University of Michigan, Charles Kendall Adams. "1’ King was
a woman who knew what was going on in her field of study. She was a participant in a

conversation about what shape the discipline of history should take, and she was a '

 

1°“ King, 1889, p. 160
“’5 King, 1889b; 1893b; 18930; 1894; and An outline course in history.

163

member of an intellectual community of scholars. It is beyond the purview of this paper
to investigate her views on the philosophy of history or her own theories about the
burgeoning discipline in depth, but it [is significant to notice that she was incredibly well
read, that she often read these works in German, and that she studied the works of these
great thinkers because she thought it would improve her teaching. It was her assumption
that being a facile thinker and deft intellectual would make her a better teacher.
Furthermore, the Normal School trained her up in this sort of approach to teaching and
supported her growth as a scholar while she was employed as a teacher educator. Always,
“teaching and studying went on together for her.”'°‘
During her thirty-four years as a Normal School professor, King taught history,
civics, political science, and sociology. King was involved in discipline-based
professional associations, such as the American Historical Association. “King was a
member of the National Historical Association?” She also studied and served as a
leader in various local societies and clubs committed to enlarging the life of the mind in
an effort to be better professionals. For example, the Normal Educational Society, also
called the Pedagogical Club, was composed of members of the faculty. It was organized
in 1885 with the purpose of “the investigation and discussion of principles of education
and methods of teaching, and the consideration of such other professional subjects as may

conduce to the success of our united efforts as teachers.” The society met once a month,

and the exercises consisted of essay reading and discussion. “’8

 

“’6 Goodrich, 1919, p. 8.
rm Aurora, 1914, p. 22.
“’3 Putnam, 1899, p. 234.

164

 

-\"

King was often consulted, by her peers and by nationally respected groups, about
what history curriculum and instruction in the schools should look like. She advocated a
course which, using materials appropriate for the age group, demonstrated how “people
working together have found the means through which to realize the greatest national
good” and, at the same time, “that the evolution of the state has been the evolution of the
individual in society, wherein alone he finds the realization of his fullest self. The state
for the individual and the individual for the state.”‘°9 King was concerned that the
United States’ emphasis on individualism would undo our national fabric. She exposed
children to examples of people working together and helped them understand the
importance and power of the group.

King addressed her normal school faculty colleagues at a meeting of the
Pedagogical Society, imploring them to consider ways that the content and methods of
history instruction could be improved in the interests of citizen education.

The true equality of human brotherhood between nations, between social classes or
between individuals, the food and shelter problem, the labor and profit sharing,
common ownership or individual ownership, secular schools or religious schools,

political purity and social purity, are all questions vital to our national existence.
They represent the activities among which our boys and girls will find themselves.“°

She believed these to be the pressing issues of the day, and reminded her colleagues that
these were questions with which future citizens would have to contend. Having had
many normal school classmates killed in the Civil War, King was part of a generation
which remembered the pan of not being unified, and having studied French and German
as well as history, King was part of the intelligentsia which worried about the United

States’ place in the new world order of her time.

 

109King, 1899, p. 500. The lead article in this edition of the journal is by Charles Eliot,
President of Harvard, and it is edited by Nicholas Butler, Professor of Philosophy and
Education at Columbia.

“° King, 1894.

165

By focusing on enduring dilemmas and current events, King demonstrates that she
believes the purpose of education is to help maturing citizens face questions of national
importance. She goes on to challenge the normal school professors to consider why

schools do not generally consider preparation for citizenship their primary objective.

Why do the schools make absolutely no effort directly to meet the needs of citizens
well-informed, citizens capable of thinking these questions to a wise conclusion,
citizens with clear and enlightened judgments, citizens with lofty moral characters?
These are not glittering generalities which spend themselves in the putting, but they
are specific living issues of the time which press with great weight upon every serious
teacher. They ought to determine the direction which educative instruction shall take
in our schools.”
King’s speech makes clear that she thinks there is a distinction between instruction and
educative instruction. The direction of educative instruction must be determined by
serious teachers who are well-informed, wise thinkers with good judgment and character.
King’s beliefs about disciplinary inquiry and knowledge acquisition informed her
pedagogical choices. She was interested’in both the nature of history and the role of
history in teacher education. King taught history as a way of developing the habits of
mind necessary for good teaching and for active participation in a democratic society.
This included having students work with primary source materials and understand
methods of historical inquiry. King believed that the study of history was simply
learning in a community of inquiry.”2
King was widely known for her rigorous methods and feared by students who
were not familiar with her, but students who had the good fortune to encounter “Miss
King’s Method” became her disciples. In King’s history classes, she employed a
modified Socratic method where the students were made to do most of the talking.”3

King aimed to draw from the class, question, and suggest, acting as their guide, but

 

"‘ King, 1894.
"2 King, 1893b.
113 Goodrich, 1919.

166

'l

”4 Her once chestnut-colored silver hair

leaving them to discover, compare, and record.
was often knotted neatly in a bun resting on the high collar of an austere black dress, as
she painstakingly searched for a few well-directed questions and encouraged her students
to use a document as a starting place and to let it lead them out.115 Through rigid and
intelligent cross—questioning of primary sources, King helped her students develop
inquiry skills and the ability to build and substantiate their own interpretations?" These
methods demonstrate the link between King’s own disciplinary knowledge, her
understanding of society, and her pedagogical choices.

King’s pedagogical goal was to have students develop a sense of themselves as
capable intellectuals, able to act independently as responsible citizens. “I do not seek to
test and do nothing more,” King proclaimed, for she believed that “truth clothes herself in
such varied forms that to hold to ultimate theories would be an evidence of pedantry,
which is worse than ignorance?“7 Instead, King opened her class to free discussion,
confident that in investigation truth may be discovered. Far from memorizing facts,
King’s students dealt with uncertainty and were forced to consider alternative
interpretations and viewpoints as they worked together on historical problems.

One of the things that characterize a discipline like history is the exchange of
ideas that takes place through professional journals and associations. King was active in
a national conversation about history teaching. At the Annual Meeting of the American
Historical Association’s Conference of Teachers of History in Teachers’ Colleges and

Normal Schools,

Miss Julia Anne King of the Michigan State Normal College, maintained that the one
object of the teaching of history was to help the child to understand and participate in

 

1“ King, 1869, p 66.
“5 King, 1869, p. 66.
“‘ King, 1889.

"7 King, 1889. p.159.

167

the life around him, and that since the material selected by the committee of eight for
the first four years work did not do this, it was therefore a mistaken choice."8

She used her experience as history teacher and a normal school professor to help
historians who were not familiar with children think about how the discipline might be
best presented in schools. King was actively involved in discipline-related professional
organizations, contributing her views and about pedagogy, and seeking to learn more
about the subject she taught. By bringing her pedagogical orientations to the study of
history she was able to enrich the discussion about what should be taught to small
children and how teachers should be prepared to teach it, but King also expanded her own
professional status by becoming part of the disciplinary community.

King also presented her ideas about the centrality of history in a course of study, the
relationship between history and social education, and history’s place in teacher education to her
colleagues at the Normal School.” King was acquainted with Charles K. Adams, the renowned
historian from the University of Michigan. In her third of a series of five articles on “Method
Applied to Teaching History,” in the Michigan School Moderator, King says, “Prof, C. K.
Adams once said to me “that it is impossible to teach history without books?”0 It was these
kinds of collegial conversations that enriched King professionally.

King was part of a nineteenth century social movement aimed at improving
teaching, learning and teacher education. She joined a teacher-led discourse community
early in her career and exchanged ideas about the philosophy of education, purposes of
schooling, and appropriate teaching methods with her peers in Michigan’s schools. King
was an officer in the State Teacher’s Association, presented papers to the Normal School
faculty, and published articles in The Michigan Teacher, Michigan Moderator,

Educational Review, and American Schoolmaster. This is a diverse set of educational

journals; King wrote for both practicing teachers and university educational researchers.

 

"8 American Historical Association Report, 1911. p. 32.
“9 King, 1893a; 1894
W King, 1889, p. 251.

168

\u

For example, The Michigan Teacher and The Michigan Moderator were both read by late
nineteenth century Michigan teachers. The American Schoolmaster, “a magazine devoted
to the professional aspects of teaching,” was published by the Michigan State Normal
College and was intended primarily for those who prepared teachers. In 1915, the
associate editors came from Schools of Education at the Universities of Illinois, North
Dakota, Oklahoma and Washington, and at State Normal Schools or Teachers’ Colleges
in Oshkosh, Wisconsin; Cedar Falls, Iowa; Marquette, Michigan; Normal, Illinois;
Winona, Minnesota; and Ypsilanti, Michigan. The Educational Review was even more
prestigious. It was edited by Nicholas Murray Butler, Professor of Philosophy and
Education at Columbia University. The December 1899 issue, in which King published
“History in the elementary school,” also included a piece by Charles W. Eliot, president
of Harvard University. In all of these publications, King, and the other teachers and
scholars involved in printed discussions, were extremely interested in fostering creativity,
imagination, and independent thought in children. Most of the topics they wrote and
spoke about had to do with innovative ways of getting students to engage with subject
matter.

King also tried to foster collegial exchange, both among faculty and between
faculty and students, when she was a faculty member. Men and women were both
included in the debates. While she was a professor, King participated in the student’s
debate society as a faculty mentor and presented papers at the faculty Pedagogic Society.
All of these fostered an intellectual atmosphere on campus and also spoke to King’s
personal interests and political commitments.

King’s keen intellect and sharp analytical mind stayed active even in retirement.
A student who visited her regularly in old age reported: “After her retirement she devoted
much thought and discussion to the great war, analyzing contemporary action and its

probable result in the light of historic precedent. Her deductions were phenomenally

169

1 ‘.'\

v

prophetic.”m In addition to predicting how the First World War would unfold, King
spent much time reading German philosophy. “Of late, the German mind, its
philosophies of life and its effect on history both distant, and then-present, was always
discussed when I called upon her. She accurately gauged the outcome of the forces
which produced the past social and political conditions in Germany and foretold the
reaction which has lately come.”122 In addition to her philosophical readings and
political musings, King was “always alert as to the latest ideas in education. Evolution,
heredity, eugenics, socialism, industrial unrest were common topics of conversation.”123
Interestingly, King understood these diverse topics were related to education and it
seemed obvious to her that her personal, political, and professional lives would be tightly
coupled.

It was this sort of thoughtfulness about her own times as well as the past of

humankind that prompted Ernest Goodrich to compare King to Henry Adams.

I was repeatedly and strikingly reminded of Miss King’s work as I knew it back in the
90’s when I read last winter the “Education of Henry Adams”. Ten years after Miss
King had given me her philosophy, Henry Adams was working out his along identical
lines in such words as these: “Susceptibility to the highest forces is the highest
genius; selection between them is the highest science; their mass is the highest
educator.” “Past history is only a value of relation to the future, and its value is
wholly one of convenience which can be tested only by experiment.” Gauging Miss
King in light of Adams’ measure of genius shows hers to have been of the highest
quality. She was ever susceptible to the highest forcesm

Henry Brooks Adams was born in 1838 just a few months before Julia Anne King, and he
died in 1918, just a year before King passed away. The Education of Henry Adams: An
Autobiography is a history book that charts the transformation in nineteenth century
American intellectual life. It presents a world poised between the certainties of the past

and the uncertain possibilities of the future. The first edition was privately printed in

 

”1 Goodrich, 1919, p. 7.
122 Goodrich, 1919, p. 4. He was referring to World War I.
123 Goodrich, 1919, p. 8.
m Goodrich, 1919, p. 5

170

1906 tol907, but Adams directed that it be withheld from general publication until after
his death. In the fall of 1918 the Education was published to wide acclaim: it became a
best seller, won the Pulitzer Prize, and was immediately recognized as one of the world’s
great autobiographies. Goodrich read it when it first came out, and he saw similarities
between Adams, who has been described as one of the most powerful and original minds
to confront the American scene from the Civil War to the First World War, and King.
Goodrich also compared King favorably to Herman Schneider, Dean of the
College of Engineering at University of Cincinnati. Just as he gave King credit for ideas
similar to Adams’ before his publication of them, he claims her practice preceded

Schneider’s interest in the same.

She coupled reason with historical facts and applied the result to everyday life and
events. Long before Dean Schneider of the engineering department of the University
of Cincinnati undertook to couple reason with industrial instruction and both with
commercial practice, explaining present industrial conditions with past historical
facts, Miss King was doing it in her history and pedagogy. She made past events
speak concerning present conditions. She was the teacher Dean Schneider is now
trying to find to evolve a course for his engineering students wherein the present
economic and social, industrial and technical conditions are to be analyzed through
history and causes traced. Her aim was to make her department one affording culture
rather than fact, an exact scholarship coupled with thorough professional training.""

Dean Herman Schneider is known as the founder of cooperative education. The
University of Cincinnati’s College of Engineering made a unique contribution to higher
education in 1906 when Dean Herman Schneider inaugurated an original study-

experience concept, known nationally as cooperative education. 1"

Teaching History
King taught a course on the philosophy of history. The student who took this

course “became much more tolerant, more discerning in the analysis of motives, broader

 

'25 Goodrich, 1919, p. 7.
”6 http://khangl..che.uc.edu/college.html

171

in his ideas of right and wrong, while at the same time individually stricter in the personal
interpretations of these matters.” ‘27 King believed that “the time has come to train the
teacher in some sort of philosophy of what he is to teach?”8 King was interested not
only on the state of pedagogy in the field of history but on the state of the discipline
itself. She claimed it was difficult to let one’s disciplinary understandings shape one’s
teaching when it was not yet agreed upon what constituted the discipline of history.
“As yet there is no course in history scientifically determined and generally accepted by
the schools. Not only so, but there would seem to be no settled notion of what constitutes
real historical knowledge. . . .Pedagogy is so much at sea in respect to the fundamental
features of a course in history for the primary school.””9

King’s “new methods” included using primary sources when teaching history and
teaching students to subject the sources to a rigorous cross-examination. “Subject the
facts to rigid and intelligent cross-questioning with the class,” she advised the young
teachers in her history classes."°

She thought most history textbooks were inadequate on their own as tools for
teaching, and she questioned the value of having students memorize facts without

understanding how they all fit together. King said,

Ordinary textbooks are compendiums of facts, distorted through successive
compilations, and at best put together with little regard to Continuity of ideas and the
sequence of cause and effect. This disconnected and utterly removed from the basis
of the pupil’s present knowledge, the events become to them unsubstantial
nothings.”

She compared the relative value of the books that simply listed facts to a spelling book as
a way to experience literature. “They serve to teach history about as well as Webster’s

speller would to teach Literature.” Instead of depending solely on secondary sources,

 

1” Goodrich, 1919, p. 5.
”8 King, 1889, p. 215.
’29 King, 1897, p. 66.

13° King, 1889, p. 474.
‘3‘ King, 1889, p. 251.

172

in his ideas of right and wrong, while at the same time individually stricter in the personal
interpretations of these matters.” ‘27 King believed that “the time has come to train the
teacher in some sort of philosophy of what he is to teach?“ King was interested not
only on the state of pedagogy in the field of history but on the state of the discipline
itself. She claimed it was difficult to let one’s disciplinary understandings shape one’s
teaching when it was not yet agreed upon what constituted the discipline of history.

“As yet there is no course in history scientifically determined and generally accepted by
the schools. Not only so, but there would seem to be no settled notion of what constitutes
real historical knowledge. ...Pedagogy is so much at sea in respect to the fundamental
features of a course in history for the primary school.””’

King’s “new methods” included using primary sources when teaching history and
teaching students to subject the sources to a rigorous cross-examination. “Subject the
facts to rigid and intelligent cross-questioning with the class,” she advised the young
teachers in her history classes.‘30

She thought most history textbooks were inadequate on their own as tools for
teaching, and she questioned the value of having students memorize facts without

understanding how they all fit together. King said,

Ordinary textbooks are compendiums of facts, distorted through successive
compilations, and at best put together with little regard to Continuity of ideas and the
sequence of cause and effect. This disconnected and utterly removed from the basis
of the pupil’s present knowledge, the events become to them unsubstantial
nothings?"

She compared the relative value of the books that simply listed facts to a spelling book as
a way to experience literature. “They serve to teach history about as well as Webster’s

speller would to teach Literature.” Instead of depending solely on secondary sources,

 

"7 Goodrich, 1919, p. 5.
”3 King, 1889, p. 215.
”9 King, 1897, p. 66.

13° King, 1889, p. 474.
‘3’ King, 1889, p. 251.

172

King advocated using primary source documents with students. “Excerpts from original
documents if judiciously selected might serve a better purpose. The only book of this
sort designed for class use, as far as I know, is Miss Sheldon’s General History.”132

The Miss Sheldon whose book King refers to was Edward Sheldon’s daughter.
Sheldon was the founder of the Oswego Normal School in New York, and he was known
for his Pestalozzian ObjectLessons. His daughter, Mary Sheldon attended Oswego
Normal and was one of the first women to graduate from the University of Michigan.
She became one of the early professors at Wellesley College, along with several of her
classmates from University of Michigan, including Angie Chapin (King’s student from
Flint and Wellesley Professor of Greek) and Alice Freeman Palmer (President of
Wellesley and later Dean of Women at University of Chicago). Mary Sheldon married
Earl Barnes and became the first female faculty member at Stanford University. Sheldon
Barnes published several history textbooks in addition to the one King recommended.
Sheldon’s books appealed to King because they were designed to elicit critical thinking.
“Arranged as a series of intellectual puzzles, primary sources balanced equal amounts of
explanatory narratives. The texts introduced lists of terms and sources, quotations
descriptions—advance organizers for lessons to come.”133

King’s critique of textbooks included an indictment of the study questions in one
publication: “They test and do nothing more. To be really effective, questions should
build on true knowledge.” ’3’ Barnes’ approach to teaching history, which she developed
from Oswego all the way to Stanford, was, at root, very similar to King’s. The strong
influence of Pestalozzi and the Object Method that both women were steeped in as
Normal School students formed the basis for their critical inquiry approach to history
teaching. As they became historians and as the history profession took shape, they

 

‘32 King, 1889, p. 251
"3 Monteverde, 1999, p. 17-41.
'3‘ King, 1889, p. 251.

173

brought their understandings of pedagogy with them and constructed meaningful,
disciplinary lessons. King poses a question about Barnes’ work with regards to its
applicability for public schools. She says that the material she presents as example is of a
much higher level than most high school students could produce. So King was thinking
along the same lines as Barnes but striving to serve a different population. Barnes made
her Stanford students engage in disciplinary inquiry; King used similar tactics with
Normal School students, but she was also ever attentive to the needs of children and the
appropriateness of materials for the primary schools?”
Barnes earned some acclaim for what was termed her “Source Method.” King
only names her approach once in the professional writings that survive. She defines
“Topical Method” as “ the presentation of history through the series of events in which an
active historical idea in the various phases of its development expresses itself.” For

example, King claims that the events of our national history group themselves naturally

into seven periods:

First, the settlements in communities. Second, the establishment and development of
their municipal institutions with their free choice of leaders and jury trials. Third, the
overthrow of the Puritan Commonwealth. Fourth, the oppression by England but to
the Declaration of Independence or national freedom and the attempt to maintain it
led to foreign alliances and finally a national union. Fifth, the constitution securing
individual rights, jury trial, habeas corpus, religious liberty and free suffrage. Sixth,
the enfranchisement of the Negro. Seventh, the social movements of today of
whatever sort which look to the realization of the human brotherhood of humanity. ’36

When studying topics such as these, King recommends that, “the development begins
naturally at the earliest manifestations of the idea and makes all conditions modifying it
matters of investigation.” She wants teachers to think about historical events and
movements and identify topics of study. Then she advocates thoroughly interrogating

those topics or sets of concepts.

 

1” King, 1889, p. 251
‘3‘ King, 1889b.

174

9..

For example, in the subject of slavery it would not be enough to begin at its
introduction in 1619. The impulse which led up to that event, all the natural
conditions which modified it, the peculiar economic reasons which both fostered and
retarded its growth are matters of investigation. In other words, the idea must be kept
in the conditions of its lifem

King did not want history presented as disconnected “facts.” Instead she hoped to show
the cause and effect relationships, the reasons behind decisions made, and the inter-
relatedness of various events.

In her discussion of the “ Topical Method of Teaching History in the Public
School,” King quotes Wm. Von Humbolt in her discussion of historical ideas, deeds, and
topics. William Von Humbolt (1767-1835) was a historian, philologist, and leader in the
regeneration of Prussia. This took place in the early part of the nineteenth century and
included the formation of a new national system of education. Prussian officials sent
teachers to Switzerland to study Pestalozzi’s ideas and methods.“ In 1809, Von
Humbolt was made head of the new Prussian Department of Public Instruction.139
Interestingly, Von Humbolt founded the Berlin High School where Frobel came to
study.“0

“Miss King taught me how to think,” is the expression of many an alumnus who
appreciated in later years what that meant. Far different, however, were the expressed
feelings of the students in my classes when the announcement was made that Miss King
was to take the class. Some were worried, -- those that had come from schools where the
old memory method alone prevailed. The others expressed anticipation of interest. Miss
King’s method was for both teacher and student to work It was a modified Socratic
method with the student made to do most of the talking?” For example, she apparently
asked students questions such as “What made the Greeks artistic?” “What started

 

‘37 King, 1889b.

‘33 Cubberley, 1920, p. 568-9
”9 Cubberley, 1920, p. 572.
“° Rooper, 1893/4, p. 271.

"“ Goodrich, 1919, p. 6.

175

political parties in the United States?"42 It was these types of higher level thinking skills
and broad understandings, rather than drab facts that characterized King’s practice of
history teaching.

In King’s history classes students drew maps and learned where the places they
studied were located.“’3 King saw it as only natural that when learning about events, if
one was to gain a full understanding he would need to know the location. “Geography,
ought never to be separated from history. A historical event without a local habitation is
like a man without a country, while a locality without its human interests and associations
is of small worth to any pupil?”

King utilized all the sources she could get her hands on. She especially liked
stories and literature as inroads into historical understanding for small children. Even at

the normal she recommended students read childhood favorites to get a sense of narrative

structure.

I know that after wading through rivers of blood and oceans of horror in Dickens’
Child History of England, I sought professional advice from my grown up neighbor
[King]. She advised Tanglewood Tales, which I think exemplifies her class methods
also. History to her was not a series of chronological and statistical drab cold facts,
but a linking of social and economic causes and political results, a rendering luminous
of human action and reaction. “5

Tanglewood Tales is a collection of seven short stories and myths written in 1853 by
Nathaniel Hawthorne.

Perhaps greater than King’s ability to choose stories or primary sources or objects
that would illuminate the past to young children was her ability to build social studies
lessons out of everyday human interaction. The field of Social Studies had not yet

developed; the National Education Association defined social studies in he schools in

 

"2 Goodrich, 1919, p. 6
"3 King, 1886.

“4 King, 1894, p. 8.

"5 Goodrich, 1919, p. 5.

176

1916, and the national Council for the Social Studies was founded in 1921.'46 However,
King saw lessons about sociology, psychology and political science all around her. “ The
games on the school grounds or the play houses in the fence comers contain the germs of
genuine historical institutions only waiting a teacher skillful enough to unfold them.” “'7
She did not think early elementary students were developmentally ready to tackle a
discipline like history, but she certainly thought they could be nurtured into becoming
analytical thinkers and responsible community members.

King’s Curriculum

In the 1830s thousands of New Englanders flooded into the Michigan territory via
the newly opened Erie Canal. In 1852, King’s family moved from their farm and her log
school into the village of Adrian. King continued to cultivate her love of books at
Adrian's newly opened, coeducational public high school. In 1853, an artistic map of the
city of Adrian featured the new Union School as a symbol of prosperity and culture.“
The school, a 60 X 80 foot, three story, red brick structure, which the town newspaper
called “a model temple of instruction,”"’9 occupied a central position in the town’s self-
image. Public schools in Adrian were supported by everyone’s property taxes so that
resident children could attend free of charge ten years before the state of Michigan
mandated free public schooling."o

The first steam-powered railroad west of the Alleghenies puffed out along the
newly completed Erie and Kalamazoo Railroad track between Toledo and Adrian. "1

This sort industrial development made Adrian the second-largest and fastest growing city

 

"6 Crocco and Davis, p. 7.
"7 King, 1894, p. 14.

“'8 Map. LCH

"9 Payne, 1876.

"° Early Adrian. 1964/73
‘5' Carton, Bruce, 1988.

177

in Michigan. By the time the King family moved there, many of the formerly wooden
downtown buildings had been converted to brick. The well-educated and forward-
thinking Adrian businessmen convinced The Lakes and Michigan Southern Railroad to
connect to the Erie and Kalamazoo line in Adrian and to relocate their headquarters to the
blossoming city. Formerly split between the Democrats and Whigs, Adrian citizens
began to join the anti-slavery Liberty party, and, in 1848, the Free Soil Party. The
Compromise of 1850 and the Kansas-Nebraska Bill split the Whigs, and several Adrian
residents traveled to Jackson, Michigan to organize the first meeting of the new
Republican Party. "2

It was in this political climate that King spent her adolescence. It would have
been impossible for her not to have noticed that Catholic and Protestant, rich and poor,
city residents and farmers children who boarded in town, all attended her school. During
the time that King lived in Adrian, the Underground Railroad was active there. There
was an African American church built downtown, only a few blocks from her high
school, and black and white children attended classes together at the Raisin Academy just
outside of Adrian.

King’s high school experience was not considered formal teacher education, but
since we know that much of what teachers believe about teaching is acquired during their
apprenticeship of observation,"3 I include her high school as part of her teacher
preparation. When King was fourteen years old, her family moved from their farm in
Milan, Michigan into the fast-growing town of Adrian so she could attend the newly
opened Adrian Union School.” It was one of only twelve high schools in Michigan at

the time.“ King studied under a variety of teachers, most of whom had attended

 

"2 Lindquist, 1990.

"3 Lortie, 1970.

‘5‘ The early high schools in Michigan were called Union Schools and were generally
intended for students who had completed grammar school.

"5 Annual Report of the Superintendent of Public Instruction, 1853.

178

t)

institutions that offered classical course work. For example, her high school principal,
Franklin Hubbard, attended Amherst.”6 The Adrian High School curriculum resembled
those of the college preparatory academies its teachers attended. The Michigan State
Normal School, where King also studied a classical curriculum from 1855-1858, was also
shaped by its founders’ and early leaders’ experiences in antebellum colleges and
universities. The men and women who founded and taught in the Normal School were
graduates of Union College, Brown University, the University of Michigan, Dartmouth,
Oberlin, and Genessee. These colleges offered classical studies to their students in the
18408. The first group of teachers at the Michigan State Normal School, with whom
King studied, was born in the 1820s, and they all migrated to Michigan from the East
Coast'” King’s professors’ educational experiences, both generation- and institution-
based, shaped, at least to some extent, their orientations toward the curriculum and
instruction of teacher education and their beliefs about what teachers should know and be
able to do. Normal schools were not available to the generation ahead of King, so the
people who founded them and taught at them depended on their own experiences in other
educational institutions to inform their practice in the early years of teacher education.

The educational pioneers who founded the Michigan State Normal School looked
to earlier exemplars of teacher education when forming their program, but they decided
to take normal education a step further than their colleagues on the East Coast.

The normal school opened at Albany, N. Y., in December of 1844, of which D. P.
Page was the first Principal, began with a course of studies essentially the same as
that of the Massachusetts schools. The course in the normal schools for female
teachers, opened at Philadelphia, in 1848, was of the same general character, but a
little less extensive. With the example of these pioneer institutions before them, it
was only natural that the Board of Education and the teachers of the new Michigan
normal school should adopt a similar curriculum. They went, however, a little

 

"6 Catalogue of Adrian Union School. 18544855.
"7 Putnam, 1899.See Cubberley, 1934 for examples of U of M curriculum.

179

'r‘i

beyond the previously established schools, and, prepared a Classical course in
addition to the usual English one."8

Their decision to include the Classical Course reflected a preference for one of two
different approaches to normal education that were often debated during this time. There
were two dominant varieties of normal school curricula: one emphasized mainly teaching
methods, the other academic preparation in the liberal arts.“

The three-year Classical Course, which King completed, was considered more
rigorous than the English Course, which took only two years (see Table . The Classical
Course was intended for those people who planned to become high school teachers
and/or administrators. It was assumed that the ability to teach well had more to do with
being a facile thinker with a flexible mind than with expertise in a particular subject
matter. All students studied the same courses. Normal students were only permitted to
begin training in the art of teaching after proving their capacity and zeal for learning by
passing rigid written examinations in what were then considered the basic branches of
learning. Questions about the nature of knowledge and its relation to teacher’s work, or
how the pursuit of knowledge might inform social and political questions, not specific
teaching techniques, are what characterized King’s intellectual life and the content of her
courses.

During the course of the nineteenth century, the normal school expanded its
curricular options and offered more specialized preparation for professional positions
through a variety of degrees and certificates. In 1855, when King entered the normal
school, there were two courses of study: the two-year English Course and the three-year
Classical course. By 1899, there were five different courses of study available at the

normal college:

1. The general degree course of two years.
2. The specializing degree course of two years.

 

”Putnam, 1899, p. 39. See chart on the requirements for each course.
"9 Harper, 1939.

180

Jo.

3. The general diploma course of four years.
4. A four-year specializing course.
5. Course, of one year, for college graduates."50

Through these courses teachers were prepared for the following named positions:
For positions in rural, ungraded and village schools.

For public and private Kindergartens.

For primary work and the lower grades of the elementary schools.

For the upper grades of the graded schools.

For general grade work.

For special subjects and departments.

For supervisors of particular branches, such as music, drawing, etc.

For principals, superintendents, directors, etc.

FSQMPPNE

The college was authorized to bestow certificates, diplomas, and degrees as follows:
A certificate good for two years.

A certificate good for three years.

A certificate for five years.

A Life certificate.

The degree of Bachelor of Pedagogy.

The degree of Master of Pedagogy?“

These offerings differed from King’s days as a student because in the 1850s there were

P‘MPP’PE‘

no certificates or degrees required to be a teacher, administrator, or teacher educator.
King’s classmates pursued professional lives that included this type of variety, but
usually a single person would occupy many of these jobs during the course of her career.
However, by the turn of the century, rural one-room schoolteachers received a very
different education than did superintendents. King, of course, had been both a rural one-
room schoolteacher and a superintendent. This expanded fare was touted as meeting the
needs of the state for teachers as well as serving the upper echelons of school system by
preparing administrators. Michigan State Normal College students were some of the first
in the country to be granted Bachelor of Arts degrees,”2 and Ypsilanti boasted one of the

first post-baccalaureate teacher education programs for college graduates. Other normal

 

'°° Putnam, 1899, p. 84-5.

1" Putnam, 1899, p. 84-5.

“’2 Some sources credit Ypsilanti as being first, others give credit to Albany as the first
Normal School to award Bachelor’s degrees.

181

‘J\‘

:4
”A.
I "

schools and teachers’ colleges generally followed in Ypsilanti’s footsteps ten or twenty
years later.

In addition to her studies, King was an active participant in the campus
community and a member of the Normal School Lyceum. “3 The Lyceum at the Normal
School was organized in the very first term and continued to be the only student
organization for nearly twenty years. This was a coeducational group that debated
important scholarly and popular issues and brought speakers to campus. The faculty and
students organized and managed the Lyceum together. It was the intent of the faculty
that the organization be collaborative but also that the informal life of the campus
emphasized the intellectual. The literary society, or Lyceum, had long flourished in the
East. Its emphasis was on freedom of discussion, the challenging of stereotypes, and the
importance of reason?“

Various members of the faculty attended the weekly meetings, frequently
delivered lectures, and participated freely in debates. Principal Welch was the first
president of the society and Professor J .M.B. Sill was corresponding secretary. As might
be expected of a mixed faculty-student organization, the topics debated remained well
within the limits of propriety; however, they did represent serious attention to problems

of the day. A few of the propositions were:

“That men engaged in manual labor act a greater part in the formation of the character
of a community than men of scientific research;”

"That the aims and tendencies of the so«called 'Know -nothing’ party are detrimental
to the institutions of our government;”

“That the discovery of the California mines has been detrimental to mankind;”

“That the ladies ought to be allowed to debate; that the interest of the society and its
existence depend upon their debating” (1870);

“That the acquisition of Cuba is an object much to be desired by the government of
the United States;”

 

“’3 The Old Normal Lyceum is discussed, with special attention to gender, in Chapter
Three.

'“ U.S. Department of the Interior, 1932, History of the American Lyceum

182

“That the Bible should be retained in the public schools?”
This last proposition resulted in a protracted and animated debate, participated in by
several members of the faculty, and extending over three evenings. The Lyceum finally
adopted a resolution stating “we believe the Bible should not be excluded from our public
schools and that such exclusion would not, in our opinion, render them more acceptable
to any class of our citizens?“
In addition to promoting intellectual life outside of the formal curriculum, the

Lyceum served as a center for social life and was active in bringing lecturers to Ypsilanti
and the campus. It also developed a sizable library of its own as it pursued debating and
literary programs, and, in 1888, the general library absorbed its collection of more than a

thousand volumes. "7

As the school grew, the large membership became unwieldy, and
eventually several other societies were formed.”

The Michigan State Normal School was on the cutting edge of educational
reforms and often at the center of debates about curriculum in K -12 schools and in
teacher education. In the nineteenth century, the Normal School curriculum was
changing and vibrant; there were multiple significant changes in the course of study for
those who intended to teach school. “’9 As the school matured, the faculty struggled to
agree on the purpose of a normal education and a curriculum that would fulfill those
purposes. They debated frequently whether the Normal School should indeed teach

academic courses, like a college, or whether all normal work, regardless of content,

should be, at root, a course in pedagogy?”

 

“’5 Isbell, 1971 p. 332-333.

1“ Isbell, 1971 p. 332-333.

“’7 Isbell, 1971 p. 333.

1°“ Isbell, 1971, p. 332.

“’9 This image is markedly different than the ways historians have portrayed normal
education. Jessie Pangbum claimed there was a largely technical approach to the
education of teachers, and she also added that there were no real changes in the
curriculum between the 18408 and the 18908. Pangbum, 1932, p. 14.

”0 Putnam, 1899, pp. 48, 52, 56, 64, and 78.

183

From the beginning the Michigan State Normal School made efforts to secure

excellent teachers. Because it was on the cutting edge of educational theory and practice,

the Normal was able to attract outstanding teachers.

Instruction in music began in Normal’s second year. In the spring of 1854, Albert
Miller was secured to fill a position provided for in the original plan of instruction,
listed as Teacher of Vocal Music and Drawing. The man chosen to fill this position
was born in Sonderhausen, in the Principality of Schwartzberg, Germany, and
educated at the University of Jena. '7'

The inclusion of music in the curriculum reveals the alertness of Principal Welch and his

associates. For it was only as recently as 1848 that instruction in music in the public

school had begun to find favor in some eastern cities.”

Principal Welch also advocated the inclusion of physical education in the Normal

School curriculum. In his report for 1860 he discussed the matter at some length, and he

noted that the subject of physical education was receiving nation-wide attention:

It is difficult to overestimate the importance of this movement. Thousands of valuable
lives have been sacrificed, and scarcely any one has passed uninjured through the
terrible ordeal of close and crowded rooms, long sittings, excessive mental effort and
deficient exercise. Most of the graduates of our High Schools and Colleges carry with
them as mementos of their School days, disordered stomachs, curved spines,
enfeebled bodies or some nervous weakness, to embitter their lives and to rob
education itself of much of its value. Nor can study be prosecuted with due success
while the health and vigor of the body are so little cared for. Hour after hour is daily
wasted in our Schools, in listless and futile efforts at study, when, through mere
weariness of the body, the sympathizing mind has lost its power of steady application.
A skillful gymnastic drill of a few minutes would awaken the energies, quicken the
sluggish circulation, and lend new life and interest to the whole mental action.‘73

The Normal School helped lead the physical education movement, and, as Welch hoped,

the graduates took their skills and orientations toward good health out into Michigan’s

schools, promoting physical education in the lower grades as well.

 

‘7' Isbell, 1971, p. 83-84.
1” Isbell, 1971, p. 84.
"3 Isbell, 1971, p. 91-92.

184

sq

While King was a Normal School student she was closely supervised and required
to keep a strict study schedule, and expected to follow rules of deportment. For example,

in 1860, a Normal School student wrote to his cousin:

I suppose there are nearly three hundred students in the Normal School and over two
thirds of these are ladies There are many things required of students who attend the
Normal School. As the school is pretty much free, being only three dollars a year,
they lay down many rules which we have to obey, or we can go home, just as we
please All recitations are conducted in the forenoon, so we have to go to the
building but once in a day; and that is at twenty minutes after eight, and holds four
hours. We have to stay in our rooms two hours during the afternoon except Saturdays
or Sundays, also after seven o’clock in the evening except the two days above
mentioned when we can stay out till ten in the evening. The students room all over
town just where they can get rooms and board. If you should go out of your room
during study hours, perhaps you would not be seen, but if one of the teachers should
happen to see you, he... would probably report you to the Principal; and after you
have been reported twice you are expelled from school.""

This young man doesn’t seem to question the fact that if he doesn’t like the rules, he
should go home. He has respect for what the leaders of the school have decided is
necessary and appropriate. This is the type of schedule and regulations that King abided
by while she was a Normal School student.

In addition to the formal curriculum of preservice teacher education, King and her
contemporaries also participated in on-going professional development. Those teachers
who did not have the opportunity to attend normal School could get a taste of the
teaching and learning that went on there by taking part in a teacher’s institute.

A three week long Teachers' Institute, under the direction of the first principal of the
Normal School, A. S. Welch, succeeded the dedication exercises in October 1852.“ The
Teachers' Institute, or temporary normal school, was attended by 250 Michigan teachers.

The instructors at the institute were Normal School professors as well as local

 

"4 Isbell, 1971, p. 319320.
'7’ Annual Report of the Superintendent of Public Instruction, 1853.

185

experienced teachers. The Teachers' Institute was a migratory form of normal education.
It was expected that professors would periodically teach at one and that normal graduates
would attend and lead them in various locales across the state, thereby “carrying
throughout the State, and to the doors of the people of each section of the
State—blessings and advantages of the permanent Normal School?”"

The Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction in Michigan issued a
circular announcing the “Dedication of the State Normal School and Teachers’ Institute,
at Ypsilanti.”

The permanent opening of the Institution for the reception of pupils will be preceded
by the holding of a Teacher’s Institute, at the Normal School, for four weeks
successively after the dedication, and while citizens, parents and friends of Education
are invited to attend and participate, the Teachers of the Primary Schools of this State
are specially expected to attend. The exercises at the Institute will be free of expense
to the Teachers, and it is expected that arrangements will be made with the officers of
the Central and Southern Railroads, to extend to them the advantages of reduced rates
of fare. Arrangements are expected to be made to accommodate all who attend, with
as little expense to them as possible. Francis W. Shearrnan, Sup 't of Pub. Instruction,
and Sec ’y of Board of Education, Ex. Ofiicio. ”'77

A Teachers’ Institute is a temporary Normal School. Two hundred and fifty teachers
participated in this three-week session. The teachers for the Institute were the “most
experienced and able men who can be obtained from the ranks of the profession, either at
home or from abroad.” These experts “conduct its exercises after the most modern and
approved methods of teaching.” The Teachers’ Institute was seen as an ongoing
migratory educational project. Theoretically, Normal School graduates would be the
instructors of future Institutes around the state. The Institutes were seen as tools for
adding to the public’s knowledge through lectures and discussion as well as auxiliary

teacher training. “The more general object of these organizations is the advancement of

 

'76 Annual Report of the Superintendent of Public Instruction, 1853. p. 1 13
”7 Annual Report of the Superintendent of Public Instruction, 1853, p. 109-1 10

186

knowledge on all subjects connected with the Teacher’s vocation.”178 Teachers and other
participants listened to familiar lectures and participated in discussions related to the
branches of study usually taught in primary schools. They learned about the best
methods for imparting knowledge in these subjects through participation as learners.
Theories and methods were examined through illustration and practical application.179
Evening Lectures included the “Rev. H. N. Strong, upon Female Education?”0
At the close of the Institute the two hundred and fifty teachers who had descended upon
Ypsilanti wrote a set of resolutions—mostly thanking the various people who made the
institute possible. One of the resolutions reads, “Resolved, That the thanks of the
Institute are due to the clergy men of Ypsilanti, by whose presence we have been
encouraged, and to whom we are indebted for their daily prayers and religious

exercises.”181

Adoniiah Welch

Adonijah S. Welch, Principal of the State Normal School and newly-elected
President of the State Teachers’ Association, delivered an address before the State
Teachers’ Institute titled, “What Constitutes the True Teacher ” His ideas and
commitments helped shape the curriculum and instruction of the early Normal School
and set a professional standard for teachers in mid-nineteenth century Michigan. Welch
refers to teaching as a “profession,” and he also refers to it as a “calling” when he claims
that the establishment of Normal Schools is an indication “highly favorable to the
elevation of our calling.” Although Julia Anne King was just beginning high school in
Adrian when Welch gave this address, he would become her professor and mentor, and
the legacy of his ideas about teaching would pervade her early professional life.

 

'78 Annual Report of the Superintendent of Public Instruction, 1853, p. 113.
"9 Annual Report of the Superintendent of Public Instruction, 1853, p. l 13.
m Annual Report of the Superintendent of Public Instruction, 1853, p. 115.
'3' Annual Report of the Superintendent of Public Instruction, 1853, p. 119.

187

 

 

 

 

 

Welch believed teachers needed to know more about what they were going to
teach. He refers to ancient Athens when he says that men “dwelt long under the porch, or
walked in the groves of the academy, listening to the accents of wisdom from the lips of
such teachers as Zeno and Plato. They had a wise notion in those day, that the Teacher,
before he instructs his pupils to soar, should be full-fledged himself?”2 Welch explains
how ministry, law, medicine and other professions require the practitioner to be
knowledgeable in the field before instructing others, but in teaching there is an anomaly.
He believes teaching to be one of the highest and noblest professions but is disturbed by
motley assembly of teachers in our nation’s schools.

Welch calls for teachers to value and maintain good health, so that it might spill
over and afford them good spirits. “Unvarying cheerfulness, urbanity of manner, and
kindness of feeling, are essential elements in the character of the true teacher. Nothing is
more attractive to the pupil than the countenance of an instructor animated by good will;
and nothing conduces more to this state of mind than uniform good health.” He
continues that the true teacher will be “intellectually well educated. He makes clear that
he does not mean mere mental furniture, but “that mental strength which is acquired by
discipline.”183 “To possess a systematic, well directed and mental activity—that habit of
attention and reflection which, wherever directed, enables the student to probe the
subject—the power of close, accurate, consecutive thought... such a student will show no
slavish reliance upon textbooks, no servile deference to the conclusions of another. . 3"“
Welch wants independent thinkers, teachers with orientations toward knowledge that 1
allow them to see themselves as knowledge creators not consumers.

Welch is disappointed in the common focus on the pecuniary. “How often is a

course of training, which tends to produce a mental monstrosity, fixed upon from the

 

m Welch, 1853, p. 122.
"'3 Welch, 1853, p. 126.
'84 Welch, 1853, p. 127.

188

mercenary question— ‘will it pay?’ Will it pay? not in high aspirations for
excellence—not in wide and generous views of life—not in an exquisite perception of the
beautiful, the good, and the true-not in the elevated enjoyment found in all these, but in
the paltry commodity of dollars and cents?“ Of course, professionals should be
enumerated, but he sees so much more possibility and excitement in the teachers’
vocation.

Welch asks his audience, “What type of study should the teacher make of the
subjects?” Perhaps it was King’s ruminations on queries such as this as a Normal School
student under principal Welch, that first got her to think about the role of teacher as life
long learner. Welch advised that, “In every branch of learning, he [the teacher] will aim
for accuracy, rather than extent of knowledge. In every branch of learning, he will be
mindful that it is not the memory of words, and facts and formulas, which gives finish to
scholarship, but a thorough investigation of relations and reasons?”6 These ideas were
still considered cutting edge forty years later when King was a Normal School professor
and professed these herself.

The teacher should impart instruction in “a manner which shall interest the pupil,
guide him in the path to proficiency, and induce him to think for himself.”"’7 Nothing is
now more trite and widely acknowledged, than the fact that the pupil must be interested
before he can make any considerable advancement. . .The only true motive for
application, is the love of it.”'88 Welch knew that if a student is interested in something,
he will apply himself to the subject at hand. The best way to motivate a student is to find

something he truly cares about. Welch recommends leading the pupil through a step-by-

 

‘85 Welch, 1853, p. 128.

“’5 Welch, 1853, p. 129.

‘37 Welch, 1853, p. 129.

“’3 Welch, 1853, p. 130. It is hard to read Welch’s words from 1852 without thinking of
John Dewey’s famous “Interest and Discipline” essay in Democracy and Education. The
similarity is especially poignant because Dewey’s thoughts were considered
revolutionary, and he wasn’t even born when Welch gave this speech.

189

step system of careful induction from the simple to the more abstract truths of science.

Learning becomes a “succession of novelties which stimulate curiosity and rivet his

attention, [and] the schoolroom is no longer a prison.”189

Welch didn’t want to cater to students’ interests and activities at the expense of
mental challenge. His ultimate goal was to create original thinkers, so it was logical that

he desired his students to reach a place where they could investigate and further their

study independently.

As the object of education is to make original thinkers, that method is the best, which

while it leaves nothing in the recitation unsifted, elicits the most thought from the
pupil and the least explanation from the teacher. That lesson affords the severest
mental exercise which is mastered by unaided effort (emphasis in original).190

Welch was worried that some teachers depended too much on textbooks and that they had
the impression they had “covered” material when they had assigned all the study

questions.

Questions are not arranged on the margin of the text books for the true teacher, but
for the drone. The mistaken idea has widely obtained, that when these are answered
the subject is exhausted. Urge the pupil instead to an independent exposition of what
he has learned. ...impress him with the fact that the greater benefit flows not from the
possession of knowledge, but from that mental discipline which arises from his

efforts to acquire it.191
Even though Welch demanded intellectually astute teachers, he knew that academic

qualifications and didactic skill alone were by no means sufficient. In addition he desired
that his teachers possess impressive moral qualities. “What a perfect antidote to the
annoyances of the school room can be found in the graces of the Christian?“ Welch
believed that in addition to the brainy requirements he enumerated, teachers should be

pious community members with big hearts who could serve as models of virtue.

 

“'9 Welch, 1853, p. 131.
19° Welch, 1853, p. 131.
‘9' Welch, 1853, p. 131.
’92 Welch, 1853, p. 132-133.

190

 

Welch concluded his remarks to the teachers by urging them to “obedience of the
old precept of the Greek—~“Know thyself.” He instructed them to analyze their own
characters, divest themselves of all narrow-minded prejudices, and extend constantly

their range of thoughts. His closing plea: “never forget the well known maxim “as is the

teacher, so is the school,” and let your motto be, vivam benefacere.”‘93

Several years after Welch opened the Normal School as the inaugural Principal,
he published Object Lessons: For Teachers in Primary Schools and Primary Classes’ 9‘.
The series of Object Lessons contained in this volume was prepared for the experimental
department of the Michigan State Normal School.“ The Model or Experimental School
of that time had two primary objectives: to give advanced classes at the Normal School
practice teaching experience, and to furnish a preparatory course of study.“5 The book
was intended to be used by teachers to supplement their regular curriculum so that they

might better meet the “object of all primary instruction, namely, the cultivation of the

senses of the pupil?”7 In the preface it reads:

The first instruction given to the child in school should be based on the fact that his
intellectual activity consists in seeing and hearing rather than in reasoning and
reflecting. His restless curiosity about material things is natural and proper to
childhood, and equally natural, also, is his aversion to abstract thinking. Any mode of
teaching, therefore, which thwarts the former while it seeks to overcome the latter, is

false in its philosophy and bad in its results.
Welch was committed to a teaching practice grounded in what he knew about child
psychology and development. He credited Pestalozzi, an eminent Swiss teacher, with

developing the order of instruction to which he subscribes and says that it has prevailed

in the schools of Germany and England. He explains that the Object Method has not

 

'93 Welch, 1853, p. 135-136.
'9‘ Welch, 1862.

‘95 Welch, 1862, p. iii. -iv.
’95 Putnam, 1899, p. 89.

‘97 Welch, 1862, p. iv.

191

 

g(

 

caught on widely in our country because there is not a book that trains teacher in its
methods. “But the want of a suitable book, from which teachers could learn the best
methods of training the senses of children by means of their appropriate objects, has
proved a serious obstacle to the introduction of the Pestalozzian system into our primary
schools?“ He proposes to fill that void

In his preface, Welch thanks “friends who have kindly commended the work in
advance, especially to Mr. Wells, Superintendent of the Public Schools of Chicago, and
to Mr. Gregory, Superintendent of Public Instruction for the State of Michigan?“
Welch was a well-connected educational leader. John M. Gregory, formerly head of a
flourishing classical school in Detroit, worked with Welch and Haven to establish, under
the auspices of the State Teachers’ Association of which Welch and Gregory were both
Presidents, the Michigan Journal of Education. Gregory edited this journal before taking
on the Superintendency.zoo William H. Wells studied at Samuel Hall’s Teacher Seminary
in Andover, MA. The Reverend Samuel R. Hall’s private school, which he conducted as
an adjunct to his work as a minister, was the first teacher-training school in the United
States.” Wells then worked as Assistant to Henry Barnard, Secretary of the State Board
of Education in Connecticut, and served as Principal of Westfield State Normal School in
Massachusetts before answering the call to serve as Superintendent in Chicago. In 1861,
Wells addressed the Michigan State Teachers’ Association. Wells’ experience was in

and concern was for teacher education, and he was a respected Pestalozzian.”

 

'98 Welch, 1862, p. iii.

'99 Welch, 1862, p. iv.

2°“ Putnam, 1899, p. 335-336.
2“ Cubberley, 1920, p. 751.
”3 Herbst, 1989, p. 89.

192

 

 

Welch’s Object Lessons were intended to give little children their first

introduction to the schoolroom and included topics such as “the Features of the Face” or
“the Alphabet in Drawing Lessons.“ He gave directions to young teachers that
included,

3. If the lesson be on a visible object, always have that object at hand, where every

child can inspect it.

4. Encourage the pupil to answer every question himself, and try to beget in him the

habit of accuracy in expression.
8. Be thoroughly in earnest. Vivacity is diffusive; so is dullness. Indifference on the

part of the class, will be due to the teacher.”
His manual had much helpful to the young teacher who had probably grown up in a less

enlightened educational atmosphere.

Abigail Rogers
Abigail Rogers was hired to work with Welch as the first Preceptress at the

Michigan State Normal School. Abigail Rogers instructed the Normal School students
that they must, “Remember that it should be your object not so much to communicate
mere knowledge, as to arouse and strengthen the intellect that it may be able to carry on
the work of acquisition independently?“ She, like King and Welch, advocated teaching
students how to learn rather than simply accumulating content.

Abigail Rogers, who had been appointed Assistant Principal of the Female
Department of the Normal School and elected Vice President of the State Teachers’

Association, also spoke at the Teachers’ Institute in October 1852. After a lengthy,

apologetic, beginning in which she gracefully humbles herself before the assembled

 

”3 Welch, 1962, p. ix.
2“ Welch, 1862, p. ix-x.
”5 Rogers, 1853, p. 144.

193

 

 

 

teachers, perhaps because it was not customary for women to speak in public, Rogers
tells the teachers she hopes they depart from the Institute with “additional power to
benefit others?”6 She spoke of sympathy, or putting oneself in the shoes of a child, in
order to become his best teacher.

Sympathy with children is, I conceive, the secret of success in teaching them. It is the
open sesame to their hearts. There is a depth in the child’s feelings which nothing but
sympathy can fathom; and where this is wanting in a teacher, great talent and intense
labor may be employed, 1 will not say absolume in vain, but with very dubious
success and feeble applause. . .You must throw into your work not your mind only but
your heart also. If we would succeed in conveying instruction to the minds of others,
we must participate in their pleasures and take pride in their improvements. We must

become as a child in our own feelings. We must bring back the gentle remembrances
of our youth, the half-forgotten delights of our childhood?”

Rogers was a devoted Christian who was familiar with Jesus’ teachings. When Jesus’

disciples asked him “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” Jesus called a little
child unto him, set him in the midst of them, and preached,

Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall
not enter into the kingdom of heaven. Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as

this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoso shall
receive one such little child in my name receiveth me.”

Rogers describes what she considers to be a model teacher. He had “ a spirit that
was earnestly at work in the world, whose work was healthy, sustained and constantly
carried forward in the fear of God—a work that was founded on a deep sense of its duty
and its value.” The ideal teacher knows his work is important in God’s eyes and that God
is his ultimate supervisor. Rogers berates teachers who are too concerned about order
and who concentrate on mistakes rather than accomplishments. She compares their
narrow management to the washing of the Pharisees, and says their rules are no more

necessary to the schoolroom than the Pharisees were to devotion.” The Pharisees

 

”5 Rogers, 1853, p. 137.
”7 Rogers, 1853, p. 138.
3“ KJV, Matthew 18:1-5.
1°“ Rogers, 1853, p. 140.

194

 

 

 

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observed many food laws and other ceremonial customs that Jesus proclaimed
unnecessary?”

With a good teacher, Rogers claims, “the school room instead of being regarded
as an irksome den of imprisonment becomes the very hall of liberty.’ml Rogers offered

her beloved sister as a model of the intellectual and moral excellence required for good
teaching.

Never was any call upon her intellect or her heart disregarded. It was her highest
happiness, and her abundant reward to know that she lived only to serve and benefit
others. That her own sex should be educated and elevated was her most anxious

wish, and to this end was directed the labors of her life... May you, like her, be ever
ready to bear the burdens of others.212

She sees no contradiction in a woman who fights for equal treatment of her sex and who
submits to bear the burdens of others. Her theology, and therefore educational
philosophy, included a belief, like King’s, in the equality of all humankind, regardless of
male or female. It also included a desire to humble oneself and serve others as Jesus did.
Therefore, the Rogers sisters were not really feminists, in the modern sense of the word,
they were simply thoughtful Christians trying to do their best to fulfill God’s call in their
lives. Rogers even sees the pursuit of knowledge in its highest forms as a religious act.

We cannot wonder at the exquisite construction and wonderful capacity of that
intellect with which our Creator has endowed us, in common with the most highly
gifted of our race, and an anxiety and ambition to cultivate it to the highest degree,

should animate us as it has, in every age, animated the wisest and best of our
species.213

Rogers refers to teaching as a career of improvement, and she hopes that the
teachers will constitute a band of intellectual laborers. In this case she means both that

teachers help others improve and that they should strive to improve themselves. She

 

2” KJV, Mark 7: 1-23.

2“ Rogers, 1853, p. 141.
2" Rogers, 1853, p. 144.
2" Rogers, 1853, p. 145.

195

 

 

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cautions them not be lulled into thinking they have arrived, but to constantly challenge
themselves to greater heights.

Never flatter yourselves into the conceit tlmt your education is accomplished, and that
you have reached the point where the labor of mental culture may properly cease. . ..
Perform your appointed work “with a deep and constantly abiding sense of your
responsibility to a higher than any earthly tribunal.214
Rogers’ tone and message sound very similar to the teaching of the female seminaries.
She was a student in the Female Department at Wesleyan Seminary. Leaders of girls’
schools also criticized mechanical methods of instruction and mere memorization.
Teachers like Emma Willard of Troy Female Seminary wrote textbooks describing their
new methods that did away with competition and corporal punishment.” The Michigan
State Normal School faculty were part of a larger international conversation about
teaching, learning, female education, and teacher education. This diverse body of

educators was more thoughtful, their theories were more progressive, and their goals

were more liberatory than education historians give them credit for.

John M. B. Sill
When Julia Anne King graduated from the Normal School, Professor Sill

addressed her class. Sill was a member of the first graduating class and had studied
under Welch as a high school student as well. He continued on to serve as
Superintendent of the Detroit Public Schools, principal of the Detroit Female Seminary,
and Principal of the Normal School [see chart on principals’ lives], but in 1858, he was a
young Professor of English Literature and Language.

 

2“ Rogers, 1853, p. 145.
2” Tyack and Hansot, 1990, p. 40.

196

 

 

Regarding teacher education, Sill claimed, “The art of teaching is a rare
endowment, yet there are few who possess the capability of acquiring knowledge, who
cannot by diligent effort gain the power to successfqu impart it.”216 He admitted that
some truly wonderful teachers are born with their gifts, but that most of us, if we apply
ourselves, can learn to teach well.

Sill knew that balancing the duties of the schoolroom world and the world outside
was difficult. He encouraged young teachers not to center all their hopes and cares in the
world over which they preside and to become ignorant and neglectful of the things that
concern every law-abiding citizen. Sill believed teachers should “fearlessly utter our
opinions on all suitable occasions, and come squarely up to our duties at the ballot-box

and elsewhere.” He knew this was debatable ground, but asked,

Will not the most conservative admit it is better and more manful to hold fixed and
well considered opinions and to maintain them quietly but unflinchingly, than to be
tossed hither and thither by the fickle gale of public sentiment? and who does not
know that the bitterest partisan will give us more honor for holding adverse opinions

than for holding none at all?”
After instructing the teachers about their obligations to participate in the civic arena, Sill
turned to other uses of non-teaching time. He recommended having friends and spending
time outside of school. He also lectured the graduates on the importance of continued
study. He proclaimed, “No mind can bear the tax of continued expenditure unless it
receive fresh supplies from living fountains of knowledge. Remember then, that the
education which you have here initiated will, if you are true to yourselves, end only when
life ends. ”"8 Instead of seeing their graduation from professional education as an end,

Sill sees it as a beginning, an initiation into a life long quest for understanding.

 

2“ Sill, 1858, p. 37s379.
2" Sill, 1858, p.380.
1" Sill, 1858, p. 381

197

 

 

First Teachings

In the Report of the Superintendent of Public Instruction for 1855-58, there
appears the text to “First Teachings” A Paper read by a Lady of the last Graduating
Class of the Normal School, in March, 1858.“ The exact author is unknown, but there
were only five women in the graduating class: Julia A. King, Harriet A. Farrand, Louisa
Clark, Addie S. Bradner, and Elvira Allen.“0 Attire time of their graduation, Julia Anne
King wrote, in addition to “Life Work,” an essay titled, “Meanwhile,” which I could not
locate. First Teachings serves as an illustration of what the young graduates had learned
and were thinking about teaching. ’

The first proposition offered in this piece is that the eye and the ear are the
principle avenues of approach to me mind, and, as such, should be first cultivated. The
young author then compares what she thinks of as best practice with what she has seen to
be the case in district schools. Unfortunately, though not surprising, theory and practice
are not in line. She suggests that instead of requiring the children to memorize long
columns of words, teachers should develop their “perceptive faculties.” For example, if
children play with reflective surfaces, teach them about light; if they capture bugs, teach
them the habits and properties of spiders and flies, etc. When they are outdoors they
should be encouraged to observe the natural world in an effort to stimulate their desire for
knowledge about it.

She discusses the need to develop the “power of conception.” By this she means
the ability to conceive of the author’s meaning. She explains that if teachers “explained
the circumstances in which [the piece] was written, the locality described and the various
persons alluded to,” the students would have been able to read the piece with better
rmderstanding. She offers a second example in drawing, which she claims is “another

means of cultivating conception.” For example, if students draw picture maps of

 

"9 First Teachings, 183, p. 382.
1'“ Putnam, 1899, p. 296.

1%

 

landscapes they are familiar with preceding their study of geography, they will more
easily form a conception of the earth’s surface.221

This young scholar echoed Abigail Rogers’ sentiments five years earlier when she
claimed “The great fault in our present system of education is its superficiality (emphasis
in original). Scholars are hurried over too much, thus not only failing to acquire the
knowledge they might, but fonning habits which will preclude future intellectual
culture.”222 She has learned to be self-critical in her practice: “Very much of the child’s
interest in school depends upon the teacher. ”2” She has learned to look beyond the
mental activity of the child and to appreciate “the fact that the child has a physical, a
sensitive, and a moral nature.” To develop sound bodies she recommends schools be
fitted with the means for exercise, to cultivate refined tastes she suggests arranging the
school yard to gratify the pupil’s love of beauty, and to instill pure moral principles she
advocates daily teaching and enforcement of self-denial and attention to any deviation
from the path of truthfulness.224 It seems this yormg teacher has learned well the lessons
that her Professors have taught. She honors her new profession and is anxious to do good
in the world.
King and her contemporaries from the Michigan State Normal School of the
18503 all considered themselves professionals and approached their work with the vigor
and disposition that would earn them that title today. Even though they tried to focus on
the ministry aspects of teaching, they were conscious of teachers’ salaries and advocated
for their peers to receive more pay. In 1854, an author in the Michigan Journal of
Education and Teachers ’ Magazine, listed only as E. O. H. (presumably Dr. E. O. Haven
of the State University who collaborated with Welch and Gregory to produce and edit the

 

2” First Teachings, 18$, p. 384.
222 First Teachings, 18$, p. 385.
2” First Teachings, 1858, p. 385.
22“ First Teachings, 18$, p. 385-386.

199

 

 

 

 

J.

 

 

first Michigan Journal of Education)?” reports that teacher salaries in Michigan have
been raised within the last few years, perhaps as much as fifty percent. This is as it
should be, because, “No man will do his best as a teacher unless his heart is in it, and that
cannot be unless he intends to make it his profession, and depend upon his success in it

for his position and support.” According to this article, teaching and ministry have a
great deal in common.

We [the members of the Michigan State Teachers’ Association, who published this
magazine] aspire to use what influence we have, not only to elevate them [teachers]
in public estimation, but to increase their own respect for their calling. The salary
should be sufficient to command men of talent and enterprise, and to ensure to the

economical an increase in property, and then the man of thought can devote himself
with heart to his life work.“

The author advocates teachers becoming genuine scholars and thereby helping
themselves in their calling and also honoring the profession.

A Single Purpose Institution

Even though the Normal School provided an education of collegiate-caliber to
King and other graduates who stayed for the full three-year course, the founders also built
a curriculum which was flexible enough to meet the needs of students who simply needed
to brush up on basic subjects. Being familiar with the basic subjects one was going to
teach was considered of primary importance. Even so, the main objective was not to
simply present the grammar school curriculum to students; instead, Normal School
professors hoped to introduce students to ways of thinking about subject matter teaching
that would help them when they were in charge of classrooms. Even in the third year of
the Classical Course, students who were studying things that were commonly taught in

colleges learned their lessons from a professor whose main job was to prepare them to
teach.

 

2” Puhram, 186, p. 41-42.
”5 Haven, E. O. 1854. p. 47.

 

O.

)P

 

The early Michigan State Normal School did not want to offer a curriculum
equivalent to the university. Rather, the Normal School was a single-purpose institution
committed to educating teachers for the state’s schools. Richard Edwards, President of
the Illinois State Normal University, captured this purpose when he said that, the idea of
future teaching “is the Alpha and Omega of schemes of study and modes of thought. ”“2"
This influential normal school president was also a minister, and when talking about the

purposes of normal education he makes a scriptural reference. The Revelation of John,
the final book in the Bible, reads: “‘1 am the Alpha and the Omega’, says the Lord God,

 

who is and who was and who is to come, the sovereign Lord of all?“ Just as Edwards

saw reverence for God as the goal of a Christian life, he saw attention to the fact that
normal students were going to become teachers as the guiding light in normal education.
Adonijah Welch, first principal of the Michigan State Normal School, shared

Edward’s View. Welch believed

No amount of textbook knowledge as such, no memory of straggling
undigested facts or details-mo skimming of the area of knowledge of
whatever sort, can make the genuine scholar or the independent thinker. It is

rather by investigating the relations of facts and things-~by a close scrutiny of
the reasons on which opinions are founded . . . that the student, at last, attains

to a genuine cultivation of the intellech
He emphasized the importance of a balanced education, insisting that the function of the

true teacher is to educate the whole mind. The founders of the Normal School believed
that an education that constantly required students to think about the relationships
between individuals, subject matter, schools and society was good preparation for
teaching. The curricular sequence at the Normal included all of the common subjects
taught in schools, and it also had courses similar to those taught in colleges. In the
18503-18703, students at the Normal studied philosophy, mathematics, rhetoric, and

 

27 Edwards, 1865, quoted in Borrowman, p.24.

2” Rev. 1:8
1” Isbell, 1971, p. 2021.

201

 

 

 

 

literature. Only on Sunday afternoons, when the principal spoke, did they focus
exclusively on pedagogy. Even then, the emphasis was on theory and not specific
strategies.
Michigan State Normal School was a single-purpose institution during at least the
first few decades of its existence. Michigan does not fit into the regional generalizations
historians have made about normal schools. In Wisconsin multiple normal schools
opened in small rural towns. There were few high schools at the time, and so students
who wished to pursue their education, or who could not afford to make the trip to
Madison for university studies, enrolled at the normals, whether they wanted to be
teachers or not. In Michigan a single Normal School was located in Ypsilanti, a city
which already boasted one of the state's early high schools, and which was only fifteen
miles from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Evidence from alumni records
suggests the vast majority of students did, in fact, teach in the public schools upon
graduation [see chart]?0

In obedience to a requirement of the Board of Education, every pupil of the
Normal School signed the following declaration as a condition of membership: “We, the
subscribers, do hereby declare that it is our intention to devote ourselves to the business
of teaching in the schools of this State, and that our object in resorting to this Normal
School, is the better to prepare ourselves for the discharge of this important duty?“
Whether or not students dedicated themselves to school teaching upon graduation, this
declaration served as an important unifying concept when designing the curriculum.

Generally whatever subject is taught in classes is given with reference to the best
methods of teaching it together with the pedagogic axioms applicable to each step, by
which to test the correctness of the methods...Differing in this respect from mere
Academic Instruction, the chief aim of which is attainment of knowledge concerning
the subject of study only with an incidental, often uncertain aim at what is called
“Mental discipline.” We cannot well dispense with a curriculum having the Form of

 

2” See chart of classes of 1857 and 18$.
z" Welch, 1858. p.37 0-71.

 

the “Academic.” . . .Consider the material out of which Teachers are to be developed,
and is it not evident to the judicious that each step of progress through any branch of
study is an occasion for impressing a method or applying a pedagogic axiom, not so
surely within the attainment of the pupil, when the occasion is but memory? Our
method enables us to begin this kind of professional training with our earliest classes

and continue it through the entire course.232
It was clear to the faculty why students were there and what they needed to be able to do

That normal students only devoted a few years to teaching is not a reflection on
the quality of the education they received or their commitment to serving children. Many
knew and believed in the original purposes of normal education, but they found the
society outside of the normal did not support their aims. Most normal school students
were women who chose to marry and raise families. Richard Edwards, President of the
Illinois Normal University (1862-1876), noted that it would be inappropriate to fault the
institution for having graduates who followed accepted social norms (and sometimes the
law). Men who graduated from normal schools also often taught for only a few years.
However, they usually left the classroom to enter administration or other professions.
Just as women cannot be faulted for choosing marriage and motherhood in a society in

which those were considered the most important roles a woman could occupy, men
should not be faulted for choosing to become doctors, lawyers or scientists in a society

where one cannot earn as much money, or the respect of one’s peers, as a teacher. ’33

King’s Connections
Later in life Julia Anne King expressed sorrow that teachers were not often

enough the social leaders that they were in past times.” For example, all of the
nineteenth century Principals of the Michigan State Normal School were involved in
some sort of social reform work in addition to their work at the Normal School. Some

served as senators or ambassadors while others worked rehabilitating criminals or at

 

”2 Putnam, 1899, p. 56.

”3 Loomis, 1932.
z" Goodrich, 1919, p. 9.

 

qa

.) ,.

 

 

insane asylums. My investigation of King and the Normal School reveals a group of
influential male leaders who combined political power, religious zeal, and nurturing
pedagogy. Schooled before the Industrial Revolution and the rise of the university, these
men were ministers, statesmen, teachers, and scholars. They supported advanced study
for all God’s children and believed men and women could work side by side in Christian
communities. These civic-minded servants were strong advocates of women’s education
and were often the husbands or fathers of women who were active in social movements.
The Normal School gave future teachers an opportunity to be part of a learning

community in which students and their professors examined, practiced, and debated a
wide range of issues related to pedagogy. Even those teachers who did not enroll at the
Normal School were connected to the Normal School and its professors through the State
Teacher’s Association, various publications in which both teachers and professors
published articles, and teacher’s institutes. Institutes were extended teacher in-service
workshops that Normal School professors led for a few days or a few weeks. These were
more accessible to teachers than fulLblown normal education, and they served as a bridge
between the theories studied at the Normal School and the everyday lives of the state’s
teachers. Normal school professors concentrated on how to translate theory into practice.

In the early Normal School boundaries between teachers, administrators, scholars
and policy-makers were fluid, and there was little differentiation in professional
credentials, organizations, and preparation. In teaching, this made it possible for women
teachers to have conversations with male leaders. For example, Horace Mann and Henry
Barnard were in attendance at the annual meeting of the Michigan State Teachers'
Association in 1854. Alongside these “fathers of American education” were women
teachers like Mrs. Lucinda Hinsdale Stone and Miss Abigail Rogers who were involved
in the State Teachers' Association since its beginning in 1852. At the annual meeting in

December of 1865, President Richard Edwards of the Illinois Normal University, two

 

professors from Yale College, and Miss Ruth Hoppin, a professor at the Michigan State

Normal School, all presented papers.“

Along this same vein, the highest public office in the field of education in the
state of Michigan was the State Superintendent of Public Instruction; The men who held
this post were intricately and in some cases intimately connected to the Michigan State
Normal School where King prepared to teach and later taught. For example, Ira
Mayhew, the fourth Superintendent (1845-49, and l855-$), helped found the Normal
School?“ Theodore Nelson taught English at the Normal School in 1885”" Ferris Fitch,
State Superintendent in 1891-92, graduated from the Normal School in 1873.” Edwin
Willits, member of the State Board of Education (1860-1872), became Principal of the
Normal School (1883- 1885). The following members of the Board of Education were
graduates of the Normal School: James Ballou (Board 1884- 1890, class of 1862), Samuel

Babcock (Board 1886-1892, class of 1865), and David Hammond (Board 1890-96, class

of 1878).”
While the professional community to which King belonged was fostered by the

Normal School in an effort to promote excellent practice, it was also a network that could
help King get ahead professionally. She was awarded teaching positions and asked to
take on professional responsibilities because she knew the people who controlled the
educational establishment in Michigan. She earned a reputation for excellence among
her Normal School classmates and teachers, and the connections she established at
Normal served her well. Her friends became teachers, teachers became principals,
principals became professors, professors became state officials (not necessarily in that
order), and as one reads through the annual reports of Michigan’s schools in the mid-

 

2'35Putrram, 1877.

”6 Putnam, 1899, p.333.

”7 Putnam, 1899, p. 345.

”8 Putnam, 1899, p. 298, 346.
”9 Putnam, 1899, p. 356—358.

 

nineteenth century, it seems that everyone knew everyone else. Many of the men who
served as principal of the Normal School also served as the president of the State
Teachers’ Association or as the Superintendent of Public Instruction [see chart].

For example, in her first job, teaching in St. Clair, King was supervised by J. M.
Gregory, Superintendent of Public Instruction. A few years later Gregory left his post as

Superintendent to become Principal at Kalamazoo College, and he invited King to
become Principal of Ladies there. At the same time, Daniel Putnam was a professor at
Kalamazoo College. Fifteen years later, Putnam was a professor and acting principal at
the Michigan State Normal School when King was asked to become Preceptress there.
Putnam was a friend of Lucinda Hinsdale Stone who King replaced as Principal of
Ladies; they worked together with Abigail Rogers, first preceptress at the normal school,
in the State Teacher’s Association to rally for women’s admittance to the University of
Michigan. J. M. B. Sill, King’s professor of English Language and Literature when she
was a student, was her colleague when she became a professor at the Normal. When he

became principal, he named her head of the History Department.
Colleagues of King’s also had interwoven lives. In 1858, before she came to the
Normal School, Ruth Hoppin became preceptress of the Three Rivers [MI] Union
Schools of which William H. Payne was principal. “To awaken a local interest in
education Mr. Payne invited State Superintendent Gregory to conduct a teacher’s institute
at Three Rivers. Accompanying Mr. Gregory came Professors Olney of Kalamazoo, and
Sill and Welch of Ypsilanti. Taking a prominent part in the institute was the young
woman from'Oberlin [Hoppin].”“° Professor Payne later organized and filled the chair of
“The Science and the Art of Teaching,” at the University of Michigan. In a letter Miss

Genevieve Walton, librarian of the Michigan State Normal College, wrote, “May I

 

z”Alford, 1974, p. 18.

 

suggest that Miss Hoppin’s close acquaintance and work with William H. Paine [sic],
who was one of our great American educators, must have given her a feeling for our great
educational problems which few women of her time-or even later—possessed.”Ml
The Michigan State Teachers’ Association was, from its inception, an
organization that sought to support and elevate teachers and their profession. They were
a diverse group of schoolteachers, and normal school, college, and university professors.
From the beginnings of the organization in the 18508, the members considered topics
such as “Teaching as a Profession” and the position, rights, and duties of teachers.” The
interest of the body in the State Normal School and in every practical form of
professional education for teachers was kept alive and vigorous through all the earlier
periods of its existence [up until the 18708].
The Michigan State Teachers’ Association was formed during the first teacher’s
institute at the founding of the Normal School. They adopted the following resolution:
Whereas, The cause of education in this State demands efficient organization to
advance its various interests, and to secure greater hamrony and concert of action
among its friends; Resolved, That we who subscribe our names to this resolution,
hereby form orn'selves into a State Teacher’s Association, which shall be auxiliary to
the State Superintendent of Public Instruction and the State Normal School.”
At this time, educators moved between positions on the State Board of Education,
prof essorships at the Normal, and positions of leadership in the State Teachers’
Association. These organizations saw themselves as supporting one another and not in

competition with or opposition to each other. Various committees were established. The

committees mostly had to do with the “best methods of teaching” the various school

 

2‘” Alford, 1974, p. 17.

242 Putnam, 1877. p. 10
“3 Annual Report of the Superintendent of Public Instruction, 1853, p. 120.

207

 

 

subjects, but one comrrrittee was devoted to “Wages of Female Teachers.” Misses Farley
and Loomis and Mr. J.M.B. Sill, who was a professor at, and would one day be, President
of the Nornral School, served on that committee.W
At the State Teachers’ Association meeting in Detroit in 1854, a long and

carefully drawn report upon the “Professional Spirit among teachers,” was read by Prof.
J. F. Cary. In this paper the condition of the teacher’s calling was set forth.”

WHEREAS, The cause of popular education, and the best interests of our schools

demand an increase of, and a higher standard of professional teachers;

Resolved, That we earnestly commend the profession to the consideration of young

men of talent and learning, as one that is useful and honorable, and one that ought to

be considered among the learned professions;

Resolved, That we urge teachers to maintain the dignity of the profession by higher

mental cultivation and preparation for the office, and then boldly demand an

enumeration for their labors according to their value.
It seems exciting that at such an early date a group of influential educators were rallying
for high standards, talented applicants, and fair salary; however, Normal School Principal
Welch thought “the efforts to establish teaching a profession by law must be a total
failure. He claimed, “No Legislature could elevate a teacher; the teacher must do this for
himself. ””6

In the mid—18708 something started to change in the State Teachers’ Association.

Daniel Putnam, who studied at Dartmouth and Amherst before becoming a Professor at
Kalamazoo College and then the Normal School, believed that the changes in the State
teachers’ Association were linked to the changes taking place at the University and in its

relation to the rest of the public school system.

 

2“ Annual Report of the Superintendent of Public Instruction, 1853, p. 121.
2“ Putnam, 1877, p. 55.
2“ Putnam, 1877, p. 56.

The relations of the University to the colleges, as well as to the public schools, have
been steadily and rapidly changing. The great development of the University and of
the high schools, and the comparably slow advance of the colleges, have rendered this
change inevitable. This changed relationship of the institutions has effected, no doubt
unconsciously in many cases, but unavoidably, a corresponding change in the
relations of their faculties and teachers to a general State Education Society.
Putrranr recognized that his former colleagues from the University of Michigan were
enjoying a rise in their prestige and were no longer willing or able to mix with mere
teachers. In the earlier years of the Association men and women from all levels of
education participated in the Association.

For example, Dr. Tappan, then President of the University participated freely in
the discussion at the fifth annual meeting of the State Teachers’ Association in 1857, and,
at the 1861 meeting of the same, he delivered an address.” Henry Barnard was present
at the third annual meeting of the Michigan State Teachers’ Association.” William H.
Payne, who eventually became the first Professor of Education at the University of
Michigan, was active in the State Teachers’ Association while he was serving as principal
in Three Rivers, Niles, and Ypsilanti, and superintendent in Adrian.” In this capacity,
he served on the Committee of Visitors to inspect and report on the Normal School in
1876 with Julia Anne King.”o Richard Edwards, President of Illinois Normal University
addressed the Association at the annual meeting in 1865 on “Sources of Personal

Influence?”l Dr. E. O. Haven of the University of Michigan delivered an address in

1859 on "The American System of Education, and again in 1866 on “The School, the

 

7’" Putnam, 1876, p. 14, 17.

7’“ Putnam, 1876, p.11.

“9 Putnam, 1876.

25° Annual Report of the Superintendent of Public Instruction of the State of Michigan,
1877. p. 130.

2" Putnam, 1876, p. 22.

'o

n
1 r .

Pulpit, and the Press?”2 At the Annual Meeting in 18$, Mrs. Stone of Kalamazoo read
a paper to introduce the discussion on “The Relation of the! Sexes in Education.“ In
1866, Rev. Geo. B. Jocelyn lectured on “Woman-Her Education” and Prof. J. Bengal
read a paper on the “Co-education of the Sexes.” In 1875 the Rev, Dr. Jocelyn of
Albion spoke upon the question of “The Bible in Schools.”’” In 1868, Prof H. L.
Wayland gave a lecture on “Woman and her Destiny,” and a resolution was passed
favoring the admission of women to the University. This was the first meeting where
Miss Julia King is mentioned in the proceedings—she gave a paper on “Teaching Outside
of Textbooks?“ At the Annual Meeting in 1864, the Hon. J.M. Gregory addressed the
Association on the “Relation of Christianity to Education.“ In 1865 he spoke about
“The Life and Character of Dr. Francis Wayland?“ This was likely a memorial to
Wayland (1796-1865) who died that year. Wayland was President of Brown University
(1827-55) and the nation’s leading Baptist educator.m He was well known for his
teaching, textbooks, preaching, and reform activities, but one of his greatest contributions
was his 1850 proposal for a radical expansion of the Brown curriculum in order to fill the
educational needs, as he saw them, of merchants, farmers, and manufacturers.“’0

The State Teachers’ Association counted among its accomplishments during its

first 20 years, the establishment of the County Superintendency of Schools, “the Opening

 

2” Putnam, 1876, p. 15,22.
”3 Putnam, 1876, p. 14.

7'“ Putnam, 1876, p. 22-23.

”5 Putman, 1876, p.36.

2“ Putnam, 1876, p. 25.

”7 Putnam, 1876, p. 20.

2" Putnam, 1876, p. 22.

2” Goodlad, et. al., 1990, p. 118.

15° Hofstadter and Smith, 1961, p. 334.

210

I
r

11...!”

of all State institutiOns of learning, from the lowest to the highest, to all the inhabitants of
the State without regard to race or sex,” and “the abolition of the “rate bill’ and the
establishment of a system of common schools absolutely and really ‘free’ to every child
in the Commonwealth?”61
With this impressive early history, it must have been painful to Daniel Putnam

and the other Normal School professors and public school teachers to see their friends
and mentors step away from the fold. Putnam explained that,

The change is one to be felt rather than described in words, but none the less real, and

none the less sure to produce legitimate results. One of these results has been the

gradual withdrawal from the Association of a class of men who had been accustomed

to participate freely in its exercises, and to exert a strong influence in its
management.”

He knows the State Teachers’ Association will falter without the leadership of these fine
intellectuals. Ironically, he credits the success of the university as one of the downfalls of
the Association. During the 18703 there was a growing impression that the Association
was not accomplishing all that it ought to accomplish; that it was not exerting that
influence which legitimately belonged to it, upon the educational institutions and
character of the State. The Association was no longer, as it ought to be, a grand
educational force, helping largely to fashion public sentiment, and to direct public
action.263 This is an agenda worthy of a full-fledged profession, but without the

brotherhood of their university peers, the teachers of the state were no longer able to

attain these goals.

 

2.. Putnam, 1876, p. 18.
2‘2 Putnam, 1877, p.28.
w Putnam, 1877, p. 37-38

211

I”)

3 .

u

Other changes in the educational system were also brewing. The Michigan
Teacher was a journal of the State Teacher’s Association. Julia Anne King’s paper that
she read before the membership was published in this teacher’s journal.“ The Michigan
Teacher was commenced by W. H. Payne and C. L. Whitney at Niles. It moved several
times, and experienced a variety of editors. In 1876, it “disappeared by absorption into a
new educational paper just commencing its existence in the city of Chicago.” The
tendency of the times in journalism, was to consolidation. An educational monthly, called
The School, was published from 1872- 1876 by the faculty at the Normal School. In the
last issue it explained: “The School has become one of eight or ten monthlies of the great
Northwest which have been consolidated into the Educational Weekly, published by
Winchell & Klein, Chicago?” As prominent universities established Schools of
Education, and began to sponsor professional educational journals, there were becoming
fewer local avenues for common school and Normal School teachers to publish their

” ideas or read about the work of other teachers’ from their local region.“

Transition to Normal College
The place of pedagogy within the Normal School changed around the trrrn of the

century, but King’s old-fashioned orientations endured. As the Normal School looked to
the university for guidance, it set up its academic departments based on the university’s
model. It was no longer assumed everyone attending the Normal School intended to
become a teacher, and pedagogy was no longer the single-minded aim of the whole

institution. Instead, it was separated off into its own department, much like history or

 

2“ King, 1869.
2“ Putnam, 1899, p. 208.
2“ Putnam, 1877.

212

pr-

biology. During this time King published in nationally distributed journals, spoke at
professional organizations, and described her approach to teaching history as similar to
the “scientific method. ””7 However, she still turned to the Bible when choosing lessons
for the graduating class of 1915.” She spoke on Living as a Factor in Education as if all
the graduates were Christians, and would be teachers. She encouraged them to have
sympathy for the child-mind and avoid requiring the memorization of facts. She
challenged them to think about the social heredity of mankind and to consider relations
with and service to others more important than themselves. She talked about the
necessity for continued intellectual and growth and of the contributions they each could

make.

During the later years of her life a striking characteristic of Miss King might be
termed her progressive conservativism, or conservative progressiveness. She
observed defects or weaknesses in the old order, in pedagogics, historiografy, in
civics and even morals and religion. She desired and endeavored to remedy these.
But she was not a wild iconoclast determined to smash everything that was old and
imperfect. Instead she recognized and honored the truth which had been confirmed
by the experience of the ages and deliberately and cautiously proceeded to eliminate
the errors and correct the mistakes which experience had revealed. In her earlier
years perhaps she looked more for faults, but in the later she looked more for the
eternally true. The result was that she became a wise and trusted counselor “up to the
times” in all things true and good.269

With the birth of the modern university came changes in the ways gender was
constructed, and many of those qualities that characterized the early Normal
School—such as religious community, child study, integration, and relational ways of
knowing—became associated with femininity, and were, therefore, deemed less favorable
than those elements deemed “masculine”: science, specialization, individualism and
management. The Normal Schools’ previous affiliation with the egalitarian and

 

“7 King, 1893b.
2“ King, 1915.
“9 Newspaper clippings re: King, 1919. BHL

213

evangelical common schools provided King with Opportunities that young women no
longer enjoyed in the new Normal College with its man-centered mentality and its
meritocratic rhetoric. 2”“

Religious ways of knowing were no longer valued; science trumped faith in the
upwardly mobile college. Rather than principals who were ministers and professors who
studied pedagogy and worked for social reform, the Normal College hired administrators
with expertise and faculty with Ph.D.s. The once powerful curriculum that integrated
academic and professional studies became elective classes in specialized departments and
separate professional classes. The original institution with the single-minded aim—to
educate teachers—became a multi-purpose college where teachers were still educated,
but where very different notions of pedagogy and professionalism shaped their life work.

Much of our contemporary understanding of the history of teacher education is
based on a belief in the “technical” character of the normal schools. Merle Borrowman
described the technical as “the necessity to train individuals to perform efficiently the
technical tasks assigned to them” and the liberal as “the need to make certain that each
person systematically considers the far-flung implications of his vocational and
avocational decisions. ”2'" In the 1990 Handbook of Research on Teacher Education,
Wayne Urban suggests that we use Borrowman’s terms as orienting mechanisms and
think of the “formal, conscious attempts at teacher education that began in the mid- .
nineteenth century as composed of varying degrees of ‘liberal’ and ‘technical’ studies.“
However, there are problems with clinging to this dichotomy.

Julia Anne King’s life demonstrates that the Michigan State Normal School’s
curriculum was not characterized by a bifurcation of the liberal and the technical. The
curriculum reflected a belief that learning to be a teacher was deeply embedded in the

 

77° Clifford, 1%3, p. 5.
27‘ Borrowman, 1953, p. vii.
2”Urban, 1990, p. 59.

214

content of the liberal arts, not in separate technical skills. Part of learning about the
liberal arts in an institution committed to preparing teachers was learning about how to
teach them. In the early days, all subjects at the Normal School were taught with the
future teacher in mind.

Technical education emphasizes systenric efficiency while liberal education
emphasizes individual meaning making. While both are necessary in order for a school
to function, too much emphasis on the technical can impede the liberal, hence the
criticism of the normal schools. Fortunately, attention to the liberal does not, at least in
the case of teaching, limit the technical. Instead, thoughtful emphasis on the liberal
should lead to even better technical results. This was the theory on which the Michigan
State Normal School curriculum was founded.

In Geraldine Clifford’s study of schools of education, she also found that “the
earliest advocates of the systemic study of education possessed an organic view of the
task before them: that the academic pursuit of science and all that it promised was
consistent with, and indeed necessary to, strictly professional ends.“ This was King’s
experience and perspective. The classical liberal arts education King received, and in
turn provided for the teachers she taught, was based on the tmderstanding that academic
(liberal) or subject matter knowledge is embedded in, not opposed to, professional
(technical) or pedagogical knowledge. Reading, discussing, writing about, and debating
the great issues raised in Homer, Virgil, Cicero, Horace, and Euripides were considered
good preparation for a teacher. Normal students observed and helped with lessons at the

Demonstration School,“ but it was not until the second term of the third year that one of

 

jMCIifl'ord, 1986, p. 427- 466.

27" The Demonstration School was the school where normal students did their
observations and practice teaching. It was, at varying times, and reflecting the normal
faculty’s conception of its purpose, also called the Model School, the Practice School,

and the Lab School.

215

 

{

the five required classes in the Classical Course focused explicitly on the “theory and
practice of teaching.” 2”

Cremin and Butts explain how, in the mid-nineteenth century there was
conservative reaction to the demand for an expanded, more practical education. Some
conservatives saw the time honored classical curriculum as the perfect means for
enlarging the mind and training its powers.“ Cremin and Butts group the
“conservatives,” who were in favor of a classical curriculum and against the expansion of
the secondary curriculum, with the “conservatives” who were in favor of reading, writing
and ciphering without attention to students’ interests and activities. However, at the
Michigan State Normal School these two categories did not fit together. King studied a
classical curriculum and learned about innovative pedagogical approaches. The move
towards electives and more practical courses has been considered “liberal,” but studying
Ovid and Livy and such in the Normal School promoted skills, dispositions, and
orientations toward knowledge that prepared them to think critically about the endrning
dilemmas of public life, and, in this sense, it was the means to a liberating end. .

In the early 1860s the Normal School faculty debated about what should be
offered, and to whom, in the way of foreign languages. As liberal arts colleges instituted
modern languages, so did the Normal School. Shortly there after, they questioned their
decision. The debates that surrounded the inclusion of modern languages in the
curriculum were 1) do the changes at the colleges, from classical to modern, fit with the
goals of teacher education? 2) Do people preparing to teach elementary and secondary
school need the same courses? 3) Should public schools teach modern languages?” In
1876, in her capacity as Superintendent of Schools in Charlotte, King served on a Board
of Visitors to evaluate the Michigan State Normal School. She and the two other visitors

 

”5 See chart with King’s course of study.
”6 Cremin and Butts, 1953, p. 223.
"7 Isbell, 1971.

216

 

 

1P.-

wrote “we regret that our duty requires us to condemn what seems to us an unjustifiable
use of this department [modern languages] of the Normal School . . . we earnestly
recommend that this institution be held steadily to its proper coursee—that it devote itself
exclusively to the education and training of teachers for the public schools. ”’7‘

This is probably an accruate reflection of King’s stance, as the men she served on
the Board with were her professional equals and she was known for being willing to
argue and of being capable of holding her own in debate. The reason the language
department was deemed out of line is not that King and her colleagues were opposed to
curriculum that was distinct from pedagogical study. In fact, King herself returned to the
Normal School to study modern languages and, subsequently, taught modern languages
in the high school. Instead, their condemnation is related to the contest between the
classical and the modern, which was especially strong when it came to languages. The
fact that Normal students had an option to enroll in modern languages courses was
associated with the new elective curriculum that dominated the colleges in the late
nineteenth centtny. The committee’ s reprimand was more about the direction they saw
the college moving— away from preparing teachers and towards a multi-purpose college.
Modern languages, as an option in college study, were associated with the new,
“elective” curriculum that dominated the liberal arts colleges in the late nineteenth
century, and were considered in opposition to the earlier classical course. At the normal,
there was an interesting twist to the debate because the earlier classical course was also
associated with the integration of subject matter knowledge and pedagogical knowledge.
The move away from the old classical cornse, toward a more elective curriculum
reminiscent of the colleges, may have been viewed as a move not only towards modern
languages, but also as a move away from the integration of subject matter and pedagogy

in the old classical course.

 

’7‘ King, J. A., et al. 1877, p. 128.

217

King became a teacher educator at a time when pedagogical knowledge was just
beginning to be separated off from disciplinary knowledge at the Normal School. In the
1808 and 18905 her history courses for teachers integrated disciplinary knowledge and
pedagogical knowledge?” In 1914, the year before she retired, King wrote a brief
history of her department for inclusion in the yearbook. Beneath her photograph, a
sketch of the Normal School, and a list of her professional accomplishments, it read:

History hardly constituted a departrrrent before 1885. At that time it embraced seven
subjects, two of which, United States History and Political Science, were required in
four of the courses offered, while the Literary course included the entire number:
Political Science, United States, American, English, General, Greek and Roman
History.”

In the 18805, the Normal School’s history department offered only seven courses. All
normal school graduates had to take two history courses, and some had to take all seven
as part of their general preparation. By the start of the twentieth century, the history

department had expanded its offerings: 19 different courses were available. However,

none of these courses were required for graduation.

Under the increased demands of the college [to serve non teachers who just wanted
history degrees] the department now offers nineteen cornses . . .. In 1904 the last
history subject was dropped from the required list and the entire work became
henceforth elective.281

Teachers who completed their degrees at the Normal School after 1904 did not have to
take any history classes. In the early years, it was assumed that pedagogical issues were
integrated into the content of the courses, and that the habits of mind and orientation
toward inquiry gained from studying history would make them better teachers, regardless
of what subject matter they were going to teach or with what age children they intended
to work. By the turn of the century, the rationale had changed: teachers should enroll in

 

”9 Goodrich, 1919.
1""Aurora, 1914.
2“ Aurora, 1914.

218

 

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the pedagogy department and take a variety of general education courses, but only those
who were going to major in history really needed to study the content or research
methods of the discipline.

By the 18903 the move to separate history from pedagogy had begun, and
professors like King, who preferred to teach history while she was teaching how to teach
history, had to adapt to the new structure. King wrote:

The ten years following are marked by a struggle toward a more liberal culture...the
experiment of teaching method with the academic subjects proved more or less a
failure, and distinctly professional courses were offered. These included history,
civics, secondary method and primary historical material.”

As the required curriculum evolved into separate departments, the history department still
offered courses that were considered “teachers’ courses.” King offered a general history
course, a United States government course and two courses concerning historical method
to those students who intended to teach. While the college was moving away from this
sort of integration, teachers could still learn teaching and history concurrently from Miss
King.

The case of the history department is illustrative of the increasing polarization
between academic (or liberal) and professional (or technical) in the maturing Normal
School. Like the sponsors of the Yale report (see opening quotation), King and the
majority of early Normal School faculty believed a broad-based liberal arts education was
the best professional preparation. Their single-minded aim was to prepare teachers, and
concern for pedagogy was an essential element of both academic and professional study.
Reuben has shown that the reforms that took place in universities around the turn of the
century encouraged specialization rather than intellectual synthesis.” It was the same at
the Normal School, and it was this specialization and categorization of knowledge that

 

2m Aurora, 1914.
”3 Reuben, 1996, p. 3.

219 '

was so different than the synthesis and integration that permeated the early Normal
School.

During the last two decades of the nineteenth century, the Normal moved from a
curriculum based on the assumption that the academic and the professional are integrated
toward a differentiated curriculum—where professional courses dealing with pedagogical
issues were separated from academic courses in the disciplinary majors. This bifurcation
appeared at the same time that University of Michigan policy established that education
should be a separate department. In 1893 the Normal also established a separate
Department of Pedagogics. .

The curriculum of teacher education at the early Normal School was of a classical
nature, but by the time the school became a college, teacher education was reduced to
technical education. While there was a wide range of electives offered in the various
college departments, the requirements for teachers were separate from and subordinate to
the rest of the curriculum. As a student, King studied a classical course, as a classroom
teacher she was a generalist, and when she first came to the Normal School she taught
history classes as part of teacher preparation for all of the Normal students. King still
tried to instill the discipline and flexibility of mind associated with classical study, even
though the Normal College no longer had a classical curriculum. By the time she retired,
King was teaching history classes to history majors and as electives. Although King still
engaged her classes in philosophical questions about the nature of the discipline and how
one’s understanding of history might influence one’s pedagogical decision-making,
teaching methods were no longer part of the official curriculum in history classes.

While the department could boast a broader academic fare, the teachers’
participation was diminished. The expanded offerings were touted as progress in school
publications,“ and the history department may well have improved, if judged by its

 

m The First 100 Years, 1949.

220

alignment with the new departments and electives offered at colleges and universities.
But the more important question seems to be if the quality of teacher preparation
improved. Historical study was originally required to support the main purpose of the
institution, pedagogy, but then it became a separate department not connected to
pedagogy. The assumptions about what teachers needed to know, and/or how they might
best come to know those things, changed. This happened in gradual steps. For a time
teachers needed to take some history, civics, and two methodological courses, but
eventually academic study as preparation for teaching was abandoned. Academic study
was not abandoned completely; it was just separated from pedagogy, rather than
connected to it. Previously, excellent pedagogy was the ultimate goal, and the study of
history was a means for becoming better at it. Now the end became the means (study
pedagogy) and the means (studying history) became another end.

There were two main problems with the new approach to history education. first,
many of the students, especially males who wanted to continue on to university after
normal study, did not enroll in classes with teachers.” In the early normal school
everyone took the same classes, thereby avoiding the hierarchical categorization of
classes that were for teachers and those which were not. With this division, teacher
courses risked earning a less rigorous label.

Second, with no set course of study, students without adequate background
knowledge could enroll in courses that were previously part of an articulated sequence.
King complained that she could not cover the interesting material and challenging

questions she haped to, since students lacked necessary preparation.

I wish to but add a few reasons why the work falls short of the ideal in our school. It
can be easily inferred form what has been said that the strictly Normal work can not
be successful unless the academic study is well done previously. The second step can
not either naturally, arithmetically, or historically, precede the first—though not a few
of our students try the experiment. Familiarity with the facts must come before any

 

”5 Goodrich, 1919.

221

generalizations upon them. In the upper classes the work is built upon a sufferable
foundation of previous knowledge and aims to furnish mental training by useof such
knowledge. It is not a question of a little more or less knowledge in those classes that
effects the results, but a question of mental power. The deficiency in preparation
defeats the whole work of those classes.”

King is talking about the students who, in the 18903, were allowed to complete their
academic studies at an approved high school or college and then enter the Normal School
for a one or two year pedagogy course. Theoretically, these students covered the same
material as the Normal School students did in their first several years of general academic
study, but King found them under-prepared and difficult to teach because they lacked
information and, more importantly, because they lacked “mental power,” or the ability to
think and reason in powerful ways about subject matter. King continued her explanation

of the problem:

More than half the class in professional training in the coming term will enter upon
the study of method with small experience in any studies which make use of the
strictly inductive method. They will have snmll experience in scientific studies, only
primary knowledge of psychology, and almost no skill in use of books. Some
profitable suggestions could be made to them did they constitute the whole class, but
the other half are ready for real professional training. It can easily be seen that the
deficiency in preparation will greatly hinder the work class. A larger teaching force
in the department would help matters, but no amount of teaching can make up the
deficiency between the one year students and those from our own literary courses.”

While standards for admission to the normal school were supposedly going up, King
thought it became more difficult to teach the huge numbers of new students because these
one year “academic” students were under-prepared in comparison to those who enrolled
in the full literary courses.

The amount of professional work was constantly increased, and purely academic
work was more and more relegated to the high school, and other advanced institutions.”
While the normal school curriculum changes were based on the assumption that students
entering had more sophisticated understanding of subject matter than their earlier '

 

”6 King, 1893a, p. 18.
”'7 King, 1893, p. 19.
”3 Putnam, 1899, p. 844-5.

222

counterparts, King claims this was not the case. High schools do not emphasize various
ways to teach the subject matter that students are learning, nor do the teachers in high
schools, or colleges for that matter, necessarily model effective teaching strategies.
Therefore, students who are dependent upon their high school experiences for their
subject matter knowledge are less likely to be empowered by the experience than normal
school students who learn subject matter from excellent teachers who help them see how
they might teach as well as learn the content they are studying.

What you teach about history, and how you teach history, if it is a means toward
a pedagogical end, is different than how you teach history if you are preparing students to
do historical research and writing. In the best case scenario, the Normal School history
department became a place that prepared graduates for scholarship better than it did for
teaching. Of course, the potential for powerful learning on the part of potential teachers
diminished even more if the real focus of students’ collegiate experience was on sex-
specific roles assigned by Greek organizations and athletic competitions. In this case, a
history course that required the student to simply memorize other people's ideas might
have caused the least amount of student resistance, and, unfortunately, the least amount

of learning in preparation for teaching.

L; )‘A

-'o‘.‘

lk

 

ProfessionalChoicesoftheclmsesoflmmd 1858

 

 

 

 

 

Michigan State Normal School”
1 men women total

Number of men and 13 i 12
women in the classes of 25
1857 and ’58 combined
Number who taught 13 12
school after graduation 25
Number who remained in 429° 5
education 9
Number who eventually 7 7
left teaching to pursue 3 law 1 writer 14
another profession 1 medicine 6 married“

1 artist

1 business

1 farming

 

 

 

 

 

Table 4. Professional Choices

 

”9 Based on information provided in Aurora, 1895, p. 159.
29" Two male graduates died in the Civil War.
’9‘ At this time most women did not continue to teach after they were married.

224

 

English Course292

FIRST YEAR
Mitchell's Geography, (reviewed).
Clark's Grammar, (reviewed).
First Term. Davies' University Arithmetic.
Swan's Elocution.
Parker's Philosophy.

Davies’ Bourdon's Algebra, (begun).
Gray's Chemistry.

Second Term Cutters Anatomy and Physiology.
Analysis of the English Sentence.
Vocal Music and Drawing.
Book-keeping.

SECOND YEAR
Davies' Bourdon's Algebra, (finished).
Wood's Botany.
First Term. Blair's Rhetoric.
St. John's Geology.
Davies' Legendre's Geometry, (begun).

Davies‘ Legendre‘s Geometry, (finished).
Davies' Plane Trigonometry.

Second Term Davies' Surveying.
Winslow's Intellectual Philosophy.
Lectures on Theory and Practice of Teaching.
Constitution of United States.
Composition and Declamation throughout the course.

Table 5. Original Courses, 1852.

 

”Putnam, 1899, p. 3940.

225

First Term.

Second Term

First Term.

Second Term

First Term.

Second Term

ClassicalCourse

FIRST YEAR
Latin and Greek Grammar. (reviewed).
Cooper's Virgil's Aeneid.
Lucian's Dialogues, or French and German.
Davies' Bourdon's Algebra, (begun).

Anthon's Cicero's Orations.
Owen's Xenophon's Anabasis, or French and German.
Lincoln's Livy (begun).

Davies' Bourdon's Algebra, (finished).
Analysis of English Sentence.

SECOND YEAR

Lincoln's Livy (finished)

Owen's Homer's Iliad, or French and German.
Davies' Legendre's Geometry, (begun).
Ancient Geography.

Anthon's Cicero de Senectute or De Officiis.
Xenophon's Memorabilia or French and German.
Gray's Chemistry.

Davies' Legendre's Geometry, (finished).

THIRDYEAR

Anthon's Horace's Odes.

Wood's Botany.

Blair's Rhetoric.

Plane and Spherical Trigonometry and Surveying.

Euripides' Medea, or Spanish.

Robinson's Mathematical Astronomy.
Winslow's Intellectual Philosophy.

St. John's Geology.

Lectru'es on Theory and Practice of Teaching.

Table 5. Original Courses, 1852. (continued)

226

”3“” l '! {url' I

SynchronisticViewoftheNormalComesofStudy,1871

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

m Common School Come. Full English Course.
Course
Winter Term Summer Term Winter Term Summer Term
1. Arithmetic, l. Physiology,
Preparatory 2. Geography, 2. U.S. History, Same as the English
3. English 3. English Amlysis,
Grammar. 4. Reading and Common School Course
4. WritingDrawing Vocal Music.
and Bookkeepig
1. El. Algebra, 1. Analysis of
First Year 2. Natural Arithmetic, Same as the English
Philosophy, 2. Botany,
3. Professional 3. Professional Common School Course
Instruction. Instruction.
1. Geometry, 1. Geometry.
2. Physical Geog 2. Zoology and
Second and Zoology, Geology,
Year 3. Chemistry, 3. Science of
4. Rhetoric, Gov.
(lectures) (lectures)
4. English
Literature.
1. Higher Algebra, 1. Trigonom'y,
2. Psychology, 2. Psychology,
Third Year 3. Professional 3. Moral Science
Instruction. and Professional
4. Rhetoric, Instruction.
(lectures)
Fourth Year

 

 

 

 

 

Table 6. Courses of Study, 1871

227

Synchronistic View of the Normal Courses of Study, 1871, continued

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CW Course. Com-ac In Modern Language
Course
Winter Term Smnmer Term Wlnter Term Simmer Term
Preparatory SameastheEnglish SameastheEnglish
Common School Course Common School Course
FirstYear SameastheEnglish Sameasthe
Common School Course,
except that Latin will take the place of Classical Course
Professional Studies.
Second Same as the English Same as the Classical Course,
Year Common School Course, except that Latin except that German will take the
willtaketheplaceofChemistryand placeofLatin.
Science of Government.
1. Higher Algebra, 1. Trigonom'y,
Third Year 2. Latin, 2. Latin, Same as the Classical Course,
3. Greek, 3. Greek, except that German and French
4 Chemistry. 4. Scienceof willtaketheplaceoflatinandGreek.
Government.
1. Latin, 1. Latin,
Fourth 2. Greek. 2. Greek. Same as the Classical Course
Year except that German and French
ProfessionalSurdiesthesarneas willtaketheplaceoflatinandGreek.

in the full English Course.

 

 

 

Table 6. Courses of Study, 1871 (continued)

Chapter 5
lie-Imagining Teacher Education

“Interpreting the past is not only essential for creating a different future,
but often just as difficult.”l

In this final chapter I embark upon a thought experiment, or treatment of teacher
education policy objectives, rooted in my analysis of King. I explore how King’s life and
the history of her Normal School might contribute to contemporary conversations about
teacher professionalism and the professional education of teachers. I consider what teacher
education might look like today if we embraced the conception of professionalism that the
early normal school sponsored and paid attention to what King—a teacher, a woman, and a
Christian—believed to be most important in her professional life. I begin by making a case
for drawing on historical understandings when making policy decisions. Second, I propose
we reconsider the term professionalism, what it entails, and who gets to decide. Third, I
recommend a synthesis of the academic, or liberal, and the professional, or technical, aspects
of teacher education. Fourth, I make a case for better serving the gender-specific needs of
the mostly female students in teacher education. Finally, I close by suggesting that the
faithless university get back to its roots and once again value Christian beliefs — both those
of historical subjects and those of contemporary students and teachers.

Tinker-mg Toward Utopia’

In an era when millions of children, and even entire school districts, are considered
“at risk,” education is closely scrutinized and reforms abound. Current challenges to
improve public schooling in the United States are often answered with calls to improve
teacher education and professionalize teaching. The argument is that if we are to have better
‘ Robin Kelley, author of Race Rebels: Culture, Politics, and the Black Working Class, a
quotation regarding Michael Katz's Improving Poor People: Ihe Welfare State, the

“Underclass, ” and Urban Schools as History.
2 Borrowed from Tyack and Cuban, 1995.

 

teaching and learning, in better schools, with better student outcomes, we need better
teachers. The supposedly weak students, professors, and curriculum in the nation's colleges
of education have long been the subject of historians' critique and public attack.3

Leaders in the teacher education community are attempting to define what good teaching is
andwhatsortofteachereducationonemightneedinordertomeetthatideal.

Teacher education reformers draw upon their interpretations of past events when
making choices about the present and the future.‘ The past that education historians
choose to reveal will certainly influence which debates and possibilities reformers consider
and how they consider them. As Barbara Finkelstein says, “educational historians can be
revealers of an educational past, actors in contemporary debates, and crafters of future
possibilities!” Since King’s life calls into question our understandings cf the history of
teacher education, her life should also prompt us to reconsider current approaches to teacher
education and conceptions of teacher professionalization that dominate educational policy
discussions today.

Alternative routes for preparing teachers, fifth year programs which emphasize
subject matter knowledge and/or longer periods of internship/induction, and national reform
packages that call for more adventurous teaching and learning and for no child to be left
behind have been proposed and instituted.6 Teachers and researchers are trying to figm'e
3Charles A. Harper, A Century of Public Teacher Education: The Story of the State
Teachers Colleges as They Evolved from the Normal Schools. (Washington, DC:
American Association of Teachers Colleges, 1939); Merle Borrowman, Teacher
Education: The Liberal and the Technical (1956); Frederick Rudolph, The American
College and University, A History (1962); Merle L Borrowman, Teacher Education in
America: A Documentary History. (New York: Teachers Colle e Press, 1965); Paul H.
Mattingly, The Classless Profession: American Schoolmen in t Nineteenth Century.
(New York: New York University Press, 1975); Jurgen Herbst, And Sadly Teach.
(Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989); Robert A. Levin, Educating
Elementary School Teachers: The Struggle for Coherent Visions, 1909-1978, (New York:
University Press of America, 1994); James Koemer, The Miseducation of America's
Teachers (1963); Rita Kramer, Ed School Follies, (1991); The Holmes Group, Tomorrow's
Schools of Education, (1995).

“ Tyack and Cuban, 1995, p 6.
5 finkelstein, 1992, p. 289.
‘ for example, Carnegie Task Force on Teaching as a Profession. (1986). A nation

prepared: Teachers for the 21st century. New York: Carnegie Forum on Education and
the Economy; and Holmes Group. (1986). Tomorrow ’3 teachers. East Lansing, MI:

 

230

out ways to improve teacher education so that preservice teachers will be disposed to care
about and equipped to serve the needs of all children, regardless of their race, class, gender,
or other differences.7 Teacher educators too have realized that understanding preservice
teachers' beliefs and perspectives is crucial if one intends to get them to think differently
about something like diversity. Personal reflection and autobiographical exposition have
become important pieces of some introduction to teaching courses.8

In a related movement, policy makers are seeking to improve the quality of
classroom instruction by legislating curricular frameworks, benchmarks, standards, and
other such inspirational directives for teachers.9 A new generation of policy analysts have
discovered that they will have little chance of accomplishing their objectives unless they take
into consideration the context in which teachers teach and the ways in which teachers
interpret and shape policies during implementation.” In order to successfully implement
policies, researchers are calling for attention to teachers—their perspectives and
understandings.

All of this emphasis on teachers and the preparation of teachers makes one wonder
about what it takes to be a good teacher, how much and what type ofeducation teachers
need, how teacher educators and policy makers can best support teachers as they learn to
teach, and what the goals of initial and career long teacher education should be. The current
focus of educational reform on restructuring preservice and in-service teacher education
also brings up questions about who is making the policy decisions, on what sorts of
evidence they are basing these decisions, and who is benefiting from the decisions which are
finally implemented.“

Author. See U.S. Department of Education website devoted to the No Child Lefl Behind act
at http: I/wwwedgov/nclbllandingjhtmnsrczpb.

7 Zeichner, K. 1996.

' Feiman-Nemser, S. and H. Featherstone. 1992.

9 For example, History-Social Science Framework for Califismia Public Schools, or
National Council of Teachers of Mathematics Standards. See California State Board of
Education’s website devoted to Standards and Frameworks at http://www.cde.ca.gov/belst/
‘° for example, see Cohen & Barnes, 1993.

” Contemporary efforts to professionalize teaching have been criticized for not attending to
the gendered mum of women's education and careers. For example, Laird, S. (1988).

 

231

As we search for new models of teacher education and struggle to define teacher
professionalism at the start of this millennium, King’s example raises important questions
about what the pedagogy and curriculum of teacher education should be, how best to serve
the mostly female student body in teacher education programs, and who teacher education’s
authorities should be. In the twentieth century teacher education has developed in ways that
make King’s education and life work seem distant, yet her normal school education enabled
her to construct a form of teacher professionalism that contemporary practitioners and
scholars admire.

Ifwe could step into a time machine, set it back 150 years, and revive the
characteristics of the early Normal School in the beginning of the twenty-first century,
teacher education would look very different than it does today. Clearly, we could not, and
would not want to, create an identical institution. We have progressed in many ways since
those times, and it would be unreasonable to call for a return to an era so vastly different
than our own. However, for educators in search of alternative visions, who seek to unpack
and reconsider their assumptions about what teacher education can and should be, there is
merit in considering what King’s life work might look like in today’s schools of education.

The intertwined histories of Julia Anne King and the Michigan State Normal
School present an example of teacher preparation as an effective form of professional
education and teaching as an expansive profession. All of this was located in the mid-
nincteenth century, which is the last place contemporary reformers would look for examples
of professionalism in education. Teacher education at the Michigan State Normal School
was characterized by a conception of professionalism that l) respected teacher’s
perceptions and experiences, 2) integrated the liberal and technical into an organic whole for

 

Reformin “women’s true profession”: A case for “feminist pedagogy” in teacher
education. Harvard Educational Review, 58, pp. 449-463. In addition, reformers have also
been criticized for assuming that there is a scientific knowledge base for teaching, for
embracing social efficiency as an educational goal while preaching democratic equality, and
for promoting their own self -interests rather than the interests of teachers and children. For
example, Labaree, D. F. ( 1992). Power, knowledge, and the rationalization of teaching: A
genealogy of the movement to professionalize teaching. Harvard Education Review, 62,
23-154.

232

professional education, 3) empowered women to succeed and lead as educators, and 4)
viewed Christian faith as a potentially powerful factor in learning to teach and in
contributing to the betterment of individuals and society.

Teacher professionalism

King’s life makes me wonder what it should take to be a professional educator and
who gets to define what counts as professionalism. King began teaching in 1858, well
before what historians and sociologists have referred to as the rise of professionalism, but
she certainly was a professional in some senses of the word. The Michigan State Normal
School was quite effective at providing King with the knowledge, networks, and credentials
that propelled her career within education. Far from a limited and limiting form of women's
work, teaching provided her fluid possibilities for career advancement and professional
growth.

Even before King entered the Norrmrl School there was talk of professionalizing
teaching. There was movement nationally to have teachers organize into a strong, self-
dimcfingbodythatworddundertakethetaskofdetemgfimessandsmndards. A
speaker before the Michigan State Teachers' Association in 1854 sought “the cultivation of
a professional spirit among the members of the profession, and especially among that
portion of it that train the minds of the masses in our common schools (italics mine). ”‘2
The concept of teacher professionalism did not originate in the late nineteenth century;
rather, early Normal School men and women thought of themselves and the teachers they
educated as professionals even before the Civil War. However, the goals and expectations
ofthe early Normal Schoolmenandwomenwere differentthanthoseofthe laterexperts
who defined professionalism at the end of the century. There was a shift in who was
considered a professional and what counted as professionalism. As other fields with more
prestige began to define their own forms of professionalism, educationistsjumped on board,

‘2 Cremin and Butts, 1953, p.229 [The Michigan Journal of Education and Teachers'
Magazine, vol 1 (1854), p. 145]

 

233

 

 

.-.

 

professional education, 3) empowered women to succeed and lead as educators, and 4)
viewed Christian faith as a potentially powerful factor in learning to teach and in
contributing to the betterment of individuals and society.

Teacher professionalism

King’s life makes me wonder what it should take to be a professional educator and
who gets to define what counts as professionalism. King began teaching in 1858, well
before what historians and sociologists have referred to as the rise of professionalism, but
she certainly was a professional in some senses of the word. The Michigan State Normal
School was quite effective at providing King with the knowledge, networks, and credentials
that propelled her career within education. Far from a limited and limiting form of women's
work, teaching provided her fluid possibilities for career advancement and professional
growth.

Even before King entered the Normal School there was talk of professionalizing
teaching. There was movement nationally to have teachers organize into a strong, self—
directing body that would undertake the task of determining fitness and standards. A
speaker before the Michigan State Teachers' Association in 1854 sought “the cultivation of
a professional spirit among the members of the profession, and especially among that
portion of it that train the minds of the masses in our common schools (italics mine). ”’2
The concept of teacher professionalism did not originate in the late nineteenth century;
rather, early Normal School men and women thought of themselves and the teachers they
educated as professionals even before the Civil War. However, the goals and expectations
oftheearly Normal Schoolmenand womenwere difi'erentthanthose ofthe laterexperts
who defined professionalism at the end of the century. There was a shift in who was
considered a professional and what counted as professionalism. As other fields with more

prestige began to define their own forms of professionalism, educationists jumped on board,

 

‘2 Cremin and Butts, 1953, p.229 [The Michigan Journal of Education and Teachers'
Magazine, vol 1 (1854). P. 145]

233

 

and transformed the previous definitions of teacher professionalism in ways that left
teachers out of the equation.

It is acceptable for teachers to be meagerly educated if all they are to do is dispense
information and control children, but if we have loftier goals for them as social transformers
and intellectuals then they must not only be exposed to great ideas but they must be helped ‘
to develop orientations toward knowledge that allow them to think of themselves as capable
members of learning communities. For examme, Deborah Meier, award-winning
educational reformer and lead teacher at Central Park East Secondary School, claims that
when she interviews teachers for her progressive alternative public school the most
important quality she looks for is the ability to be reflective about themselves as learners.13
She thinks that what we need in school reform today are “leaders who still see themselves
first and foremost as teachers, not administrators . . . not as “middle management,” but as
catalysts and supporters, dreamers and manipulators of three-ring circuses.”“ Vito
Perrone echoes this theme when he says we need teachers should be “scholars, artists,
students of society, and persons with the eye of the naturalist.”ls

The role of pedagogue should be synonymous with, not opposed to, the role of
professional educator. For King, being a professional meant being engaged in her calling in
a pedagogical way, but not all things that we consider “professio ” today are
pedagogically sound. Those who use it to exclude and to infer status and hierarchy have
appropriated the word professional. Rather than consider what best practice includes and
use that as a basis for teacher professionalism, educationists have tried to fit teaching into
the models developed in other professions. Male models of professionaliration have
inappropriately been applied to women teachers.“ Women teachers’ sense of career does
not match a model based on presu'gious male occupations, but rationally reflects the set of

 

’3 Meier, 1995.

" Meier, 1992.

‘5 Perrone, 1991.

“5 Acker, S. 1983. p. 124.

responsibilities women face at home and at work.” King’s life prompts us to reconsider
the responsibilities teachers face at home and at school and ask if these could be considered
“professional.”

What counts as professional activity must be enlarged so that educational
researchers and professors can participate in activities and movements that concern children
and their teachers. We must question the values and assumptions embedded in
contemporary Colleges of Education about what constitutes professional behavior and what
is good use of one’s time as a professional. Do you earn respect in the profession by
joining the State Teacher’s Association, writing articles in magazines read primarily by
teachers, participating in political movements, or taking moral stances on educational issues?
We will need to transform university tenure and promotion policies and/or rethink the
location of teacher education in the university if we truly want to validate the kinds of
professional activity that King’s colleagues enjoyed.

By examining teaching according to Randall Collins' definition of a profession, it
becomes clear why teachers today are not accorded professional status." A profession is a
self-regulating community with the power to train new members and admit them to practice.
It practices its specialty according to its own standards without outside interference.”
Teachers do not regulate their own communities. State and district Boards of Education,
headed by people who may or may not have teaching credentials or experience, make
decisions that impact the teaching profession. University professors, policy-makers, and
administrators make decisions about what should be taught and how it should be taught.
Francis Keppel, in the forward to Who Controls Our Schools, congratulates author Michael
KirstformerpresidentoftheCalifornia StateBoardofEducation. “Asamajorstate
official and as a scholar, Professor Kirst... shows that he can lead the way [toward
improving schools].”’° Officials and scholars have become the elite of the teaching
‘7 Bilken, S. K. 1987.

'3 Collins, 1979. p. 137.
‘9 Collins, 1979. p. 132.

2° Kirst, 1984.

 

235

 

thh 1 "'1

 

 

profession. These people are not practicing teachers, and many of them have not completed
teacher-training programs or had experience teaching in the classrooms they attempt to
control. Martin Haberman notes that, “only five percent of education faculty have ever
worked in urban schools, and only one percent long enough to earn tenure?“

Teachers do not control the training of new teachers or their admission to practice.
Teachers are not allowed to participate in setting standards or restructuring their own
profession. In order to take on additional responsibilities or become influential in the
professional community a teacher must go back to school. She must give up being a
classroom teacher, because, based on the way the profession is cm'rently organized, it is
virtually impossible to do anything else while teaching full-time. Merely getting a teaching
credential and teaching successfully are not enough, or perhaps not even required, to reach
positions of prominence in the educational establishment.

A double standard exists between what schooling is required of a teacher and what
schooling is required of someone who wants to have power and influence in the world of
education. One way to solve this problem would be to allow teachers, without advanced
degrees, to teach perspective teachers in universities, serve on state boards of education, and
make policy recommendations to the government. At the same time, teacher educators and
educational policy makers could be required to teach in classrooms. This “deschooling”
of sorts would serve to break down the barriers between practicing, credentialed teachers
and other education professionals, exposing the nature of teaching as a profession.
Teachers will need to consider what they need to know and be able to do in order to be able
to educate future teachers, design professional admissions standards which are relevant to
teaching, and set up structures through which they can judge teachers' performance and
decide what competence consists of. Only when teachers are actually the leaders of their
profession will teaching truly be considered a profession.

 

2‘ Haberman, 1990. p. 13.

236

N

 

The Academic is Professional

King advocated a child-centered, personally powerful pedagogy for children and
teacher education students alike. In teacher education this included a commitr‘nent to
teaching pedagogy while teaching subject matter. The assumption that these two types of
professional knowledge were integrated and the expectation that teachers needed to be
confident critical thinkers capable of helping children become the same made for teacher
education that was more liberatory than most contemporary approaches.

Recent reforms in teacher education, which stress the importance of subject nutter
knowledge, have, at the majority of universities, led to further bifurcation of subject matter
knowledge and pedagogical knowledge, rather than their integration as King’s life would
suggest. For example, today students learn about history in classes offered in the history
department taught by professors who know little about pedagogy, and they learn teaching
methods in the College of Education from education professors who know little about the
discipline of history. The professors in these departments often have no contact with each
other. The effort to educate teachers is considered the College of Education’s domain, even
though most people agree that subject matter knowledge is a crucial piece of teachers’
professional knowledge base.

One of the reasons the separation between subject matter knowledge and
pedagogical knowledge is so problematic is that students preparing to be teachers are most
often young women from working class families. Research on women’s ways of knowing
hasshownthattheyarelikelytofeel intimidatedbydisciplinarydiscoursesandtobe
controlled by the content of the humanities and science cornses they take, rather than to
become powerful users or creators of knowledge.22 If this is the case, and students
graduate from history departments having clocked in the required number of hours but not
learned how to think about historical knowledge or themselves in ways which allow them to

 

2’ Luttrel, 1989; Grumet, 1988; Belenky, et al., 1986.

237

’|‘I.

,‘. 0

Q

 

teach critically, then no matter how innovative the methods they are taught in education
classes, when they go to teach subject matter, they will fall back on the kinds of practices
with which they are familiar.

If we want to improve teachers and teaching, we need to improve teacher education.
However, requiring Bachelor’s degrees for admission to fifth year programs that offer
graduate level work in education will not address this inadequacy. In fact this was one of
the reforms that the Michigan State Normal College implemented one hundred years ago, as
it started to slip away from its original purpose and character. In order to overcome the
weaknesses in teacher education today, the pedagogy of subject matter classes will need to
improve and explicit links will need to be made between the Colleges of Arts and Sciences
and the Colleges of Education. .23 Teacher education programs must consider subject
matter classes an essential piece of teacher preparation, and disciplines~based professors
must take their work as teacher educators seriously. Disciplinary scholars who are excellent
pedagogues interested in helping students think about teaching and learning as well as
content should work with education professors in order to construct classes which could
truly develop future teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge. For example, Peter Vinten-
Johansen teaches history courses that model effective teaching techniques, introduce
studentstothephilosophyofthediscipline,andgivestudcntsatasteoftherealworkof
historians.“ Additionally, Vinten-Johansen collaborated with teacher educator, Bill
McDiarmid, to pioneer the type of interdepartmental collegiality that will be necessary to
improve teacher education. The methods of teacher education are indeed part of the content
and should be deliberated and decided as painstakingly as the content of the courses.

In King’s time the curriculum of teacher education mimicked the elementary and

high school curriculum. Teacher education students all took the same set of classes in an

 

2’ see, for example, McDiarmid, et al., 1995. An alternative approach to secondary social
studies methods: Integrating pedagoy and subject matter. Symposium presented at the
NCSS Annual Conference, Chicago, Illinois.

2‘ I was his student. What is most amazing about V—J’s methods is that they are so unique.
He has very few colleagues at MSU or elsewhere who teach undergraduate history courses
with these goals in mind.

238

articulated sequence. King’s course of study included a review of the common school
subjects and then more advanced coursework in the classics. It was assumed that anyone
who was preparing to be a high school teacher or administrator needed to read and discuss
the classics. This was a standard part of all higher education at the time, and high school
teachers would be expected to teach this content to their students. Additionally, in
discussions of classical texts, which address enduring dilemmas of the human condition,
future teachers could debate what makes a good society, the best methods for teaching, and
the role of power in various relationships.

Contemporary teacher education students take a wide variety of classes, mostly with
classmates who do not intend to be teachers and about subjects that do not bear on the
decisions that teachers have to make. The content of the school subjects that high school
teachers have to teach may or may not be part of their disciplinary college majors. For
example, it is possible to graduate from many history departments having never taken
courses on ancient Greece and Rome, Colonial America, or the history of the state in which
one will be teaching, yet all of these are commonly taught not only in high school history
departments, but in elementary and middle schools.

If we look to King’s example, we must consider making the curriculum of teacher
education, including the entire undergraduate experience of those intending to teach, more
focused and purposeful. Future teachers would 1) take classes with cohorts of other
students intending to become teachers, and 2) pursue a course of disciplinary study which
parallels the required curricultnn in the K-12 schools. Most importantly, surrounded by
their future colleagues, in classes which are relevant to their chosen profession, these
preservice teachers would engage in more rigorous reading, writing, and debating about the
social issues and philosophical questions which influence teaching and learning.

I advocate having the range of subjects that teachers are required to teach
represented in their collegiate/professional education. This seems obvious, but in an effort
to make teachers’ preparation more challenging, many colleges and universities now require

239

elementary teachers to fulfill the requirements for a disciplinary major. While it may be
interesting to study the in-depth details of one subject matter, this certainly does not prepare
one to teach elementary school, where, in one week you might be required to teach children
about fractions, light, the Gold Rush, prepositional phrases, perspective, exponents, rhythm,
Haiku, the Civil War, and the digestive system

lamnotadvocadngareuunmdumbed-downinmductorycourseswithnameshke
“physics for teachers.” Instead I envision a broad-based, liberal education with the best
foundational classes from the departments that are represented in the K-12 curriculum,
taught by excellent teachers who model innovative methods, and pose hard questions about
the content and the process of teaching and learning it. Students preparing to be teachers
might be grouped into a special section of an American History course. Rather than simply
taking this course to learn information, they would be required to think about things like
what kinds ofquestions historians ask, what sorts ofmethods they use, how the social and
political position of the historian-or the history teacher-influences what students
understand about history, the range of representations of subject matter a teacher has to
choose from, and how might one teach this content in an intellectually honest way to yormg
children. Instead of waiting until upper division courses to introduce epistemological issues
about the subject matter, teachers would be exposed to these sorts of questions, and how
they might influence pedagogy, in every course they take. In addition to better preparing
them academically, this approach could have the welcome side effect of capturing teacher
candidates’ interest and imagination as their disciplinary classes would be more relevant to
the important work they see themselves doing, rather than simply being obstacles they have
toendureinordertobeallowedtoteach.

Essentially, We are Women
Separate spheres for men and women were taken for granted by the teachers of
King’s era. Rather than simply keep women teachers in a subordinate position, this

240

r'ql’

 

 

 

ideology also worked to provide avenues for women to develop their own communities and
supports that proved to be powerful bases for social action. The normal school allowed
women to participate as equals but also provided them with the special care their sex
supposedly needed

Most forms of contemporary feminism scoff at the separation of men and women
into public and private spheres, and those who consider women’s ways of knowing or other
sex-specific characteristics or needs as they attempt to take women students seriously are
accused of inappropriately essentializing men’s and women’s experiences.” However, if
we are to consider King’s example, we must ask if there are differences between men’s
experiences and women’s experiences that influence the ways they think about knowledge
and power and, subsequently, teaching and learning. Whether these characteristics are
naturally or socially acquired is not really important, what matters is that when educating
teachers we are most often educating women, and most teacher educators have not seriously
considered what it would take to do this well. '

Educators who devote their lives to educating girls have long considered the special
benefits of single-sex education, but only recently have studies on sexism in schools
confirmed that girls get short-changed in classrooms with boys and are often able to
succeed at new levels if they are separated out for certain classes or even for several years of
schooling. The increasing number of studies concerning adolescent girls’ experiences tell
us that they are competing for male attention in a society which values women for their
beauty and their reproductive capacities, rather than their intellectual abilities."5 In addition
studies of sexism in the classroom show how even well-intentioned teachers tend to call on
boys more, allow boys to interrupt girls, and generally provide more attention to boys than

girls.27 Some scholars recommend a connected pedagogy that recognizes women's ways of

 

2’ Joan Scott, 1988.
2‘ Holland and Eisenhardt, 1990.
’7 Sadker and Sadker, 1994.

241

 

'9’

knowing as a way to respect and engage female students who have previously been
overlooked or made to feel stupid.28

Some feminist educators advocate voluntary sex-segregation that has liberatory,
rather than restrictive, goals similar to the hotly debated African-American Academies which
seek to educate black youth about their culture and instill pride and confidence that the
desegregated public schools have, in many cases, failed to provide. Just as some advocates
for African American children are questioning the value of mixing with white children if the
education black children receive is inferior, whether because they are “tracked” into lower
classes or because they are marginalized within classrooms where they are not taught the
culture of power, some advocates for girls are questioning the value of coeducation.29

In the 1970s liberal feminists argued that a truly identical coeducation of boys and
girls would open freedom of choice and equality of opportunity for adult men and women.
However, in the last thirty years those agendas have been redefined. Some educators now
believe that coeducational schools are basically male in control, values, pedagogy, and the
knowledge they teach. Simply assimilating girls more thoroughly into such a system
deprives them of their own heritage and perpetuates male domination. Hopefully by
illuminating the ways in which coeducation has failed to serve females adequately, and by
proposing alternate models of gender-sensitive schooling, the current debate over separate
sex schools may prompt a new vision of gender-balanced learning in miXed schools.3o

If we look to King’s experience as an example, teacher education programs will
need to sponsor some sex-specific activities and opportunities for women to study with
womenconeaguesmdmenmwnnecdngmeworkofteachingmtheirwmkasmothem,
daughters, and wives. Professors who teach future teachers will need to familiarize
themselves with research on women learners and modify their instruction to better meet the

needs of their female students. Program developers will need to listen to the students and

 

2‘ Belenky, M. F. et al. 1986.
29 see Oakes, 1985 re: race and tracking; Delpit, 1995 re: the culture of power.
3° Tyack and Hansot, 1990, p. 279-292.

242

I
,r .
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‘ ‘ t

 

build curriculum around their interests and activities, especially those that are unique to
women and shared by most women. In addition, teacher educators will have to create
environments that encourage students to be reflective and critical about the ways their own
schooling has been gendered. Finally, professors should provide teacher education students
with the resources to construct anti-sexist teaching practices of their own. For example, in
teacher education programs students should be helped to notice the ways in which their own
schooling has been gendered and learn about children’s literature with strong female
characters or historical biographies of women. If we pay attention to the lessons from the
nineteenth century normal school, teacher educators will acknowledge that we are educating
bodies, not just minds, and that the way one experiences teacher education has at least a little
to do with what sex their body is.

For example, advising, mentoring, or supervision of student teachers could include a
sex-specific element. By necessity, my own experience working with pro-service teachers
has included conversations about 1) how to dress and behave in ways that set you apart
from the sexualized female high school students, 2) how to talk to administrators about
maternity leave options; 3) how to balance teaching and mothering; 4) how to honestly
present feminist politics to young students and not alienate conservative families; and 5)
how to handle sexual advances from colleagues, administrators or students. I have been
most rewarded by the relationships I have built with women whom I could look up to and
with women who looked up to me. This sort of teaching and learning is not authorized or
rewarded. Female faculty members are not compensated for the extra hours they devote to
young women, and students earn no credits for these essential life lessons. Perhaps a crew
of modern day Preceptresses would be welcomed by the current crop of young women in
teacher education programs.

243

1U

 

The Foolishness of God

Religious beliefs about serving God and carrying out God’s will drove the
establishment of the Norml School and fueled young men and women as they chose to
devote their lives to teaching. The work of the norrml school and its graduates was
informed by the single-minded purpose of the founders: “to promote the great cause of
man—the cause of God?“ Strong in their Christian faith, and informed by the Bible,
King and her colleagues taught gladly. While the ministers who lead the early Normal
School were all Protestant, they subscribed to a non-sectarian Christianity, and the early
Nomml School provided many teachers with an environment and values similar to their
church and family. Teaching was a redemptive force; they were committed to uplifting the
poor and building a more equal society through education.

King was able to integrate her faith, her teacher education, and her work in the public
schools in ways that many of my contemporary teacher education students find inspiring.
In efforts to secularize teacher education some things were lost. For example, within a
teacher education program that valued secular theories, scientific methods and Biblical
lessons, King may have had a safer place to explore her own beliefs and values than
Christian students do today, thereby making it easier for her to develop an efi’ective and
socially transformative Christian pedagogy.

Today state-sponsored universities and many foundations that support education
have divorced themselves from any ties to religion. Teacher education is most often located
within universities where scientific rationalism has taken the place of religious authority.
Some professors make teaching for equity and social justice central to the teacher education
classes they teach, and some entire programs even adopt this language, but these folks are
generally considered alternative rather than mainstream, and they rarely connect their ideas
about freedom and anti-bias education to religious faith. Even where there are excellent

teacher education programs devoted to equity and social justice, the graduates still have to

 

3‘ Pumam, 1899, p. 17.

s'.‘

\
,-")

 

go out and get jobs in the existing public schools, the vast majority of which have
curriculum and instruction that suggest social efficiency goals are more valued than moral
uplift or even the God- given value of all children.32

Even though there is no formal place for religion in teacher education, a large
number of contemporary preservice teachers are Christians.” In my own teacher education
classes I have become increasingly aware of how many students filter their experiences
through a Christian lens, and in conversation with practicing public school teachers, I have
learned that many of them also see their work as “God's work” and their call to teach as
“ministry.” Religion in America 1996, published by the Gallup organization and based on
a national questionnaire distributed by the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA,
found that one-fourth of the freshman of the class of 1999 were bom-again Christians.
That figure rose to 50 percent at Protestant-affiliated colleges.34 In 1997, the
interdisciplinary joumal Lingua Franco published an article about religion in higher
education that began: “Intellectual fashions being what they are, the next major issue facing
American higher education may well be the revival of religious faith?” In August of 1996
the New York Times reported that “in a time of outward tension and inner searching, when
many Americans worry about social decay and also show a growing interest in spirituality,
teachers and administrators on campuses are asking whether colleges ought to try once
again to build moral and spiritual character as well as intellect.”36

Even so, research on teacher education would suggest that teacher educators do not

pay attention to students' religious beliefs or draw upon these religious beliefs when helping

 

3’ Labaree, 1997. V

’3 Because King was a Christian, and religious teacher education students are most likely to
be Christians, I have chosen to focus my comments on them, but, clearly, it is important for
teacher educators to pay attention to the experiences of Jews, Muslims, and other non-
Christian students too. Additionally, state-sponsored teacher education must support the
freedoms of atheistic or non-religious students as well, but my analysis suggests most
current teacher education curriculum and instruction is already designed with these students
in mind.

3‘ Manuel, 1997, p. 29

35 Manuel, 1997, p. 29

3" Manuel, 1997, p. 29

245

them think about teaching and leaming in a diverse society. Neither “religion,” in general,
nor “Christianity,” in particular, made their way into the indexes of either volume of the
Handbook of Research on Teacher Education.37 The 1996 volume includes statistics on
“Who Teaches and Why?” Demographic features which Darling-Hammond and Selan
consider include: gender, race, ethnicity, family income, marital status, if students are
interested in elementary or secondary teaching, and if they are enrolled full-time or part-time
in college, but there is no mention of prospective teachers' religious affiliation.38 Cazden
and Mehan present a profile of a beginning teacher in the 1990s: “[She will be] female, in
the early to mid-twenties, Anglo, and from a lower-middle—ineome to middle-income
family.”” Again, there is no mention of religious faith. Brookhart and Freeman located
44 studies that focused on the characteristics of teacher candidates for the spring 1992
Review of Educational Research, and they never mention religion either.‘0 In their
concluding sentences they call for further research to focus on
Identifying which beliefs that are known to be important for effective instruction are
reachable and which are not. Teacher education programs could then be explicitly
designed to foster appropriate beliefs and to include measures of inappropriate,
nonteachable beliefs as part of the data considered for program admissions decisions.‘1
I wonder how Christianity would score on the instrument they envision.

Perhaps teacher educators are trying to influence and analyze beliefs that they only
partially understand. Maybe underneath their “good student” exteriors, pre-service
teachers have adopted a subtler, more white, female and Christian version of what Herb
Kohl calls, I Won 't Learn From You. My guess is this stance extends to “I won't share the
Christian part of me with you in a scientific research setting.” Robert Gregg, Dean of
Memorial Church at Stanford University, explains “many students don’t want to be forced
by new intellectual challenges into a kind of student schizophrenia, in which they do what
the system requires of them in their school work but have to lumdle the really important
37 Sikula, 1996; Houston, 1990.

3‘ Darling-Hammond and Selan, 1996.
3’ Cazden and Mehan 1996.

” Brookhart and Freeman, 1992.
“ Brookhart and Freeman, 1992, p. 56.

 

questions of meaning privately, in underground Bible Study groups.”42 There are some
areas of inquiry that are more easily written off as separate from spiritual growth, but
discussions of teaching and learning and the social foundations of education in the United
States seem well-suited to the type of integration students desire. Ifteacher educators are
among the members of the academy who believe that “intellectual life can only proceed if
you junk all religious and spiritual questions and get on with your business,”"3 they are
missing a great entree into serious dialogue with their students.

I am not suggesting that religion be taught in teacher education programs, but I am
advocating noticing and taking seriously that which our teacher education students bring
with them. For example, educators have already recommended teachers practice “culturally
relevant pedagogy” which takes students’ ethnic backgrounds into consideration.“
McDiarmid claims teachers need to know what kind of knowledge, skills, and commitments
are valued in their students’ cultures. Such knowledge is critical to developing
representations of teaching that either bridge or confront the knowledge that students bring
with them. McDiarmid also recommends that teachers know about their students’ prior
knowledge of and experience with the subject matter if they are to represent the subject
matter in ways that lead to student understanding. All of these important points suggest that
teacher educators need to learn about if their students have religious beliefs and how those
shape their understandings of teaching and learning.

Teachers' orientations toward diversity and their pedagogical choices are often
grounded in their religious beliefs. Because this private issue (a teachers' religious beliefs)
has a public consequence (her pedagogy), teachers should understand the implications of
their ideas and values for pedagogical decision-making, not go about doing what they think
are good things for children and society in an unexamined fashion. It would be

unconstitutional to establish religious beliefs in public schools or teacher education

 

‘2 Manuel, 1997, p. 30.
‘3 Manuel, 1997, p. 30.
“ McDiarmid, et al., 1989.

247

 

 

 

 

VI

 

‘0 t

programs but there is nothing in the Constitution that forbids debate and discourse
concerning religion and its role in teaching and learning.

I am interested in helping my Christian teacher education students negotiate between
their Christian faith discourse community and their new secular professional educator
community. Many teacher education students do not have the skills to discuss their reasons
for becoming teachers, what they hope to gain from their vocational choice, and their values
and beliefs and about children, society, teaching or learning with a professor or researcher
who “doesn’t speak their language.” Some prospective teachers lack the cultural currency
of academia—critical text analysis, scientific reasoning, and personal reflection and
presentation appropriate to the university-based teacher education community. In order to
be able to acquire these skills, students need teacher educators to respect their beliefs and
help them learn to present, discuss, and reconsider their religious beliefs in a way that is
personally empowering, acceptable at the university, and appropriate for the multicultural
public schools. Academic university knowledge is important for teachers, but learning how
to integrate professional standards and personal religious beliefs is essential. W.E.B. Du
Bois' The Souls of Black Folk speaks to this issue: he would advise us to help preservice
teachers learn the ways and powers of the wider culture but to keep their souls and know

their roots."

 

‘5 Du Bois, W. E. B. 1989/1903.

EPILOGUE
“Teaching Outside the Lines”':
Julia Anne King and My Own Life Work

“And you never thought to question, you just went on with your lives,
‘Cause all they taught you who to be was mothers, daughters, wives,
And you believed them.“

History teachers and historians have important roles; we bestow power upon people
and contribute to history through our interpretations of the past. We decide who gets
included, and who gets left out, who gets marginalized, and who gets center stage, whose
perspectives are valued, and whose are silenced. As a Gambian griot proclaims, “we taught
men the history of their forefathers, with our oratorical charm we could bring peace or cause
war-we were king makers.” When I studied history, I did not learn the history of my
foremothers, but] want to teach and write history that includes the experiences of women
and contributes to social justice by making the dispossessed more powerful.

When we find gaps in the history of education, places where it seems as if no
women were present, we should struggle not only to hear them but also to figme out how it
is possible to impose and maintain boundaries that keep them out of the historical narrative.
Helen Leflrowitz Horowitz recently reviewed four new books on the history of higher
education, faulting all of them for their inattention to women and gender.3 She asks why
these established scholars aren't reading the relevant work on women and why they continue
to treat gender, not as a crucial piece of unraveling the past, but as outside the proper realm
for historical inquiry. Perhaps some historians' commitment “to make power less
‘ Hunter, Tom. 1990.

2 Judy Small, Australian folk singer.

3 Horowitz, 1995. The books she reviewed include Intellect and Public Life: Essays on the
Social History of Academic Intellectual: in the United States, by Thomas Bender (Johns
Hopkins University, 1993); Gentlemen and Scholars: College and Comunity in the “ e
of the University, ’ 865-1917, by W. Bruce Leslie (Pennsylvania State University Press,
1992); Research and Relevant Knowledge: American Research Universities since World
War II by Roger L. Geiger (Oxford University Press, 1993); and Academia 's Golden Age:

Universities in Massachusetts, 1945-1970 by Richard Freeland (Oxford University Press,
1992).

 

 

 

F I'-
s.‘

 

 

mysterious and knowledge more accessible”4 is not shared by education historians when it
comes to women teachers. Perhaps teachers are still expected to be mystified by, and
deniedacwssto,the powerandknowledgeofthose who regulateandcontrol them.

Only recently did I realize that my orientations toward history and teaching were
considered outside of the norm. In the prologue I described flying to a conference with my
daughter and eating peas and applesauce. The next day I delivered a papercalled ’
“Women's History and Pedagogical Thinking.” It was about how my recent study of
United States Women's History had made me think differently about my pedagogy, and I
hoped that by sharing my own reflections on the contributions of women's historians I
would convince other educators about the importance not only of incorporating women into
the curriculum but of re-conceiving our work to include an analysis of gender. I credited
the graduate class in women's history that I had just taken with challenging me to consider
what feminist pedagogy nright look like.

I was honored that a former teacher of mine was in the audience; Lynda Stone,
formerly a social studies teacher and presently a professor and philosopher of education,
was my mentor when I was in the Stanford Teacher Education Program. She raised her
hand after] finished making my rermrks and challenged my assertion that women's history
hadmademethinkdifl'erentlyaboutpedagogy. She announcedtotheaudiencethatshehad
known me for ten years and that I had “always been a little shit stirrer.” I was a bit taken
backmeyndameantthisasacomphmenLandshewantedtopushmetoreveal whatother
forces influence a young feminist social studies teacher. I agreed that my pedagogical
thinking was informed by more than just women's history, but] was surprised that Lynda
viewed me as a uoublenurker.

I invited Lynda to have tea with my mother and me before leaving the hotel. During
our casual conversation we all talked about our teaching My mother was active in sit-ins in
BaltimoreduringtheCivil RightsBaheardDr. MartinhrtherKinng. speakinlouisville,

 

‘ Kerber, Kessler-Harris and Kish Sklar, 1995, p.14.

250

Kentucky, and caused quite a stir at the elite private school where she taught when she told
her students what a wonderful experience it was. I had heard all of these stories before, so
my mind wandered. I pondered what Lynda had said in my session the day before. As we
were leaving, I asked her, “What did you mean when you said I had always been a shit-
stirrer?” Lynda smiled and said, “It's in your blood.” At first I was confused. My
mother, a preppie sixth grade teacher, had played dutiful grandmother all weekend. Could I
have possibly learned something from her that earned me a label she wouldn't even allow me
to say in her home? I thought about my mother's political involvement before I was born,
and I wondered what else my mother could have done when confronted with the situations
she was. I admired her, but I didn't view her contributions to civil rights or teaching as
especially valiant or extra-equity minded. She had never talked about her life in ways that
made me think it was extraordinary; in fact, she usually talked about it in ways that made it
clear she loved my dad, my sisters, and me, but which also made it clear that I could have
more, do more, and encounter fewer obstacles.

I could not make sense of all this at that conference in Phoenix, but now, years later,
having gotten to know Julia Anne King, I think I understand more. I know more about
women's history, more about pedagogy, and more about myself. I won't claim that my.
current life choices are a direct result of my study of King's life, as someone who knew me
ten years before I started this project might beg to differ, but I do believe that through my
relationship with King I was released from what Natalie Zemon Davis has called “the
compulsion to be a good feminist” and freed to define my own brand of feminism.’ I
credit writing King’s life with challenging me to consider what my own life work entails;
providing me with images, models, and insights for change; and helping me bridge the
scholarly community of writers and my personal development as a writer.

It wasn’t until my defense was near, when my friend Heather Bruce defended her
dissertation in which she claims that writing can be a feminist tool, that I realized I could

 

5 Davis, 1996.

251

 

 

I
'la‘ 1.!

 

have been one of her subjects. Like the young women in her study who re-imagined their
lives and drew strength from the writing they did in a women’s studies class, I have a clearer
and more confident sense of myself because of this project. It was not reading about
powerful women or even the closeness I felt to King that was most significant, it was the
process of writing which propelled my consciousness. As I wrote I identified my
commitment to “teach outside of the lines,” and I opened myself to revision what my life’s
“greatest needs, tasks and accomplishments” are." When I started writing, I put myself in
King’s shoes and tried to figure out how I could accomplish all that she had. When I
finished writing, I felt confident that King would support my decision to redefine my life
work. I have decided that for the next several years I will raise children and work part-time
in the local schools and community. I am excited to go back into the K-12 classroom and
see what its like to teach with the power of King's lifework behind me, and to help other
teachers construct a profession of which King would be proud.
Instead ofinviting my motherto tea, I wrote heralettertelling herofmy decisionto
resign from my full-time, tenure-track, Assistant Professor position. She replied,
Almoa thirty—six years ago I returned from India. I had never seen so much poverty,
such incredible humanity, and so many cultures vastly different from my own. I
st in Geneva and stayed at the Youth Hostel for a number of days. I was there as
the man kids leaving their homes gathered as The Wall was being built to create East
Germany. So much was happening m the world. I remember coming home and
thinking perhaps I should start very small, with creating my own family and do the very
best I could there. I felt there was really nothing one person could do to “change the
world” and no one wanted me to anyway. I decided perhaps my children, if I could
raise fine peeple, would go on to do a little more to make this world a better place. I feel
that you certainly do that every day you interact with people whether it is at the DMV,
the University or the YMCA ballet class. Your family must come first in your life to
make you happy, and as you care for them you will touch many. Abby will reach out as
she grows and through your students and your children you will continue to give. I feel
that over these 35 years of marriage, child rearing and teaching I have touchedman maul
lives and perhaps made a few students excited about learning more about our worl

This makes me feel that I did not turn my back on what I experienced in India, but that I
channeled my gifts in a far different manner.

Perhaps Lynda Stone was right; maybe my version of feminism is in my blood. But writing
King’s life provided the time and space for me to learn in ways my family and traditional

6 King, 1915.
7 Docter, Beverly Ward, 1997.

 

252

 

 

‘1

one

history lessons could not teach me. I never knew about this part of my mother’s life or how
she saw childrearing as an extension of it. There are silences about women’s lives that’exist
even between loving mothers and daughters. The more women’s lives we read and write
and teach, the freer we are to compose our own.

In The Creation of the Feminist Consciousness (199B) Gerda Lerner explored the
devastating effects on women of their exclusion from the historical record. She
persuasively argued that, “women's struggle to comprehend their own history lies at the
heart of their ability to envision a world in which they are full participants." It is not
possible to legislate improved teaching practice if teachers are unable to envision positions
and dispositions that allow them to contribute to educational policy conversations as equals.
Instead, the chasm that separates the primarily female world of teaching from the primarily
male world of policy making will persist. Including the experiences of women teachers in
educational history expands our vision of the past and helps us imagine more possibilities
for the future. Sharing with teachers the narratives of the women who taught before them

expands teachers' horizons and helps them imagine more possibilities for our children.

 

8 Kerber, Kessler—I-Iarris, and Kish Sklar, 1995. p. 4.

253

 

APPENDIX

A Briefflistory ofEducation in Early Michigan°
“Popular education is essential to the preservation and perpetuity of a free state.”1

By the ordinance of 1787, Congress established a government over the territory
lying north of the Ohio and east of the Mississippi, hereafter to be known as the North-west
Territory.2 Even before the Michigan and Indiana Territories were delineated in 185, it had
become United States policy to reserve the sixteenth section of every surveyed township in
the territories for the support of common schools.3 It was also customary to donate public
lands for the endowment of a university. In 1809 the population of the territory was still
under five thousand, but an act was adopted which provided for dividing the settled portions
of the territory into school districts, counting the numbers of school-aged children, and
taxing the parents of those who attended these rough hewn schoolhouses.

In Detroit, Catholic Father Richard and Presbyterian John Montieth shared a
common desire to provide education to both Protestant and Catholic children. Governor
Lewis Cass heartily supported their vision and in 1817 a plan was established for the
Catholepistenriad, or University, of Michigania. The goal was eventually to give the youth
of Michigan non-sectarian education of the quality that was commonly given in the colleges
on the East Coast from where the settlers came. Common schools that could prepare young
scholars for advanced study were the first necessity as the territorial leaders looked forward
to formding a university. In the 1830s the regents established branches of the university in
various growingtownsinthe southernsectionoftheterritory. ThefirstclassatAnnArbor

 

‘ King, 1896. This quotation by Lyman Abbot and a photograph of the Michigan State
Normal School start Chapter IV. “How the State Educates Her Children”, in one of the
books King wrote, The Government of the People of the State of Michi an.

2 Julia Anne King (1896) The Government of the Peo le of the State ongichi an. p. 12

3 A section is a prece of land one square mile in area harming one of the 36 an 'visions of
a township.

 

 

,. ,_. . .
J‘ ,l".'. I. .~ .h;

J:

 

 

 

 

was not formed until 1841. “Public opinion, to be safe, must be enlightened,M said
Governor Cass in 1830, as he argued for a tax devoted to the education of the poor. At this
time, Michigan was just beginning to be rapidly populated by New Englanders via the Erie
Canal. Michigan’s population climbed from 31,640 in 1830 to 212,671 by 1840, an
increase of 571 percent, faster than any state or territory in that decade? Schools were
requiredtobekeptinevery districtforatleastthreemonthsayear,andthe childrenofthe
poor were to be instructed free of charge. Fees were still required of those who were able to
pay, but the people united in the expectation expressed by President Montieth in his first
annual report, “thus the public will be benefited by genius and talent which would otherwise
have died in obscurity.”5

After a heated boundary dispute with Ohio, and the promise of additional territory
in the Upper Peninsula, the people of Michigan adopted a constitution, and Michigan was
admitted to the Union in 1837. There was no debate concerning the importance of making
suitable provision for public instruction. Isaac E. Crary, of Calhoun County, was chairman
of a committee appointed to draft an article regarding education. His plan provided for a
library in each township and for the establishment of common schools and a university.
I-Iis committee's report contained a feature not found in any previous state constitution:
“The Governor shall nominate, and by and with the consent of the Legislature, in joint vote,
shall appoint a Superintendent of Public Instruction, who shall hold office for two years,
and whose duties shall be prescribed by law.”7 Michigan was the that state to adopt the
Prussian system of vesting the educational authority in a single individual. The Prussian
school system was indirectly a model, as much of what was written about schooling and
pedagogy at the time came from Europe. The Michigan system of education that Crary
crafted was distinctive because education was to be run by a separate branch of the
government, there was a state officer in charge of the whole system, and lands granted by
‘ Cooley, 1885, p. 315.
5 Catton, 1988.

6 Cooley, 1885, p.315.
7 Michigan Constitution of 1337, Art. x, Sec 1.

 

255

the federal government for school purposes were given to the state as trustee rather than to
the townships, as had been the rule.

On Crary's recommendation, John D. Pierce was nominated by the Governor for the
office of Superintendent of Public Instruction. Both branches of the Legislature confirmed
this choice. In this capacity Pierce was to devise a plan for the organization of the school
system (1' the state. He traveled to New England and consulted with prominent educators
and statesmen before submitting a plan which was quickly adopted. Pierce said in 1&7,
when proposing his plan for education to the Legislature:

The object is universal education-the education of every individual of all classes. . . .
Let free schools be established and maintained in perpetuity and there can be no such
thing asa permanent aristocracy in our land; for the monopoly of wealth is powerless
when nnnd rs allowed freely to come rn contact wrth mind.

Like many early school reformers, Pierce and Crary were inspired to create good
citizens through their Protestant upbringing and liberal education. John D. Pierce taught
school three months each yearto maintain binnelfbefore graduating from Brown
University in 1822. He spent one year at Princeton Theological Seminary, was licensed by
the Congregational Association, and, settled, as a missionary, in Marshall, Michigan. He
became friends with Isaac E. Crary, who after graduating with highest honors from
Washington (now Trinity) College, in Hartford, practiced law, and assisted G.D. Prentice in
editing The New England Weekly Review. The young lawyer, also editor of the Marshall
lixpounder,andtheyoungministerbecameintellectual alliesandpersonalfriendsasthey
read Cousin's Report on the Prussian system of education together. Victor Cousin traveled
to Europe and reported on the Prussian school system, theories and practices in classroom,
andteachertraining institutions. Thisreporthadconsiderable influenceinshapingtheir
thoughts about education, and subsequently educational policy, when Crary and Pierce
became the architects of Michigan's public school system.9

 

' Putnam, 1899, p. 16-17.
’ Cubberley, 1934, p. 307-309.

While Superintendent of Public Instruction, Pierce began the publication of the
Journal of Education (1&8—40), the first educational journal in the Great lakes region. He
organized the common school system in Michigan, dividing-the state into school districts
and providing for a Public Library in each. He arranged for the sale of public lands to
support the schools, helped establish early qualifications for teachers, and supported the -
founding of the first normal school. Crary was a delegate to Congress from the Territory of
Michigan and was Michigan's first Congressman. He was a member of the State House of
Representatives, Speaker of the House, and one of the founders, and a regent, of the
University of Michigan.10

Reformers saw in education the means of elevating the whole condition of society
and thereby bringing about human progress. Lawrence Cremin explains how men like
Crary and Pierce employed three general means of enunciating and pressing their demands:
1) They worked through groups and organizations. (for example, The American Lyceum,
the Western literary Institute and College of Professional Teachers, and the American
Institute of Instruction) 2) They worked through the press. About twenty educational
journals were instituted by the year 1840, though few survived more than several issues (for
example, Pierce's Journal of Education 1&8-1840). 3) They held actual positions through
which they could exert their influence in state governments or school systems. Many
school reformers were also state teachers' organization officers, superintendents of public
instruction, K-12 principals, and normal school professors-the same person might occupy
all these roles at difiemnt times in his life or several of them concurrently [see chart]. In
this way they were able to serve a double purpose of helping to crystallize public opinion to
the point ofaction, andthenshaping the course ofthatactionby administeringit.”

In the history of education, Michigan was a pioneering state. Its early public school
system served as a model for other states in the Northwest Territories, Far West, and South.
In 1850, when only 15% of the nation’s population was in educational facilities, 28% of

1° Altenbaugh, 1999.
" Cremin, 1951, p.49-51.

 

Michigan’s population, second only to Maine and Massachusetts, was engaged in some
education.“2 This number is even more impressive given that 98% of those were being
educated in public facilities, compared to 92% nationwide, and Michigan did not become a
state until 1837.13 Not only did Michigan’s education-minded settlers establish a network
of public schools early on, but before the territory even became a state, they had plans for a
state-sponsored, world class university.

Michigan’s educational system was founded by Christian Missionaries and
Jacksonian Democrats who believed in the workingman's credo. The state was home to
evangelical Protestants active in reform movements, including abolitionism, temperance,
common schools, and, in the 1850s, the formding of the Republican Party. The Normal
School movement in the new state was influenced by these political activists. Early normal
school professors were educated thinkers, active politicians, and Protestant ministers [see
table]. They did not belong to one political party. Most of Michigan’s school founders
were Democrats, but there were also Whigs, Free Soilers, and eventually, Republicans; the
18505 were a time of changing political parties.

In 1849, the Michigan Legislature passed an act providing for the establishment of a
state-sponsored institution for the purpose of preparing teachers. The act that established
the Normal School also created the State Board of Education.“ The Board report to the
Legislature in 1850 included propositions from the cities of Gull Prairie, Niles, Marshall,
Jackson, and Ypsilanti. The townspeople of each potential site were convinced that theirs
was the perfect spot for the state’s first Normal School, and they all offered financial
incentives to show their enthusiasm. The Board deemed Ypsilanti's proposal the best.

Ypsilanti offered a cash subscription of $13,500, temporary rooms for the use of the

school, and proposed to pay upon specified conditions, for five years, the salary of
the principal teacher of . the model school, which salary might be $700 per year."

 

’2 Cremin, 1951, p. 180
‘3 Crerrrin, 1951, p. 18)
1‘ Putnam, 1899. p. 13.
‘5 Putnam, 1899, p. 14.

 

\

The Normal School, the crowning glory of the young state’s common school system, was
established.

REFERENCES

Mn: Archive name and location

EMU Eastern Michigan University Archives, Ypsilanti, Michigan

BHL Bentley Historical Collection, University of Michigan, Ann
Arbor, Michigan

CPL Charlotte Public Library, Charlotte, Michigan

APL Adrian Public Library, Adrian Michigan

LCH Lenawee Cormty Historical Museum, Adrian, Michigan

LCL Lenawee County Library

LMI Library of Michigan, Lansing, Michigan

LPL Lansing Public Library, Lansing, Michigan

KC Kalamazoo College Archives, Kalamazoo, Michigan

OCA Oberlin College Archives

Works by Julia Anne King

This list includes published and tmpublished works. They are arranged by chronolo 'cal
date with those without dates at the end of the list. If they were found in an archive,
name of the archive is noted with an abbreviation as shown above.

1858. Life-work. In Hattie A. Farrande’s notebook, Reminiscences of Normal Days and
Normal Friends. EMU.

1869. Education Outside of Books, Michigan Teacher, March, vol. IV, no. 3, p. 61—68.
1875. Composition in the Public School, Michigan Teacher, March, vol. X, no. 3, p. 75-79.
$8317. The People and the Schools, The Charlotte Republican, August 17, vol XXIII, p. 8.

1877. (co-authors William H. Payne and Joseph C. Jones) Report of Board of Visitors. In
F ortieth annual report of the Superintendent of Public Instruction of the State of
Michigan, for the year 1876. Lansing: W.S. George & Co., p. 128-130.

1882. Written for the ladies Library. Read at Mrs. Prof. Putnam’s. A . 5, 1882. (untitled
manuscript, only second half remains, p. 21-32, a speech regarding ato’s Republic.
In the archival files it was im roperlyeadt‘tlached to History in its Relation to the Normal
School, which was prepared or the gogic Society in the Michigan State Normal
School, Feb, 1893.) EMU

 

”mgr/I a ,{e'w v} .'r,'

 

 

 

 

1886. theSpeciali uiry respecting the study of histo%in the United States. Department of
thenterior, ureau of Education, Washington, C. (sixpa gecod,ocument wkted by
King, reporting on the state of history instruction at the Normal School)

1889. Method as Applied to Teaching History. I. -V. In Michigan School Moderator.
Nov. 14. pp. 159- 160, 216-217, 251-252, 382, 473474. EMU

'cal Method of Teaching History m the Public Schools. In the F tfiy-thtrd
1% report of the Superintendent of Public Instruction of the State of Michigan p.
108—1 17.

1893a. History in Relation to the Normal School, (unpublished manuscript, read before the
Pedagogical Society). EMU

1893b. What is history? Answered (unpublished manuscript, read before the Pedagogical
Society as part of the series titled History in its Relation to the Normal School.) EMU

1893c. (co-authors Mary Putnam and Florence Shultes) Analysis of Papers. Outline and
Bibliography for several papers read before the Pedagogical Society. EMU

1894. History as a ratifying element in a course of study. A paper read before the
Pedagogical Club of the State Normal School, Ypsilanti, Mich, February. EMU

1896. The Government of the People of the State of Michigan. New York: Hinds, Noble,
and Eldredge.

1897. Christian Association.(un (HapubliBshed typed manuscript, prepared for speech at
founding of Starkweather

1897b. The adaptation of history to primary education. Normal College News. Vol I 7, no.
4. Oct 27. pp. 65-67.EMU

18995b0History in the elementary school. In Educational Review, 18, December, pp. 479-

1915. Living as a Factor m Education. The American Schoolmaster, vol. VIII, no. 7,
September. p. 289-296.

Daniel Putnam-sketch. (unpublished manuscript, missing one page) EMU

History as a means of education. (16 page, unpublished manuscript, no date). EMU

History as a Means of Social Education, (unpublished manuscript, no date). EMU

United States History (course outline, no date) EMU

Letter to classes, EMU.

An outline course in history includin materral for the eight grades: A teacher’ 3 manual
(book length manuscript, type setfiEMU

A discussion on the adoption of the report by the Committee of Eight. Teachers
Conference. American Historical Association. (no date, unpublished manuscript)
EMU

261

The history department of the Normal College (unpublished manuscript) BHL

Topical Method of Teaching History in the Public School. Written by King, but Read by
Miss Annah M. Soule, State Normal School. [unpublished manuscript, no date, but
Soule was an assistant in the History Department from 1889-1892]. EMU

Other Archival Sources

Aurora. 1893,1894, 1895,1896, 1898, 1899, 1900, 1902, 1906, 1907, 1909, 1910,1914,
1915. (Yearbook from the Michigan State Normal School/College) EMU

Biographical sketches. 1893 Normal News, vol. 12, p.295. EMU
Biography [of King]. 1895. Normal News, vol. 15, no. 4, September. p. 8. EMU

Buell, Bertha. 1919. In Memoriam. Julia Anne King: Teacher, Counselor, Friend. In The
American Schoolrnaster. (cut out, no volume or page numbers) BHL

Buell, Bertha, 1919. letter to Ernest Goodrich regarding Julia Anne King’s Memorial
Service, June 11. BHL

Catalogue of Adrian Union School. 1854-1855. pp. 12-13, and 28-31. APL

Catalogue of the Library of the State Normal School. 1888. Published by order of the
State Board of education. MSU

Catalogues of Oberlin College. 1850-1857. OCA

Charlotte Public Schools. In The Charlotte Leader, special edition. Vol. XXXIII, June 30,
1887. p. 18-20. CPL

The Charlotte Republican. vol. xxm, Friday, August 17, 1877. p. s CPL

Circular. New Course of Study in the Michigan State Normal School. Mar 18, 1863.
EMU

Copeland Praises Prof Who Taught History Back in 1887. Correspondence and clippings
about death of Miss King, 1919. BHL

Corbin, Elizabeth. Teachers ’ Course in Histo (no date, ungublished manuscript written
by one of King’s students from a course 'ng taught, 1 pages) BHL

Detroit Free Press. May 13, 1919. EMU
Dickson, C. A. Ripley. 1875. Alumni Survey. Oberlin College OCA
Dickson, C. A. Ripley. 1894. Alumni Survey. Oberlin College OCA

Early AdriarIrCIlJ964f73. Presented by the American Association of University Women. pp.
38-41.

The First 100 Years, 1949. A Centennial Publication of the Michigan state Normal College

262

First Teachings. 1858. A paper read by a Lady of the last graduating class of the Normal
School. In the Report of the Superintendent of Public Instruction of the State of
Michigan.

Goodrich, ER 1919. Memorial Address, June 24. EMU

Goodrich, Ernest. 1919. Sketch of Julia A. King. Alumni Meeting. EMU

E.P.G., 1919. notes regarding King written in preparation for the Memorial Address. BHL

Haven, E. O. 1854, The Michigan Journal of Education and Teachers ’ Magazine, vol I. p.
47.

Hoppin, Ruth Letter to Professor Putnam. Jan 9, 1899. EMU

Hoppin, Ruth. Sketch of Sarah-Allen (3 pages, handwritten, no date) EMU

Hoppin, Ruth. 1894. Alumni Survey for Oberlin College. OCA

In memorium. 1903. Three Rivers Tribune. April 9, 19%. (Ruth Hoppin obituary) OCA
In memory of Miss Julia Anne King. (newspaper clipping, obituary) EMU

Map. Artistic rendering of the city of Adrian, Michigan. LCH.

Memorial Exercises, Julia Anne King, Alumni Meeting, Tuesday, June 24, 1919. (program
for her memorial) EMU

Michigan Constitution of 1837, Art. X, Sec I. LMI

Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections, VI (1883) "History of the Michigan Female
College and a sketch of the life and work of Miss A.C. Rogers.” [MI

Michigan State Normal School. 18&-84. Promotional materials/brochure. EMU
Newspaper clippings re: Sarah Allen Patton’s death. OCA

Newspaper clippings re: King’s death. EMU

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