“Cultivating the Powers ofHuman Beings”: Gendered Perspectives on Curricula and Pedagogy in Academies of the New Republic

Abstract

Elizabeth Hamilton, author of the popularLetters on Education(1801), was a strong advocate of advanced education for females. When someone suggested to her that a “triumph of reason over the passions” might be unattractive in a woman, she retorted, “I beg your pardon; I thought we were speaking of the best method of cultivating the powers ofhuman beings.… In this I can make no distinction of sex” [italics in original]. Most writers on education in the early republic agreed with Hamilton. The majority of educators believed that males and females were both rational human beings who needed to acquire mental discipline and who were interested in learning about the world around them. Both the curricula and the pedagogical methods proposed by educational theorists in the new republic reflected these beliefs.