Julia Wright's Educational Vision and Advocacy for Women

• In Event: 72.024 - Pivotal Landmarks: Turning to Life History as a Guide to Contemporary Educational Policy and Practice

Abstract

Educational historians of women have turned to biography as a way of tracing women’s experiences as educators and students in the historical record, understanding how women have been instrumental in shaping key historical phenomena, or exploring in depth and detail broader historical events that become imprinted on the life experiences of individual subjects. Banner (2009) remarks that “biographers are detectives and interpreters, attempting to illuminate the past and interweave its threads in new and compelling patterns” (582). In this paper, I draw from a larger biographical project on the work of an industrious but unknown 19th century female educator and writer, Julia M. Wright, who used varied writing genres to champion the rights of women to access education, to become knowledge-bearers and knowledge-creators, and to serve as active agents in shaping the mission and content of their children’s education.

For the purposes of this paper, I turn to pivotal shifts in Wright’s educational philosophies rooted in her life experience and evidenced in an unusual set of didactic texts she published during the late 19th century that reflect broader social issues: her shift from emphasizing women’s role as temperance advocates to teaching children to advance the temperance cause on women’s behalf; Secondly, her turn from championing a classical schooling curriculum to advocating for the burgeoning nature study movement. This advocacy was rooted in concepts of justice. As one character in her popular domestic manual expresses in passing, “parents are unjust who deprive children of out-door life for fear that they will mar their complexions, or of exercise lest they shall tear their clothes” (p. 113). Her writing suggests shifting conceptions of women and children as educational subjects and the activities most appropriate for cultivating democratic citizens. The breadth and length of her writing career allows particular insight into her changing allegiances over time as well as broader educational debates.

Significance
The educational philosophies and writings of Wright, and many didactic writers like her, remain productive sites of inquiry for their contributions to educational history. Although 19th century American schooling has received wide-ranging attention from historians of education, questions persist regarding women’s contributions to curricular development and informal educational processes.

Methodology and Data Sources
As Wagner-Martin (1994) has remarked, tracing women’s lives through the archival record is often a fraught enterprise. This is particularly true for marginalized historical subjects whose lives are often represented through dominant accounts (Terry, 1999). In the larger biographical project on which I base this paper, I draw from feminist and poststructuralist readings of historical subjects to analyze Wright’s philosophical allegiances and educational convictions through the pages of her diverse didactic fiction, manuals, social tracts, and children’s readers published across a fifty-year time span. I also draw from scattered archival records and secondary sources that discuss her work, the unpublished reminiscences of her family members, and correspondence with her publishers. Secondary sources include broader contextualizing material such as surveys of women’s writing in the 19th century.

Author

• Lucy E. Bailey, Oklahoma State University