The Departure of Males from the Teaching Profession in Nineteenth-Century Iowa

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THE DEPARTURE OF MALES FROM THE TEACHING PROFESSION IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY IOWA Thomas Morain When nineteenth-century American authors recalled their schooldays, the teachers they characterized came in a variety of forms— the superstitious, gangling Ichabod Crane in the Hudson Valley, the watchful tyrant on the Missouri frontier who routinely thrashed Tom Sawyer and his gang for minor infractions, the rural New England schoolteacher who boarded with Whittier's "Snowbound" family. However, overwhelmingly, these teachers were young men. By the twentieth century, Ichabod had become "our Miss Brooks," and contemporary pranksters have had to contend with the likes of Mrs. Grundy. The transformation of schoolteaching from a male profession to a predominantly female pursuit has been the subject of numerous studies. Because teaching was one of the first and one of the few professions open to women in the nineteenth century and occupied so prominent a position in the female employment picture, most of the attention of historians, economists and educators logically has focused on the increasing percentage of females in the occupation. However, the obvious corollary of a rising female percentage is a declining male one. In general, studies have tended to stress a combination of factors to explain the phenomenon: the formation of a leisured middle class, the opening of post-elementary education to women, the appearance and expansion of tax-supported public education, rapid population increases, a Victorian gender formulation which maintained that the female is innately superior in the care and education of young children, and the willingness of women to teach for substantially lower salaries than men.1 Concentrating on the factors 1 See Thomas Woody, A History of Women's Education in the United States. (Lancaster, Pennsylvania, 1929); Kathryn Kish Sklar, Catherine Beecher: A Study in American Domesticity, (New York, 1976); and Willard EUsbree, The American Teacher: Evolution of a Profession in a Democracy, (New York: 1939). Civil War History, Vol. XXVI, No. 2 Copyright © 1980 by The Kent State University Press 0009-8078/80/2601-0004 $00.50/0 162CIVIL WAR HISTORY opening classroom positions to women, most accounts have tended to ignore the precise impact ofsuch changes on male career patterns andat least imply that the factors which encouraged women to teach made eventual female dominance of the profession inevitable. Yet, while such changes necessarily had a negative impact on their teaching prospects, males nevertheless remained a significant component of the teaching profession throughout the nineteenth century. In 1880, men accounted for 42 per cent of teachers in the United States, and even as late as 1900, they still held 30 per cent of all teaching posts.2 Because control of the American education establishment has resided overwhelmingly at the local level, whatever hypothesis is offered to explain the change from male to female must account for why some men and some women applied for teaching positions and why local school boards selected certain persons for classroom assignments. Explanations based on national trends obscure local influences and blur regional differences. What may have been typical of ante-bellum Massachusetts was a far cry from frontier Nebraska or Colorado. For this reason, the school records ofa single state might provide some insight into the factors behind the feminization of the teaching profession . While the process which occurred in other states might have been significantly different, the history of teacher selection in nineteenthcentury Iowa illustrates how certain factors influenced career patterns. Iowa became a state in 1846, registered strong population increases through the rest of the century, and by virtue of a proliferation of country schools, led thenation in literacy by 1900. While in some areas of New England, women teachers had outnumbered their male counterparts as early as the 1830's, it was more common for Iowa's frontier schools to be staffed by men. Not until the pressure of Civil War enlistments rapidly depleted the number of males available and willing to teach did women, in 1862, comprise a majority of the profession. From the Civil War to the end of the century, the percentage of male teachers in Iowa fell considerably below the national average, indicating that certain factors in the state were either encouraging women to teach, discouraging men, or...

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