A Moral Good: The Gendered Differentiation of Working-Class Girls' Education in Britain, 1902-1945

Abstract

British state-aided elementary education offered the children of the working-classes a path to literacy and self-sufficiency following the Forster Act of 1870. In the years that followed, the curriculum became more robust offering science and mathematics to boys and domestic instruction for girls. By 1902 the dual character of elementary education was established that divided the curriculum by gender. Though seemingly harmless, gender differentiated curriculum ultimately worked to limit educational opportunity of working-class girls. Gender differentiation functioned to give girls less rigorous academic subjects, even if they showed intellectual aptitude, in favor of a timetable which privileged the moral responsibilities of home making and motherhood. Lessons in domestic subjects’ instruction were heavily influenced by tenets of Christian faith and tied to formal lessons in religious instruction. Though domestic subjects’ instruction was initially scientific in nature, by 1938, the teaching working-class girls received was practical in nature, and lacked most association with science. The subjection of science-based explanations in the curriculum to moral and religious prescriptions marked the character of education that working-class girls received. Instead of educating girls for the world of work between 1902 and 1944, they were educated solely for their future role in the home as wife and mother. It was an important objective for the British state to uphold that moral imperative to preserve the social status quo, as it faced unprecedented social change. It fell to working-class girls to carry the burden of state through their education and into their adult lives.