Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 January 2017
In 1901, Miss M. C. French contacted Hawai‘i's superintendent and inquired about teaching positions in the islands. “As the prospect for a principalship seems possible only upon removal by death and that at an extreme age in most of the middle west towns,” she wrote, “I look to the west as a field of great promise.” Not only, in French's estimation, did teaching positions in the West offer opportunities for career advancement, but she also observed, “the west remunerates well for modern school work.” French's letter of application indicated that she had normal school training and teaching experience totaling nine years in Chicago, Salt Lake, and Des Moines, the last under future Seattle Superintendent Frank Cooper. She highlighted skills in “geography, language, and grammar.” In closing her application, she remarked, “My strong point has seemed to be discipline, which however is a natural, not acquired, talent.”
1 M. C. French to Superintendent of Public Instruction, 25 February 1901, File 4, Box 64, Records of the Department of Education, Series 261: General Correspondence, Hawai‘i State Archives (hereafter cited as Series 261, HSA).Google Scholar
2 Kaufman, Polly Welts, Women Teachers on the Frontier (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984); Herbst, Jurgen, Women Pioneers of Public Education: How Culture Came to the Wild West (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008); Weiler, Kathleen, Country School-women: Teaching in Rural California, 1850–1950 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998).Google Scholar
3 Tolley, Kim and Beadie, Nancy, “Socioeconomic Incentives to Teach in New York and North Carolina: Toward a More Complex Model of Teacher Labor Markets, 1800–1850,” History of Education Quarterly 46 (Spring 2006): 36–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
4 Vapnek, Lara, Breadwinners: Working Women and Economic Independence, 1865–1920 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2010).Google Scholar
5 Herbst, Jurgen, And Sadly Teach: Teacher Education and Professionalization in American Culture (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989).Google Scholar
6 Administrators frequently used the terms “local” and “home girl” interchangeably; both terms were used to refer to teachers trained in the state.Google Scholar
7 Kaufman, , Women Teachers on the Frontier; Tolley, and Beadie, , “Socioeconomic Incentives to Teach.”Google Scholar
8 Nugent, Walter, Into the West: The Story of Its People (New York: Knopf, Alfred A., 1999), 4–6; Casper, Scott E., Moving Stories: Migration and the American West, 1850–2000 (Reno: Nevada Humanities Committee, 2001); Myers, Sandra L., Westering Women and the Frontier Experience, 1800–1915 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1982).Google Scholar
9 Information on Seattle's teachers comes from two collections of personnel files at the Seattle Public Schools Archives (SPSA): manuscript collection A-96–9 (cited hereafter as Personnel Records, A-96–9, SPSA) and the microfilmed personnel files (cited hereafter as Personnel Files, Microfilm, SPSA). By agreement with the Seattle Public School Archives, I have used pseudonyms to protect Seattle teachers’ identities. Seattle Public Schools Application, 18 April 1907, Personnel Files, Microfilm, SPSA.Google Scholar
10 Tolley and Beadie, “Socioeconomic Incentives to Teach,” 70.Google Scholar
11 “Applicants for Positions in Public Schools,” n.d., File 11, Box 63, Series 261, HSA.Google Scholar
12 Seattle Public Schools Application, 10 April 1909, Personnel Files, Microfilm, SPSA; Seattle Public Schools Application, 30 January 1905, Personnel Files, Microfilm, SPSA; Seattle Public Schools Application, 12 March 1917, Personnel Files, Microfilm, SPSA.Google Scholar
13 Freidson, Eliot, “Are Professions Necessary?” in The Authority of Experts: Studies in History and Theory, ed. Haskell, Thomas (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984), 3–27.Google Scholar
14 Personnel Files, Microfilm, SPSA.Google Scholar
15 Personnel Files, Microfilm, SPSA.Google Scholar
16 Seattle Public Schools Application, 24 March 1908, Personnel Files, Microfilm, SPSA; Seattle Public Schools Application, 24 March 1919, Personnel Files, Microfilm, SPSA.Google Scholar
17 Fuller, Wayne, “The Teacher in the Country School,” in American Teachers: Histories of a Profession at Work, ed. Warren, Donald (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1989), 98–117; Rousmaniere, Kate, City Teachers: Teaching and School Reform in Historical Perspective (New York: Teachers College Press, 1997), 38.Google Scholar
18 Labaree, David, “Career Ladders and the Early Public High-School Teacher: A Study of Inequality and Opportunity,” in American Teachers, 157–89.Google Scholar
19 Seattle Public Schools Application, 1 February 1917, Personnel Files, Microfilm, SPSA.Google Scholar
20 “Applicants for Positions in Public Schools,” n.d., Folder 11, Box 63, Series 261, HSA.Google Scholar
21 Tyack, David, The One Best System: A History of American Urban Education (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1974), 97–104; MacDonald, Victoria-Maria, “The Paradox of Bureaucratization: New Views on Progressive Era Teachers and the Development of a Woman's Profession,” History of Education Quarterly 39 (Winter 1999): 427–53; Tyack, David and Hansot, Elizabeth, Managers of Virtue: Public School Leadership in America, 1820–1980 (New York: Basic Books, 1982); Blount, Jackie, Destined to Rule the Schools: Women and the Superintendency, 1873–1995 (New York: State University of New York Press, 1998).Google Scholar
22 U. S. Department of the Interior, Census Office, Report on the Population of the United States at the Eleventh Census: 1890, Part I (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1895), 881; Kingdom of Hawaii, Bureau of Public Instruction, Report of the General Superintendent of the Census, 1890 (Honolulu: Grieve, R., 1891), n. p.; U. S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Report on the Population at the Twelfth Census of the United States: 1900, Part I (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1901), 609–45; U. S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Abstract of the Fifteenth Census of the United States (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1933), 105–6; U. S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Fifteenth Census: 1930, Outlying Territories and Possessions, Number and Distribution of Inhabitants, Composition and Characteristics of the Population, Occupations, Unemployment and Agriculture (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1932), 48.Google Scholar
23 Los Angeles School District, Annual Report of the Board of Education and Superintendent of City Schools With Rules and Regulations of the Public Schools of the City of Los Angeles, California, 1890–91 (Los Angeles, 1891), 2–29 (hereafter cited as Los Angeles Annual Report); Portland School District, Seventeenth Annual Report, School Distria No. 1 Multnomah County, Oregon Including The City of Portland, For the School Year Ending June 30, 1890 (Portland, 1890), 89–92 (hereafter cited as Portland Annual Report); San Francisco School District, Annual Report of the Public Schools of the City and County of San Francisco for the Fiscal Year Ending June 30, 1890 (San Francisco, 1890), 19 (hereafter cited as San Francisco Annual Report); Seattle School District, Annual Report of the Seattle Public Schools, 1890–91 (Seattle: 1891), 46–50 (hereafter cited as Seattle Annual Report). For comparative rates of feminization in public schools, see Perlmann, Joel and Margo, Robert A., Women's Work?: American Schoolteachers, 1650–1920 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001); Rury, “Who Became Teachers?” in Warren, American Teachers, 9–49.Google Scholar
24 Hawaii Biennial Report (1890), 75–76; Hawaii Biennial Report (1930), 15.Google Scholar
25 Blount, , Destined to Rule the Schools; Rousmaniere, Kate, “Go to the Principal's Office: Toward a Social History of the School Principal in North America,” History of Education Quarterly 47 (February 2007): 1–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
26 Sabin returned to her native Wisconsin in 1890 and became best known for her leadership at Milwaukee-Downer College. Although reports indicate she was a popular teacher and superintendent in Portland, later administrators, particularly Frank Rigler (1896–1913), were criticized by both contemporaries and historians as rigid and did little to encourage gender equity in administration. Susan Dorsey, who was born in New York and received her degree from Vassar College, worked her way through the ranks in Los Angeles from high school teacher to vice principal to assistant superintendent before being hired to lead the city's schools in 1920. U. S. Works Progress Administration, History of Education in Portland, ed. Powers, Alfred and Corning, Howard McKinley (Oregon: U. S. Works Progress Administration, 1937), 686–94; Tyack, David, “Bureaucracy and the Common School: The Example of Portland, Oregon, 1851–1913,” American Quarterly 19 (Autumn 1967): 493–95; Estelle Pau on Lau, Ellen C Sabin: Proponent of Higher Education for Women: A Social History (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1978); Wallis, Eileen V., Earning Power: Women and Work in Los Angeles, 1880–1930 (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 2010), 21; Raftery, Judith, Land of Fair Promise: Politics and Reform in Los Angeles Schools, 1885–1941 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1992), 48–49, 62–63; McGregor, Georgette Foster, “The Educational Career of Susan Miller Dorsey” (PhD dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles, 1949).Google Scholar
27 Portland Annual Report (1924), 62–83; Directory of the Seattle Schools (1924), 1–45.Google Scholar
28 For example, see Los Angeles Annual Report (1914), 151 and 157.Google Scholar
29 Spears, Timothy B., Chicago Dreaming: Midwesterners and the City, 1871–1919 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005); Nugent, , Into the West; Starr, Kevin, Americans and the California Dream, 1850–1915 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973), 686–94.Google Scholar
30 Beale, Howard, Are American Teachers Free?: An Analysis of Restraints Upon the Freedom of Teaching in American Schools (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1936), 686–94; Sewell, Jessica Ellen, Women and the Everyday City: Public Space in San Francisco, 1890–1915 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2011); Nelson, Margaret, “The Intersection of Home and Work: Rural Vermont Schoolteachers, 1915–1950,” in The Teacher's Voice: A Social History of Teaching in Twentieth-Century America, ed. Altenbaugh, Richard J. (London: The Falmer Press, 1992), 26–39.Google Scholar
31 Albright, Flora N. to Gibson, T. H., 18 April 1914, File 3, Box 59, Series 261, HSA.Google Scholar
32 Letter to Geiger, William, 30 December 1905, Personnel Records, Microfilm, SPSA.Google Scholar
33 By 1915, high school positions in Portland and San Francisco required a university degree. Minutes of the Board of Directors, School District No. 1, Multnomah County, 2 April 1912, Deputy Clerk's Office, Blanchard Education Building, Portland, Oregon; San Francisco Annual Report (1908), 88–101.Google Scholar
34 “What People Are Doing,” Seattle Grade Club Magazine 7 (December 1925): 30; “Professional Service Page,” Seattle Grade Club Magazine 5 (December 1923): 21; Personnel Files, Microfilm, SPSA.Google Scholar
35 “March Hike,” “February Walk,” and “Special Notice to Hikers,” Hitchcock, Millie E., Journal, 1899–1900, Ms Doc 151, Bishop Museum Archives, Honolulu.Google Scholar
36 San Francisco Classroom Teachers Bulletin 10 (March 1927): 20; Pieroth, Doris, Seattle's Women Teachers of the Interwar Years: Shapers of a Livable City (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2004), 183–85.Google Scholar
37 “How Teachers Are Appointed,” Los Angeles School Journal 10 (20 September 1926): 34.Google Scholar
38 Dayton, Iwalani K. to Kinney, Henry W., 20 June 1915, File 2, Box 63, Series 261, HSA; “A Circular of Information Concerning the Schools of Hawaii, 1919–20,” File 11, Box 54, Series 261, HSA.Google Scholar
39 Bodnar, John, The Transplanted: A History of Immigrants in Urban America (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985); MacDonald, John S. and MacDonald, Leatrice D., “Chain Migration, Ethnic Neighborhood Formation, and Social Networks,” in An Urban World, ed. Tilly, Charles (Boston: Little, Brown, 1974), 686–94.Google Scholar
40 “City Teachers’ Club Officers, 1927–28,” Los Angeles School Journal 11 (9 April 1928): 27.Google Scholar
41 Borden, Elvira to Department of Public Instruction, 19 August 1918, File 2, Box 60, Series 261, HSA; Kinney, Henry W. to Borden, 22 August 1918, File 2, Box 60, Series 261, HSA; Personnel Files, Microfilm, SPSA.Google Scholar
42 Shafer, Harry, “Mrs. Adda Wilson Hunter,” Los Angeles School Journal 10 (10 January 1927): 30.Google Scholar
43 Seattle Public Schools Application, 1908 4 March, Personnel Files, Microfilm, SPSA; Seattle Public Schools Application, 12 April 1910, Personnel Files, Microfilm, SPSA.Google Scholar
44 Cooper, Frank B. to Principals, 2 September 1921, File: “1921/22 Principal's Notices,” Box 11, Superintendents’ Files, SPSA; Babb, Caroline to Holden, J. F., 17 November 1891, Caroline, M. and Babb, George Letters, BANC MSS 2000/62 cp, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.Google Scholar
45 Bauknight, Pickney M. to MacCaughey, Vaughan, 12 May 1922, File 8, Box 60, Series 261, HSA.Google Scholar
46 Personnel Files, Microfilm, SPSA.Google Scholar
47 Portland Annual Report (1889–1890), 89–92.Google Scholar
48 Data are drawn from a random sample of 109 teachers employed in 1909–1910 (approximately 10 percent of the teaching staff) and 126 teachers employed in 1929–1930 (approximately 5 percent of the teaching staff). Personnel Records, A-96–9, SPSA; Personnel Files, Microfilm, SPSA.Google Scholar
49 Intervening reports do not list teachers’ training by region in such a comprehensive manner but do indicate a consistently high number of teachers trained in California. Seven hundred fifty-nine of the eight hundred seventy-one total teachers in San Francisco in 1890–1891 were graduates of California schools. San Francisco Annual Report (1891), 35; San Francisco Annual Report (1925–1926), 64–67.Google Scholar
50 Dorsey, Susan, “The Professional Improvement of Los Angeles Teachers,” Los Angeles School Journal 4 (6 September 1920): 6.Google Scholar
51 Cubberley, Ellwood P., Dresslar, Fletcher B., Elliot, Edward C., Francis, J. H., Spaulding, Frank E., Terman, Lewis M., and Tanner, William R., Report of the Survey of the Public Schools System of School Distria No. 1 Multnomah County, Oregon, City of Portland (Portland: Schwab Printing Co., 1913), 41–42.Google Scholar
52 Cubberley, , Portland Survey, 42–45.Google Scholar
53 Tyack, , The One Best System, 126–27.Google Scholar
54 Horn, P. W., Report of Supplementary Survey of Portland Public Schools (Portland: Jefferson High School Press, 1917), 22.Google Scholar
55 Hawaii Biennial Report (1892), 13.Google Scholar
56 For discussion of child-centered reformers and their rhetoric, see the following: Tyack, , The One Best System; Cuban, Larry, How Teachers Taught: Constancy and Change in American Classrooms, 1890–1980, 2nd ed. (New York: Teachers College Press, 1993); Zilversmit, Arthur, Changing Schools: Progressive Education Theory and Practice, 1930–1960 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993); Reese, William J., America's Public Schools: From the Common School to “No Child Left Behind” (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005), chap. 3.Google Scholar
57 Gamson, David, “District Progressivism: Rethinking Reform in Urban School Systems, 1900–1928,” Paedagogica Historica 39 (August 2003): 433.Google Scholar
58 Gibson, T. H., “Americanization,” 13 February 1920, File 21, Box 64, Series 261, HSA; Tamura, Eileen, Americanization, Acculturation, and Ethnic Identity: The Nisei Generation in Hawaii (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994).Google Scholar
59 Fraser, Nina L. D. to Pope, W. T., 24 May 1912, File 14, Box 64, Series 261, HSA.Google Scholar
60 Los Angeles Report (1901–1902), 68.Google Scholar
61 Wright, J. C. to Will Crawford, 24 October 1927, File 19, Box 3, Records of the Department of Education, Series 315: Vocational Education Files, HSA.Google Scholar
62 Personnel Records, A-96–9, SPSA; Personnel Files, Microfilm, SPSA.Google Scholar
63 Ogren, Christine A., The American State Normal School: An Instrument of Great Good (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 214.Google Scholar
64 For a discussion of the requirements for state certification, see San Francisco Annual Report (1908–1909), 88–101; Los Angeles Annual Report (1890–1891), 97.Google Scholar
65 Ogren, , The American State Normal School, 228–33; Cubberley, , Portland Survey, 41–44. Personnel Files, Microfilm, SPSA; Personnel Files, A96–A, SPSA.Google Scholar
66 For more information on teacher training in the islands, see Potter, Robert E. and Logan, Linda A., A History of Teacher Education in Hawai‘i (Honolulu: Hawaii Education Association, 1995).Google Scholar
67 Potter, and Logan, , Teacher Education in Hawai‘i, 88–91.Google Scholar
68 Cooper, Frank B. to Board of Directors, 17 April 1918, File: “Salaries,” Box 6, Superintendents’ Files, SPSA.Google Scholar
69 Pieroth, , Seattle's Women Teachers, 87–101.Google Scholar
70 Los Angeles Annual Report (1890–1891), 102.Google Scholar
71 San Francisco School District, Plan for the Appointment of Teachers for the City and County of San Francisco, Adopted May, 1904 (San Francisco, 1904), 10–11.Google Scholar
72 Seattle Triennial Report (1921–1924), 12.Google Scholar
73 Minutes of the San Francisco School Board, 20 May 1908, 2 September 1908, 14 April, 1909, 3 August 1910, 7 March 1912, and 3 May 1927, San Francisco Unified School District, San Francisco, California; San Francisco Annual Report (1929–1930), 35.Google Scholar
74 Elizabeth Rouse to Kinney, Henry W., 24 July 1917, File 12, Box 71, Series 261, HSAGoogle Scholar
75 Emphasis in original. Albright, Flora N. to Gibson, T. H., 10 April 1914, File 3, Box 59, Series 261, HSA.Google Scholar
76 Seattle Triennial Report (1921–1924), 12.Google Scholar
77 Hawaii Biennial Report (1930), 8–9.Google Scholar
78 Portland Annual Report (1929–1930), 78–100.Google Scholar
79 Cuban, Larry, How Teachers Taught; Gamson, , “District Progressivism.”Google Scholar