WHEN WE WERE NORMAL
A Historical Augmented Reality Walking Tour
Women in Charge
LOCATION: INSIDE MILLER OVAL
Despite popular assumption, since the mid-1800s, women typically received more education than men and had the high school diploma required for entrance to a normal school for teacher training. 60% of New England teachers were women and by 1900, women made up 75% of teachers nationwide. Although salaries for teachers were low, these women still worked to educate the nation and themselves.
At the turn of the 20th century, normalites at Fitchburg felt emboldened by their education and the general progress of women. In her 1897 thesis “Higher Education of Women”, Fitchburg Normal School student Helen Bradford wrote:
These liberal ideas of female schooling were controversial. Often the argument for educating women was to make them better mothers, but Bradford argued against sexism and for equality in the nation:
In 1898, our own Principal John Thompson attended a lecture by Dr. G. Stanley Hall at Clark University where Hall preached that, “Motherhood is the natural vocation of women, the largest education she can know” and “I see a tendency toward the education of all women for motherhood. That is to be desired. We need the motherhood spirit in religion, politics, government, institutions, teaching.”
Miss Hannum, a Wellesley graduate in the audience, objected, saying women should be seen as humans first rather than wives and mothers. She thought men and women should be educated in the same fashion, much like Miss Bradford. Fellow normalite Ethel Brocklebank, in her 1902 thesis, found that while 49% of the high school girls surveyed wanted to pursue professional careers, only 3% desired to remain homemakers.
A more encouraging praise came in 1898 from Frank Andrews’s “Children’s Ideals: A Factor in Education,” the first male student’s thesis for Fitchburg Normal School. He argued that children do not value feminine traits as praiseworthy and need to be exposed to more heroines.
Bringing women into higher education brought out debates on the value of co-educational colleges. Thompson wrote in an undated report of the state normal schools that the co-ed experience improved women’s social skills and benefitted them professionally.
By 1940, the female students at the Fitchburg Normal School protested this patronistic view of being the shy wallflowers supposedly improved by male company. In the March 21, 1940 issue of The Stick, the women complained that not only were men too shy to ask for a dance or courteous enough to purchase corsages, they had the nerve to essentially claim a woman after a second date. Fitchburg State women did not appreciate feeling like property.
The spirit of Fitchburg State women ultimately produced the first female mayor in Massachusetts history. 1922 alumnus Mrs. Alice Burke, née Driscoll, won the mayorship of Westfield in 1937. Though she was disqualified when an opponent claimed her position on the School Committee had not yet expired, Burke won again in 1940, edging out the incumbent, two members of city council, and a well known businessman. In her interview with a student reporter from The Stick, Burke claimed that teachers make for excellent public servants given their experience in maintaining authority.