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Turn-of-the-Century Teachers and Administrators:

Gender and Autonomy
by:
Claire M. Fontaine

When William Henry Maxwell became the first superintendent of schools of New York City in 1898 there

was no school system as such to speak of. The former City of Brooklyn, now incorporated as a borough of

Greater New York City, in many respects had a more highly developed and democratic portfolio of

educational offerings than did Old New York, the geographical area we now know as Manhattan and the

Bronx. Over the next two decades Maxwell sought to impose structure and centralized control upon the

disparate institutions now under his jurisdiction. These ranged from the crowded and immigrant-dominated

primary schools of the Lower East Side to the one-room schoolhouses of rural Richmond and Queens

counties to the well-established Brooklyn high schools concentrated in the historic Dutch residential

neighborhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant. Maxwell did accomplish many of the goals he set out in his

modernization scheme, including formalizing the process of teacher appointment, offering education at a

higher level to greater numbers of students, and expanding services provided in the school setting into

auxiliary areas of life like physical health services, vocational training, and sexual health education. Along

with his successes, however, came unintended consequences, particularly in the realm of teacher-supervisor

relations. The antagonistic relationship with supervisory personnel now so familiar to professional educators

was arguably set on its course by the bureaucracy Maxwell founded.

This examination of bureaucratization of New York City schools under Maxwell, the first

superintendent, is at root an attempt to connect the experiences of city teachers a century apart. Turn-of-the-

century teachers navigated a chaotic and disjointed system, run by professional administrators just emerging

from the universities, ready to impose corporate culture and the language of scientific management on the

school system. Today’s teachers navigate a newly redesigned system under mayoral control in which a very
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few individuals without a background in education wield enormous power. Particular attention will be paid to

perceptions of teacher competency by their supervisors, and to the extent possible given the paucity of

teacher-generated primary source material, to teachers’ own sense of their autonomy and professionalism.

The implications of gender divisions within the educational sphere will be explored when appropriate, often

revealing supervisory paternalism toward female teachers. I hope that whatever preliminary conclusions I am

able to draw might be of some use despite the limited scope of the investigation.

New York City and other urban school systems underwent fundamental changes in the late nineteenth

and early twentieth century. New York in particular witnessed unprecedented levels of immigration, mostly

from southern and Eastern Europe. The shifting demographics threatened more established Americans’ sense

of security and control and led members of the social elite to explore new approaches to schooling. The ward

system of neighborhood control of schools had worked well enough in the mid-nineteenth century when the

flow of immigration was more modest, but the so-called “new immigrants” from southern and eastern Europe

were more numerous and more foreign, in language and appearance as well as religion. Leading members of

society postulated that the principles of scientific management that had been so effective in maximizing the

efficiency of factories could be as effective when applied to the schools.

City schools were by all accounts insufficiently equipped to meet the demands that the twentieth century

would pose. In Old New York, as Manhattan and the Bronx were designated before the incorporation of the

city, high schools as we now understand them had scarcely existed at the time of this initial snapshot. There

were three sites that offered instruction to primary school graduates, but all had existed for less than a year

and were housed in defunct elementary school buildings.i What we now refer to as an “eighth grade

education” was the norm.

Children of established families customarily attended private primary schools and were sent away to
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“prep” schools before college. These boarding schools became known as prep schools because they were

originally established by associated Ivy League universities to prepare students for the qualifying exam,

which served as the primary admission criterion. Andrew Draper, superintendent of public instruction in New

York City, explained that inferior “hygienic conditions… exerted a powerful influence to drive the well-to-do

people out of relations with the common schools.” His specific concerns included insufficient “breathing

room and sunlight… too close contact with other children who are unclean,” and teachers “unworthy of

companionship with a well-bred child, and incapable of teaching him.”

These families were not the “independently rich, but the great, self-respecting, comfortable class, who

earn their living and pay their debts.” This situation, whereby the public schools serve only the lower socio-

economic classes, was problematic in his mind, but he believed it could be remedied if standards for the

appointment of teachers were raised.ii Class-conscious established New York families tended to cluster

uptown, far from the teeming hordes of “new immigrants” who settled in the densely populated tenement

districts of the Lower East Side.iii There was much discussion among public-minded society folks of how best

to assimilate immigrants to the American way of life. Public schools were settled upon as the most likely

instrument of assimilation, and enrollments soared. Elementary school enrollment almost doubled between

1898 and 1917, going from 388,860 to 729,992. High school enrollments increased nearly seven-fold in the

same span of time, from 9,373 to 63,699.iv

At the beginning of the nineteenth century nine out of ten teachers were men, usually people in

transition. The average building was the rural one room schoolhouse. As one contemporary bluntly stated,

“Teaching is a half way house for those bound for the learned professions, and a hospital for the weak-

minded of those who have already entered them.”v Most people thought of teaching as a means to an end, a

job, not a profession in itself, but a way to earn money and keep busy in the down time between more
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reputable pursuits.

In this sense, early-nineteenth-century teaching resembles the Teach for America (TFA) model, a popular

alternative certification route for graduates of elite colleges. TFA’s attitude toward its low rates of teacher

retention is articulated in a statement by Elissa Clapp, senior vice president of recruitment, in a recent New

York Times Magazine article: “We are completely agnostic about what people do after their two years.”vi TFA

is in many ways a stop-gap program, seeking not to fix the teacher shortage problem but rather to provide

temporary relief. The male schoolteachers of the early nineteenth century also saw teaching as a temporary

position.

In the last few decades of the nineteenth century the nature of teaching, both in fact and in the public

imagination, underwent dramatic change. Once dominated by males, it was increasingly identified as a

female occupation between 1870 and 1920. The gender distribution changed more quickly in urban districts

than in rural areas. By 1888 the urban teaching force was 90 percent female.vii Another source indicates that

women made up 82 percent of the urban teaching force in 1900.viii It is unclear which of these figures is

accurate, or more accurate. The former is cited more frequently than the latter, but this does demonstrate that

it is necessarily reliable as opposed to merely useful. Numerical quibbling aside, it is nevertheless clear that

women’s entry into the field began first in northeastern states, even prior to 1870, and that the role of women

was well-established in nearly all states by 1920.ix

At first, women’s entrance into the field was heralded as a welcome and necessary civilizing

influence on wayward youth in a changing society. The so-called feminization of teaching, especially at the

high school level, soon became a convenient scapegoat for myriad societal problems. A 1907 novella titled

“Looking for Trouble,” written by William McAndrew, the principal of Girls Technical High School, tells the

story of a rather effeminate fellow anointed the star principal in the city system, so sensitive that
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An official reprimand sets him weeping…. A pretty woman, a politician, and a

trip on a canal boat make a new man of him and bring him to the discovery that
school systems are so perfectly organized that a man may do more for
education at a board meeting than in a classroom.x

This pep talk for discouraged young male principals is scarcely disguised. It is a male Cinderella story with

respect and public recognition as the goal and the woman as accessory. It also attempts to deal with folk

belief in the risk that employing so many women teachers may interfere with boys’ natural social

development leaving them stuck in the maternal sphere. Even The School Bulletin, ostensibly a publication

for teachers among others in the field of education, published works that problematized the woman teacher as

role model. The Bulletin promotes itself by boasting at the front of each issue that it “is not filled with

‘methods’ and spoon-food for young teachers… but appeals to all who regard their work as a vocation, and

who want to look upon it broadly and comprehensively.”xi Yet its editor, C. W. Bardeen, published a volume

of short stories, each re-published individually in the pages of his journal, that purport to offer some insight

about how schools might be improved. One story in particular is deeply misogynistic in its portrayal of

female teachers.

“Hopelessly Heartless” is a parable about “true” womanhood that depicts an underhanded and barren

yet attractive woman teacher, Miss Olney, whose ultimate redemption is delivered by Mr. Loring, the male

principal at the school where she teaches. The rising action of the tale is littered with the catty comments of

her female colleagues who are all focused on landing a marriage proposal so they can leave teaching and

move on to the next phase of life. In the climax of the text, an extended exchange between principal and

teacher, Miss Olney reveals the reason for her dour nature: she never had a proper female role model. Mr.

Loring finally sees her for the vulnerable woman she is, and softens to her, explaining that his former ill view

of her was due to her public mask of self-sufficiency. This text reflects supervisory paternalism toward

female teachers as well as the conservatism of the early-twentieth century graded high school, staffed by

women by run by men.xii

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It is likely that texts like those described herein are both reflections of, and influences on the

significant social change that was women’s rapid invasion of city teaching jobs. Many interrelated factors

contributed to the feminization of teaching. Prentice observes that feminization “does not refer to the entry of

women into a role they had never occupied before.”xiii Instead it refers to dramatically increased participation

in unified, bureaucratic, public school systems. Many scholars have noted that women could be paid a

fraction of what men demanded. Excluded from most business opportunities opening up to ambitious young

men during industrialization, young women represented a cost-efficient labor pool. They were educated at

high rates and then often freed from labor in their parents’ homes as the industrial economy replaced the

home as the locus of production. Nevertheless, their professional opportunities were circumscribed to

teaching, factory work, or domestic service. Teaching was the least demeaning of these options, and even

portrayed as glamorous work in advertising and other artifacts of popular culture.xiv Once begun, feminization

progressed swiftly due to high teacher turnover at the time.xv

Richardson and Hatcher argue that the feminization of teaching corresponds to a state’s passage of

compulsory attendance laws. According to their model, state school systems were effectively legislated into

existence by compulsory attendance legislation which bound together by common responsibility a previously

more or less ad hoc network of schools. By passing such laws states effectively agreed to assume the

financial burden of universal education. Under the previous status quo of voluntary school attendance,

decisions like school construction and retaining teachers’ services were dependent on local enrollment levels.

Richardson and Hatcher submit that once access to schools was increased and compulsory attendance laws

passed and enforced, states faced an increasing financial burden which contributed to their decision to hire

more women.xvi

Teachers’ salaries in the centralized New York City schools were set by the Davis Law of 1900. The
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salary of women set below that of men for all positions. For example, women’s starting salary was $600 a

year but men earned $900. With sixteen years of elementary teaching experience women could expect to

make $1240, but men were offered $2160 after only ten years in the classroom.xvii Even these figures were

significantly higher that the average teacher salary at that time, but they reflect New York City’s higher cost

of living. The pay differential between men and women was the greatest in urban areas where men’s services

were at a premium due to supply-side forces like the wide array of alternatives to teaching available to men

in the cities.xviii The insult was particularly sharp for female teachers in Brooklyn whose salaries had matched

those of their male colleagues before centralization.xix

Gender becomes an important organizing principle in women teachers’ struggle for professional

treatment and greater autonomy in the classroom, as we will see later. Protection from dismissal for being

married was secured by New York women in 1904, but in most parts of the country this right was not secured

until after World War II. Married women were considered greedy for valuing crass economics over the

transcendentalism of family unity. Equal pay for women was finally secured in 1911, and maternity leave

was instituted in 1914, even if it was contingent upon taking a two-year long unpaid leave of absence.xx

Superintendent Maxwell was not sympathetic to the complaints of Brooklyn teachers. Having been

passed over himself as a candidate for teaching shortly after his emigration from Ireland to New York in

1874, Maxwell demonized the ward system of teacher appointment in Brooklyn, holding that it rewarded

unqualified candidates with political connections. The new superintendent would champion an alternative

model of hiring teachers through the civil service system the rest of his career, as in this 1912 address at

Carnegie Hall in which he proclaimed its primacy among upcoming educational reforms: “Before anything

else, it is necessary to have teachers trained for their mission and removed from the blighting effects of

dependence on political, social, or religious influence for appointment or promotion… No school or system

of schools can make substantial, continuous progress which tolerates political or sectarian influence in the
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appointment and promotion of teachers.”xxi

Maxwell seems to have had something of a troubled relationship with the with New York City

teachers. One scholar characterized him as “rather hostile to the teaching staff, frequently criticizing their

reluctance to try new methods or take on new work” and asserted that “the personnel of the schools fear and

dislike [him].” In any case, it is certain at least that Maxwell was fundamentally dissatisfied with the

irregularities of teacher appointment by lay local leaders as was the custom in Brooklyn. Formalizing the

hiring process and tightening the requirements for teachers was one of his primary objectives upon becoming

superintendent in 1898. His other major goal was to expand access to secondary education by offering it

widely and freely to grammar school graduates.xxii

The limited opportunities for public secondary education in Old New York were not reflective of

conditions in the country at large, especially in urban areas. Brooklyn’s more suburban character, on the other

hand, makes it a better reference for study of how secondary education came to exist in the United States.

Brooklyn had a rather homogenous population, composed largely of established families of northern and

western European descent with a smaller number of German and Irish Catholic “old immigrant” families.

Relatively cohesive communities willingly cast their lot together and established four public secondary

schools, three of which were college preparatory.xxiii High school entrance was assured to any grammar

school graduate, a point of particular pride for William H. Maxwell, Brooklyn’s superintendent from 1886 to

1898.xxiv

During his tenure in Brooklyn, Maxwell oversaw the construction of many remarkable school

buildings all designed by architect James Naughton, superintendent of buildings for the Board of Education

of the City of Brooklyn from 1879 to 1898. Boys’ High School on Marcy Avenue and Girls’ High School on

Nostrand Avenue were both erected during this era in the neighborhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant.xxv The layout
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of these buildings was intentionally different from that of elementary schools, with large gymnasiums, grand

auditoriums, and numerous specialty rooms. Maxwell believed that high school education was fundamentally

different from elementary school education and therefore required different facilities.

Once named superintendent of New York City schools, Maxwell endeavored to spread Brooklyn’s

“democratic plan” of high school education throughout the city and permanently do away with the

“aristocratic plan” of Old New York. The three high schools on offer by Old New York at the time of

consolidation were each four months old and housed in unused elementary school buildings – clearly

inappropriate from Maxwell’s point of view.xxvi He secured $7.5 million of funding from the Board of

Education for new buildings in 1899 and an additional $3.5 million in 1900 with which we oversaw the

construction of such architecturally impressive buildings as DeWitt Clinton.xxvii A brief entry in the “County

Items” section of The School Bulletin betrays a gaping admiration for the new structure: “The De Witt

Clinton high school, biggest in the world, was dedicated Dec. 18 [1906]. It has a $10,000 organ.”xxviii

Maxwell spent over $100 million on construction, renovation and repairs between 1898 and 1915, but even

this was massive outlay was inadequate in light of the sheer magnitude of the student population the city was

to absorb in the coming years.

Public schools have always been a site for political wrangling in this country. Controlled at first by

lay individuals, always prominent and respected citizens, and later by school boards in conjunction with

appointed professional administrators, schools have always been subject to the vicissitudes of public opinion.

Part of what struck Alexis de Tocqueville as so peculiar about the American approach to civic life when he

traversed the young country and then wrote Democracy in America was the way religious power was

divorced from political power. He was impressed that order was maintained although political figures were

not vested with religious authority, but acknowledged that given the mutability of political leadership in the
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United States religion would be imperiled by too close an association. Tocqueville observed in 1835 that, “In

the United States politics are the end and aim of education; in Europe its principal object is to fit men for

private life.”xxix In other words, in America the content and form of education both reflect the political climate

and inform it. American citizens have always shared a singular relationship with their local schools, due in

large part to the way they sprang up as intensely local entities totally under the sway of a school board of

prominent local citizens.

Political power-plays were instrumental in the centralization of New York City schools. New York

State taxpayers had effectively underwritten public education since the so-called rate-bills of 1814 were

abolished in 1867, although it was not incorporated into the state constitution until 1895.xxx The movement to

shift control of schools from local, ward boards to a central authority was led by an elite group of successful,

prominent and well-established citizens, famously referred to by Tyack as “administrative progressives.”xxxi

The administrative category first emerges in 1908, described by DC superintendent of schools Williams

Estabrook Chancellor as:

A class of school directors, administrators, and supervisors, whose

function is management rather than instruction. These school
managers see the schools from a point of view different from that
of the instructors. The subject is defined not as the instruction and
control of individual pupils, but as the organization, maintenance,
administration, direction, and supervision of schools.xxxii

Savvy power-brokers that they were, these leading men understood the essentially political nature of a

publically-funded school system. Equally important, however, was their recognition that acknowledgement

of this reality would seriously jeopardize their push for control. And so they framed centralization as a way to

“get the schools out of politics,”xxxiii thereby positioning themselves as benevolent but disinterested outsiders

aiming to contribute to the public good. In actuality, administrative progressives were of the same class as the

common-school founders, those who first controlled the schools before the ethnic arrivistes seized control in

the 1840s. Though intellectually dishonest, it was an ingenious rhetorical maneuver. New York was
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incorporated in 1898 and centralized control of all borough schools was secured through the Revised Charter

of 1901.

Compulsory attendance laws were another front in the effort to Americanize immigrant children.

Although the first Compulsory Education Act was passed by the state legislature as early as 1874, it was an

unfunded mandate and not enforced. The second major event was the passage of the Compulsory Education

Law of 1894 which required full-time attendance of children aged eight to twelve years and eighty days of

attendance annually of children aged twelve to fourteen years. Enforcement remained lax in Brooklyn and

Old New York as there were still far fewer available seats than school-age children. The economic

imperatives of immigrant life continued to compel many young children to abandon school for factory work.

Superintendent Maxwell prioritized attendance in the newly consolidated New York City school

system: “No intelligent man can for a moment doubt the benefits that would accrue to the community and to

the individual were all children from six to fourteen subjected to the beneficent influences of well regulated

schools.” In his First Annual Report of the City Superintendent of Schools to the Board of Education for the

Year Ending July 31, 1899, Maxwell tackles the issue of insufficient space head-on, in recognition of the

inadvisability of enacting unenforceable legislation. He proposes extended schedule schools that

accommodate twice as many students on two different schedules, a plan he implemented in Brooklyn and

“found it as satisfactory as could be expected – more satisfactory than any other plan, except that of

providing ample school accommodations.”xxxiv

Once compulsory attendance laws were buttressed by anti-child labor laws in 1903, however, and

more seats became available through double-session scheduling and the construction of new school

buildings, enforcement was possible and results were soon visible. Philanthropists, education reformers, and

organized labor formed a supportive triumvirate which lobbied for enforcement of the laws on the books.
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They faced significant opposition from a police force reluctant to interfere with parental authority and hostile

courts who avoided imposing the requisite fines on offending parents.xxxv It is unclear just how much

enforcement of these laws contributed to the rising enrollments in the first two decades of the twentieth

century. Even so, the compulsory attendance and anti-child labor laws demonstrate an increasing

commitment to the democratization of education in New York City under Maxwell’s leadership. Perhaps in

time he would realize his vision of the public school system as “a ladder from the gutter to the university.”xxxvi

Maxwell turned to double-session scheduling when his best efforts to accommodate ballooning

school enrollment through school construction and renovation proved insufficient. He chose part-time

schooling for many students over higher quality schooling for a majority of students and no schooling for

some students. More than 100,000 students out of almost 800,000 were on part-time schedules in 1914.xxxvii

Overcrowded and double-scheduled schools changed the day-to-day realities of the teachers charged with

working in them in fundamental, tangible ways. Teachers compelled to work under such inhospitable

conditions reported physical strain and loss of professional self-esteem. xxxviii Teachers ceased to have any

physical space they could call their own. Discipline problems cropped up in unexpected places. Students no

longer attended school voluntarily but because they were compelled to do so. Overworked teachers buckled

under the burden of “motivating” young people who up until now would have passed their days working or

hanging out on the streets. Maxwell seems not to have considered how his principles of universal education

and maximum utilization would affect the lived experience of the teachers on whom the success of his entire

plan depended.

The concurrent influences of dramatic demographic shifts via an influx of immigrants and new

theories of pedagogy informed by recent research in psychology and the social sciences formed the backdrop

upon which so-called “progressive education” was imposed. Proponents of conservative and reform social

Darwinism alike recommended that schools broaden the scope of their work to include non-academic
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instruction as well as functions previously considered the family’s responsibility, like personal and “social

hygiene,” the era’s favored euphemism for Sex Ed, and functions later incorporated into independent

occupations, like social work.xxxix By 1903 the Board of Education had approved a uniform Course of Study,

emphasizing civics, aesthetic education, accent reduction, hygiene and vocational skills.xl

Teachers’ sphere of responsibility expanded enormously in the decades after centralization. But

curriculum may in fact have been one of the least significant changes in teachers’ working lives. In fact, there

is evidence that few of the much-touted curricular reforms actually trickled down to the classroom.

Innovation is something of a luxury, after all, and many teachers prioritized maintaining a semblance of

control over experimenting with newfangled notions of child-centered pedagogy and active learning using

visual aids, hands-on activities, and field trips. Despite the official position in support of progressive

approaches to education, many teachers believed it wiser to align their classroom practice with the

educational philosophy of their principal who was, after all, the direct arbiter of their fate. Other teachers

may have taken their pedagogical cues from the limitations of their situation, that is, from the practical reality

rather than the imagined reality of the Board.xli

Many factors contributed to teachers’ sense of alienation from central authority. At the basic level of

physical comfort, teachers’ daily life was a chaotic jumble, classrooms crowded with students of varied

backgrounds. The city’s population had grown faster than new buildings could be constructed to house them.

Older buildings lacked electric lights and bathroom facilities consisted of backyard outhouses. In their

defense, they were architectural gems in comparison to the buildings that would be constructed in the 1920s.

Designed in the Collegiate Gothic tradition, they conveyed a grandness and elegance that is wholly absent

from modern approaches to school architecture.xlii

And the lived experience of classroom teachers often stood in stark defiance of the ideal.

Centralization was supposed to clarify expectations of teachers by focusing attention on a single authority
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rather than the cacophony supposedly embodied by the disparate voices and interests under the ward system.

The central authority soon showed itself to be at least as schizophrenic as local authority. Contradictory

directives and expectations confounded teachers. Under the ward system teachers at least knew to whom they

were answering; centralized authority was both physically and psychologically removed from the teachers’

lived classroom experience. The dissonance between theory and practice schooled teachers in the art of

“close the door and teach.” Teachers’ classroom practice in the current era of mayoral control, accountability,

and quantitative measurement may be understood as a continuation of this tradition.

It is clear that teachers’ experience was fundamentally altered under the new, bureaucratic model,

though less discernable is the extent to which the shift in nature of public school teaching was an effect of

bureaucratization as opposed to a contributing factor. The line between cause and effect is quite slim in this

case. One credible interpretation emphasizes the impact of the breakdown of religious homogeny, or

dissolution of the “religious disestablishment,” in the language of Richardson and Hatcher.xliii Richardson and

Hatcher suggest that the social and economic status of women underwent structural change as dependence on

clergy decreased and religious observance transitioned from mandatory to voluntary, creating ideological

tension for both groups. The mutually reinforcing relationship of mothers and ministers endowed women

with authority over the domestic domain and thus legitimized their changing role during industrialization. As

the pre-industrial model of household-based domestic industry fell during the expansion of the industrial

economy, women’s productive role was reduced and their consumerist role expanded. The value of men’s

new function as wage-earner outside the home was manifest in their earnings but women’s value was less

distinct.

The partnership between women and the clergy was mutually beneficial as it validated the social

position of both. At the same time, however, this collaboration reinforced the Victorian ideology of men’s and

women’s separate domains and distinct natures rooted in gender identity, as evidenced below:
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She holds her commission from nature. In the well developed female character
there is always a preponderance of affection over intellect. However powerful
and brilliant her reflective faculties will be, they are considered a deformity in
her character unless overbalanced and tempered by womanly affections. The
dispositions of young children of both sexes correspond with this ordination of
Providence.
Horace Mann, 1844xliv

Mann’s characterization of women’s true nature embodies the Victorian ideology of women’s civilizing

influence, as well as the religious conviction barely hidden beneath the veneer of popular rhetoric. In the

mid-nineteenth century women were thought to be especially well-suited for the teaching occupation.

Instructing and guiding young children was seen as a natural extension of the maternal sphere and therefore

ideal training for motherhood. Educated young women were encouraged to spend a few years working as

teachers before settling down to a life as a wife and mother. They were not expected to stay on as teachers as

an alternative to marriage, or worse, remain in the classroom once married. Certainly some women did opt

out of marriage entirely in favor of a career in teaching, but this decision marked them as marginal

characters. Even so, teaching was a realm in which a woman could exist on her own, as an actor in the public

sphere, and enjoy a degree of autonomy and self-direction that was not available to her by any other means.xlv

According to Hoffmann, “Only for teachers was it socially acceptable to travel without a male chaperone, to

live apart from one’s family and with another woman, and to maintain an independent household.”xlvi

For a virtuous woman, teaching was supposed to be a near-religious experience. The prevailing

Victorian ideology held that for women, the reward was in the work itself. This was very convenient for

financially-strapped local governments for it meant that by hiring a woman to run the schoolhouse they could

both foster a sense of morality in their children and save money at the same time. Cities also enjoyed the

cost-saving benefits of female teachers, though by way of a somewhat different model. A male head teacher

or “principal teacher” was typically installed in each multi-room school to enforce discipline when the

occasion arose. Over time, as urban school systems were bureaucratized, the principal teacher was relieved of
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any actual teaching responsibilities and became the principal. He was given a separate office with a big desk

and access to a public address system and became the intermediary between teacher and superintendent. The

male principal was the consummate middleman, the proximal physical representation of the superintendent’s

power whose authority was derived by association.xlvii The organizational hierarchy of schools reflected and

supported men’s dominant position in society. Teaching in the new urban bureaucracies after compulsive

attendance laws were passed no longer represented freedom and autonomy as it had for many women in the

early and mid-nineteenth century.

Educator Catherine Beecher basically justifies the underpayment of women by declaring that the ideal

teacher, “like the ideal mother, worked ‘not for money, not for influence, nor for honor, nor for ease, but with

the simple, single purpose of doing good.’”xlviii This pose of denying women the possibility of economic

motivation, this devaluing of the labor the woman may be offering in exchange for money, is a cop-out, a

way of seeming to favor women’s participation in public life while actually propping up her captivity in the

bonds of marriage. Is Beecher’s advocacy on behalf of women so circumscribed by her particular time and

place, or is hers a sneak attack on the patriarchy, an attempt to use folk wisdom about women’s true nature to

their best advantage? Either way, it had lasting implications; women teachers in New York City finally

secured equal pay in 1911, but even then it was over the opposition of the Association of Men Teachers and

Principals of the City of New York.xlix

Especially perplexing is Beecher’s explicit association between teachers and mothers, as teachers

with children were barred from the classroom until into the twentieth century. In New York City teachers

women the right to maternity leave in 1914, but with the condition that a must be a two year unpaid leave of

absence. The arguments that supposed to validate various arguments against real careers as teachers for

women contradict each other at every turn but a general misogyny undergirds them all. For example, one
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article advocated a maximum age of twenty eight and maximum career duration of six years for female

teachers to avoid the otherwise inevitable accumulation of contempt for mankind, while a different article

slanders teachers with children for conveying the wrong image of true womanhood, a woman who would

choose financial gain over time with her family.l

In the bureaucratized urban schools of the late nineteenth century and thereafter, the role of the

teacher was fundamentally altered by the creation of a new power structure that vested authority in a central

administrative figure, the superintendent. Whereas each individual teacher once made his or her own

decisions, whether concerning the content of the curriculum or the scope and sequence of lessons, the desire

for uniformity and order across many parts of a vast and disparate system meant that more and more

decisions were passed down to teachers from the superintendent through the principal. Even as the

occupation was professionalized in the sense that objective measures were created to distinguish the qualified

from the unqualified and standards for qualification were raised, the loss of autonomy de-professionalized the

role of the teacher from independent agent to technician.

The language of scientific management and the corporation reflect the approach taken by urban

school leaders of the progressive era in their effort to impose order on schools. They seem convinced of the

measurability of education and set out doggedly to identify each of the constituent parts of education and

then determine the proper relationship of each to the others. The vocabulary is adapted to the new frame of

reference as buildings become plants with certain capacities. Teachers or the work force submit to

productivity reviews and evaluations by school officials on personal and moral criteria like appearance,

cooperation, habits, and integrity.li Use of business jargon by the new professional administrators and the

singular emphasis placed on cost-effective spending during the bureaucratization of urban schools would

prove to be the most durable artifacts of the era.

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The names we give to things reflect our views of them. One aspect of Gee’s theory of discourse

analysis is that our understandings of the world and our relationships with others are shaped by the words we

use. Normally a social linguist would focus on language in context; that is, not simply word choice but also

tone, pitch, rate, volume, sentence structure, narrative construction, and most importantly, the social context

of the actors. But at bottom, Gee argues, discourse analysis is about power, and how its presence or absence

is indicated through language.

The most striking continuing in the history of literacy is the way in which
literacy has been used, in age after age, to solidify the social hierarchy,
empower elites, and ensure that people lower on the hierarchy accept the
values, norms, and beliefs of the elites, even when it is not in their self-interest
or group interest to do so.lii
The word choice of administrations in the thrall of scientific management thus

reveals their objectification of teachers. In this system, teachers are no longer

individuals who bring with them a unique set of skills, inclinations, strengths

and weaknesses. Insofar as decisions are handed down from on high, teachers

are rendered interchangeable, mere instruments of the administration.

Teachers presented a variety of responses to the paternalism of administrators. Rousmaniere asserts

that “teachers responded to their working conditions by alternately accommodating to, adapting to, and

resisting certain aspects of their work, surreptitiously claiming some control over their job.”liii One theme of

this paper has been an attempt to identify parallels between the experience of city teachers in 2007 and at the

turn-of-the-century as city school systems underwent bureaucratization. I have observed that the relationship

between teachers and their administrators shows remarkable endurance and consistency over the past century.

The two groups continue to exist on entirely different planes littered with illusions and double-speak. Many

directives are passed down yet few are enforced. Teachers establish codes and notification systems that help

them prevent surprise attacks by intrusive supervisors. The two groups regard each other with suspicion and
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teachers who become administrators are said to have “switched sides.”

The difficulty of communication is intensified in the current situation of mayoral control in which

schools are governed not by professional administrators, as in the early period of bureaucratization, but by

lawyers. In sharp contrast to the few extant texts by turn-of-the-century teachers, a spirit of antagonism

pervades the plentiful recent teacher narratives of personal experience and critiques of school governance.

Personal narratives or critiques by teachers from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries are, by contrast,

very difficult to locate, and writings by women teachers of that era, even more so. In Women’s “True”

Profession, Hoffman republishes the few primary sources by women teachers during the bureaucratization of

urban schools, but there are no letters, diary entries, or personal narratives. Available writings are limited to

essays and journalistic pieces. In her attempt to make sense of this particular absence, Hoffman suggests

including a lack of time and energy, and a sense of the commonness of one’s experience may have prevented

this earlier generation of women teachers from recording their experiences for posterity.liv

These explanations are unconvincing. Fatigue and time constraints certainly plague today’s teachers,

faced with a challenging work environment and bureaucratic interference. They slog through the drudgery of

excessive paperwork; their experiences must be at least as prosaic as earlier generations’ daily realities. Yet

some teachers manage to carve out a space for recording their thoughts and feelings. Their voices appear in

the publications of local, state, regional, national and international education organizations. The blogosphere

boasts an incredibly vibrant community of teacher-bloggers who share perspectives, disseminate information,

and support one another. They are as prolific as they are opinionated.

Grumet, another student of the history of women’s work in education, rejects the explanations offered

by Hoffman. She argues that the space occupied by the work that is teaching is so liminal, so marginal and

yet all-encompassing, that it is us – women.

There is something about the task itself, the way it wedges itself into our lives,
the way we place it somewhere between our work and our labor, our
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friendships and our families, our ambition and our self-abnegation, that has
prohibited our speaking of it.”lv

Grumut advances her argument by framing schooling as our method of transitioning young people from the

domestic world to the public world. This theory also helps explain why women were and still are considered

ideal primary school teachers. They serve as the first bridge from the maternal sphere of the household to the

larger world. Men high school teachers are presumably desirable because they complete the transition to the

masculinity of the public sphere, a male-dominated space with an ethic more competitive than nurturing.

We have seen that the experience of teachers in turn-of-the-century bureaucratized school systems like New

York City resembles in certain significant ways the experience of teachers in 2007. Teachers, especially

women teachers under male management, often experience their supervision as condescending and

antagonistic. I would like to suggest that women teachers’ self-conception is directly linked to the extent to

which they feel valued by society-at-large. Insofar as they are seen as professionals capable of exercising

independent judgment toward autonomous action, they see themselves as such. This fosters identity-

construction, which in turn promotes self-expression. The scarcity of teacher narratives under

bureaucratization would then indicate internalization of object status. The hegemony of centralized control

was perceived as solid, non-porous. Although the current school administration under mayoral control favors

micro-management and the threat of sanctions to enforce their directives, the hegemony has been pierced.

First just a few voices were audible; now a cacophony. Maxwell’s bureaucracy set a negative precedent in

teacher-supervisor relations, a tradition faithfully carried out in the Klein bureaucracy, but women teachers

are no longer silenced.

i Stephan F. Brumberg, Born in Brooklyn: The Origins of the N.Y.C. Public High School, 1890-1914 (1986).

ii Andrew Draper, “The Crucial Test of the Public School System,” New York Education, 1898.

iii Brumberg, Born in Brooklyn.

iv Stambler, “The Effect of Compulsory Educational and Child Labor Laws of High School Attendance in New York City,
1898-1917,” History of Education Quarterly 8, no. 2 (Summer 1968).

v Nancy Hoffman, “"Inquiring after the Schoolmarm": Problems of Historical Research on Female Teachers,” Women's
Studies Quarterly 9, no. 1 (1994).

vi Negar Azimi, “Why Teach for America,” The New York Times, 9/30/2007 .

vii Richard J. Altenbaugh, The Teacher's Voice: A Social History of Teaching in Twentieth-century America (Routledge,
1992), 9.

viiiPatricia Carter, “Becoming the 'New Women'.”: the Equal Rights Campaigns of New York City Schoolteachers, 1900-
1920,” The Teacher’s Voice: A Social History of Teaching in Twentieth-Century America (Routledge, 1992).

ix Richardson and Hatcher, “The Feminization of Public School Teaching,” 81.

x “"Looking for Trouble",” The School Bulletin and New York State Educational Journal xxxiv, no. 397 (1907), 2.

xi Bardeen, ed., The School Bulletin and New York State Educational Journal.

xii C.W. Bardeen, The Cloak Room Thief and Other Stories About Schools (Syracuse, NY: C.W. Bardeen, 1906).

xiii, 5; from John G. Richardson and Brenda W. Hatcher, “The Feminization of Public School Teaching: 1870-1920,” Work
and Occupations 10, no. 1 (1983)82.

xiv Kate Rousmaniere, City Teachers: Teaching and School Reform in Historical Perspective (NY: Teachers College Press,
1997).

xv Myra H. Strober and David Tyack, “Why Do Women Teach and Men Manage? A Report on Research on Schools,”
Signs 5, no. 3 (1980).

xvi Richardson and Hatcher, “The Feminization of Public School Teaching,” 81.

xviiC.W. Bardeen, ed., The School Bulletin and New York State Educational Journal XXXIV, no. 403 (1907).

xviiiStrober and Tyack, “Why Do Women Teach and Men Manage?”

xix Carter.

xx Ibid.

xxi Selma Berrol, “William Henry Maxwell and a New Educational New York,” History of Education Quarterly 68, no. 2
(Summer 1968).

xxiiIbid.

xxiiiBrumberg, Born in Brooklyn..

xxivBerrol.

xxvFrancis Morrone and James Iska, An Architectural Guidebook to Brooklyn (Salt Lake City: Gibbs Smith, 2001).

xxviBrumberg, Born in Brooklyn.

xxvii.

xxviiiC.W. Bardeen, ed, “County Items,” The School Bulletin and New York State Educational Journal XXXIV, no. 403
(Feb 1907).

xxixAlexis Tocqueville, Democracy in America, (New York: A.A. Knopf, 1945).

xxxGeorge D. Strayer, “Centralizing Tendencies in the Administration of Public Education: A Study of Legislation for
Schools in North Carolina, Maryland, and New York since 1900,” (NY: Teachers College Press, 1934), 68-107.

xxxiDavid Tyack, The One Best System: A History of American Urban Education (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1974), 127.

xxxiiRichard Altenbaugh, “Teachers and the Workplace,” Urban Education. (1987),158.

xxxiiiTyack, 133.

xxxivFirst Annual Report of the City Superintendent of Schools to the Board of Education for the Year Ending July 31,
1899, Board of Education, City of New York (NY: 1899), 136.

xxxvMoses Stambler, “The Effect of Compulsory Educational and Child Labor Laws of High School Attendance in New
York City, 1898-1917,” History of Education Quarterly 68, no. 2 (Summer 1968).

xxxviSamuel Abelow, Dr. William H. Maxwell: The First Superintendent of Schools of the City of New York, (Brooklyn NY:
Scheba Publishing Company, 1934), 105.

xxxviiDiane Ravitch, The Great School Wars: A History of the New York City Public Schools (JHU Press, 2000).

xxxviiiRousmaniere, City Teachers.

xxxixIbid., 59-64.

xl Stephan Brumberg, Going to America, Going to School: the Jewish Immigrant Public School Encounter in Turn-of-the-
Century New York City (NY: Praeger, 1986).

xli Rousmaniere, City Teachers.

xliiIbid., 76.

xliiiRichardson and Hatcher.

xlivHorace Mann, Félix Pécaut, and Mary Tyler Peabody Mann, Life and Works of Horace Mann (C. T. Dillingham, 1867).

xlv

xlviHoffman, “"Inquiring after the Schoolmarm."”

xlvii

xlviiiKate Rousmaniere, “Losing Patience and Staying Professional: Women Teachers and the Problem of Classroom
Discipline in New York City Schools in the 1920s,” History of Education Quarterly 34, no. 1 (1994).

xlix.

l Ibid.

li .

lii

liii Rousmaniere, City Teachers.

liv

lv Madeleine R. Grumet, Bitter Milk: Women and Teaching (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1988), xii.