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... one's judgment and other people's will which tends to make us a helpless mob, mere sheep, instead of wise free, strong individuals. " Gilman's most explicit discussions of education and its impact on women were presented in The Man-Made World, Herland, and Concerning Children. In The Man-Made World, Gilman analyzed the anglocentric nature of society and strove to "point out what are masculine traits as distinct from human ones, and what has been the effect on our human life of the unbridled dominance of one sex. " While the book explored gender discrepancy within such areas as literature, law, history, sports, and religion, a great deal of attention was paid to the realm of education. Believing that the "origin of education is maternal, " Gilman criticized the degree of competition in the schools which perpetuated the patriarchal culture, one based on the "male characteristics" of desire and combat. "Desire, the base of the reward system, the incentive of self-interest" led to an unwillingness to learn when pleasure was not guaranteed, while "Combat, the competitive system" emphasized winning rather than the pleasure of learning or the exercising of the mind. 15 The real problem, for Gilman, was that self-interest and competition did not develop the "human qualities" within men and women that enable society to "learn from wide and long experience to anticipate and provide for the steps of the unfolding mind, and train it through carefully prearranged experiences, to a power of judgment, of self-control, or social perception. " In recognizing that the educational philosophy at the turn of the century was both determined by the anglocentric nature of society and affected by the cult of domesticity, Gilman argued that female instruction was masculine in its content and philosophy as well as in its methods and pedagogy.
Building upon the earlier efforts of Francis Wright and Catharine Beecher towards establishing alternative philosophies of instruction, Gilman maintained that the predominant educational philosophy was still too narrow since masculine traits were defined as human traits and female traits were defined as other. 17 Thus, women's emergence into primary, secondary, and higher education was but further immersion into institutions marked by the male characteristics of competition, self- interest, and self-expression. In both The Man-Made World and His Religion and Hers, she argued that this imbalance in the nature of women's education resonated in the types of knowledge extended to women: the knowledge considered of most worth to women was the knowledge determined, accumulated, and organized by men; it was masculine knowledge presented within a masculine culture in a masculine way. In Herland, her all female utopian novel, Gilman suggested how society and education might be different if motherhood rather than manliness became the cultural ideal. In a land where neither the private home nor the nuclear family existed, the characteristics of love, service, ingenuity, and efficiency became the dominant social norms and motherhood became a social rather than a biological category. "Here we have Human Motherhood -- in full working use, " explained a Herland to a male intruder in her country. "The children in this country are the one center and focus of all our thoughts.
Every step of our advance is always considered in its effect on them -- on the race. You see, we are Mothers. " Therefore, education became the "highest art, allowed only to our highest artists" and child rearing emerged as "a culture so profoundly studied, practiced with such subtlety and skill, that the more we love our children the less we are willing to trust that process to unskilled hands -- even our own. " 20 As Jane Roland Martin so aptly noted, in Herland "the interests of women, children, and the state become one, so that an education for citizenship is an education for motherhood, just as an education for motherhood is an education for citizenship. " In comparing education for citizenship with education for motherhood, Gilman stressed social responsibility as central to education. Moreover, she illuminated the imbalanced nature of the anglocentric society and its disregard for the qualities of womanhood evident in citizenship. Accordingly, the existing male-dominated culture needed to be feminized; it needed to reevaluate social values and attitudes towards women and women's role within the economy and society at large.
Education, for Gilman, was the most effective way to transform society, so the most effective way to feminize society was to feminize education. To feminize education would be to make it motherly. The mother does not rear her children by a system of prizes to be longed for and pursued; nor does she set them to compete with one another, giving to the conquering child what he needs, and to the vanquished, blame and deprivation... Motherhood does all it knows to give each child what is most needed, to affectionately and efficiently develop the whole of them.
The emphasis on social responsibility, specialized knowledge, and common characteristics in education created a system in which women could develop to their full potentials. In teaching women to dedicate their lives to the common good rather than the familial good, education liberated women from the "chamber and scullery work" of the home and helped them to recognize their connection, commitment, and contribution to the larger world. The emphasis on social responsibility enabled women to participate in "human work" and to become active members of the economy. In devising an educational system that de-emphasized masculine and feminine character traits, Gilman enabled women to enter and to act as full and equal members of society. Trained in similar manners, exposed to the same types of knowledge, encouraged towards parallel goals, women, in Gilman's educational philosophy, would be empowered to assume a myriad of new roles and to enter into various types of relationships with men. Through a gender-balanced education, women and men would develop into socially active, intellectually stimulating, financially self-reliant, civically responsible, personally courageous human beings.
Based on her knowledge of the kindergarten movement, the experimental education she observed at Hull House, and her belief that child care must be available if women are to enter the work force, Gilman adapted the educational ideas of Froebel to meet the needs of the very young. "Civilized society, " Gilman wrote in Concerning Children, "is responsible for civilized childhood, and should meet its responsibilities" by attending to the needs of all its young. 23 As depicted in Herland, infant education became a social responsibility, not the responsibility of the biological parents. In arguing for the extension of responsibility to all children through a collectivist approach to early childhood education, Gilman noted the frustration of many women with the inability to properly care for their children. It was absurd to assume that each mother, educated for neither marriage, social service, nor motherhood, was a natural-born teacher of children. "You cannot expect every mother to be a good school educator or a good college educator. Why, " she asked, "should you expect every mother to be a good nursery educator?" Infant education, in Gilman's view, "should be, as far as possible, unconscious. " Such an education would commence in babyhood and involve a "beautiful and delicately adjusted environment... in which line and color and sound and touch are all made avenues of easy unconscious learning [so that] there is no sharp break between 'home' and 'school. '" Baby gardens and the method of unconscious education would provide major intellectual and social benefits, for they supplied "the world with young citizens of unimpaired mental vigor, original powers and tastes, and strong special interest" who learned from infancy "to say 'we' instead of 'I. '" Finally, Gilman firmly believed that infant education should be as scientific and specialized as all other levels of education and that the instructors should be as well trained and professional as all other teachers.
Perceiving the roots of education as maternal, Gilman thought women were best fitted for child care. Herein lay a fundamental paradox between her recognition of the symbiotic relations between women and children -- that any changes in the status of women affected children -- and her struggle to open the parameters of professional opportunities to women. By arguing that feminizing education would make it "motherly" and that the nature of education was "maternal, " Gilman offered a theory that failed to break with the Victorian emphasis on the unique qualities of womanhood. Ironically, her call for infant education was, in many ways, a call for the professionalization of motherhood that channeled women into areas, albeit professionalized, traditionally within women 's sphere of influence. Further, in addressing her comments and concerns mostly to problems of the middling and upper classes, Gilman excluded large numbers of women and men of various economic, ethnic, and racial backgrounds from her social vision, never suggesting their role in this new, gender-balanced society. Throughout her long and distinguished career as a feminist writer and lecturer, Gilman was never comfortable with labels. "I was not a reformer but a philosopher, " she wrote in her autobiography. "I worked for various reforms, as Socrates went to war when Athens needed his services, but we do not remember him as a soldier.
My business was to find out what ailed society, and how most easily and naturally to improve it. " 27 The way she found "most easily and naturally" to improve society was through education. "I am a teacher, " she declared in a statement rarely noted by scholars. 28 Gilman used her lectures and publications deliberately to teach present and future generations about the possibilities that lay open to them. Her educational efforts were twofold: she wrote about education, and she wrote to educate. All of her works focused on women; some of them commented on schooling, but almost all included her critique of the informal education women received within the home and the community. Though written a century ago, Gilman's critique of womanhood and education remains potent as society continues to struggle with issues of gender and women continue to struggle for equality, independence, and autonomy.
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Research essay sample on Women And Men Social Responsibility
