Woman's "true" Profession

Book excerpt: Synopsis: "Women have always been teachers." So begins this second edition of Nancy Hoffman's classic history of women and the teaching profession in the United States. With this revised collection of her own essays and the writings of early women teachers, Hoffman offers a rich and fascinating portrait of educational life in America. The documents that enrich this volume include autobiographical writings of teachers who practiced between 1830 and 1920. Hoffman's essays probe the socioeconomic factors that led women into teaching, analyze the roles that women teachers played in effecting social change, and assess the impact of urbanization and bureaucracy on teaching. This second edition greatly expands on and revises the central focus of the original book, drawing on several decades of feminist research and analysis that was not available when the first edition was published. In addition, it includes a thoroughly reconsidered account of the relationship between race and education, together with archival materials written by Black women teachers that were not known at the time of the first edition. A book that explores the full range of contributions, challenges, successes, and frustrations that marked these early teacher's careers, Woman's "True" Profession is an indispensable contribution to our understanding of the teaching profession.