Those Good Gertrudes

Book excerpt: This book explores the professional, civic, and personal roles of women teachers throughout American history. Its themes and findings build from the mostly unpublished writings of many women. Clifford studied personal history manuscripts in archives and consulted printed autobiographies, diaries, correspondence, oral histories, interviews to probe the multifaceted imagery that has surrounded teaching. This work surveys a long past where schoolteaching was essentially men's work, with women relegated to restricted niches such as teaching rudiments of the vernacular language to young children and socializing girls for traditional gender roles.