Details

Abstract / Summary

TITLE: The Woman as Teacher: Lecture presented on 16 November 1888, at the Second Lecture Evening of the Kronstadt/Brașov/Brassó Women’s Association for the Support of the Evangelical Girls’ School. DESCRIPTION: The lecture was delivered as part of a lecture series on diverse careers suitable for women at the second lecture evening of the Women’s Association for the Support of the Hermannstadt [Nagyszeben, Sibiu] Evangelical Girls’ School (Frauen-Verein zur Untersützung der evangelischen Mädchenschule in Hermannstadt). Adele Zay (1848-1928) was a leading representative of the General Women’s Association of the Transylvanian Evangelical Church (Augustan Confession) (Allgemeiner Frauenverein der evangelischen Landeskirche A.B. in Siebenbürgen), founded in 1884 and a key representative of Transylvanian Saxon women’s activism. See also, Adele Zay, Die Kindergärtnerinnen-Bildungsanstalt der ev. Kirche A. B. in Siebenbürgen [The Kindergarten-Teacher-Training Institute of the Transylvanian Evangelical Church] (Hermannstadt: “Honterus” Buchdruckerei und Verlagsanstalt, 1924), and Adele Zay, Die sächsische Frauenbewegung [The Saxon Women’s Movement] (Kronstadt: Druck von Johann Gött’s Sohn, 1928). The lecture is a plea for women’s right of employment in the girl’s schools maintained by the Transylvanian Evangelical Church. In the first half of the lecture, Zay gives a brief overview of those more remote periods of human history when women’s education was unjustly neglected, despite the crucial importance that women would exert on the moral character of their peoples. Thereafter, she turns to the upsurge of women’s education and of women’s training and employment as teachers in the previous century. She firmly centres her discussion upon Protestant German lands outside the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The Austrian part of the Monarchy is curiously missing from her review of the standing of female teachers in various European and overseas countries, while Hungary is only present in the form of a few basic references. ¶ The second half of the lecture describes a recent movement for the employment of female teachers in Lutheran Saxon girls’ schools and makes a case for this issue. In Transylvania, primary schools providing teaching in German were maintained by the Evangelical Church, and the overwhelming majority of Transylvanian Saxon pupils attended such schools. The proposal belonged to the Kronstadt pastor Franz Obert. It was subsequently joined by Saxon women’s associations from five cities, but in 1887 it was rejected by higher church bodies because they decided that it would have entailed the establishment of a Saxon female teachers’ college. Contesting this decision, Zay offers a wide range of arguments. Referring back to the inroads that female teachers made in all developed countries, she contends that Transylvanian Saxon women are in no way inferior intellectually—“their brains weigh no less”—than their foreign peers. Further, she points out that many Saxon women of modest means need to eke out a living out of needlework, intimating that they could also teach handicraft to children. Many of them work as private tutors in the “neighbouring lands,” especially in Romania (eighty individuals from just four Saxon cities), and some have completed teachers’ college in Hungarian and teach in state-run, Hungarian schools. Finally, she claims that women are better equipped to understand young girls and to have a beneficial influence on them than the mostly young male teachers of Saxon girls’ schools, since far from being a paler copy of a man’s mind, the female mind is of a different character. KEYWORDS: Women Silencing Empire; Social Reform and Political Activism; Political Parties and Other Male Dominated Organizations; Women and Education; Women as Teachers; Habsburg Empire; Hungary; Reps/Rupea/Kőhalom

Field of Interest

Women and Social Movements

Author

Adele Zay, 1848-1928

Collection

Women and Social Movements, Modern Empires Since 1820

Content Type

Book

Duration

0 sec

Format

Text

Page Count

33

Publication Year

1889

Publisher

Albrecht & Zillich (Publisher)

Place Published / Released

Brașov, Brașov County

Subject

Women and Social Movements, History, Women and Religion, Women and Work, Women and Education, Mujer y Religión, Mulher e Religião, Mujer y Trabajo, Mulher e Trabalho, Mujer y Educación, Mulher e Educação, Hungría, Rupea, Brașov County, Hungary, Women and Religion, Indigenous Women, Women and Education, Social Reform and Political Activism, Women, Colonization, Empire, and Post Coloniality, Religious Leadership and Religious Activism, Social Movements and Indigenous Women, Empire and Education, Women as Teachers, Political Parties and Other Male Dominated Organizations, Opposition to Imperialism, Hungarians

Topic

Religious Leadership and Religious Activism, Social Movements and Indigenous Women, Empire and Education, Women as Teachers, Political Parties and Other Male Dominated Organizations, Opposition to Imperialism

Keywords and Translated Subjects

Mujer y Religión, Mulher e Religião, Mujer y Trabajo, Mulher e Trabalho, Mujer y Educación, Mulher e Educação, Hungría