In 1792, English writer Mary Wollstonecraft wrote the philosophical treatise A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. In it, she asserted the importance of girls and women being given similar opportunities to their male counterparts, to allow themselves to be more productive and intellectually valued members of society, and therefore make society better as a whole. Wollstonecraft wrote an entire chapter on education, in which she argued that the development of co-educational day schools was tantamount to this end. She believed that children who were educated at home would become spoilt, and potential tyrants towards their tutors, while boarding schools were a hotbed of bullying and indolence, punctuated by holidays at home where the children were over-indulged as returning angels.
Her idea was that day schools, where children went to school during the day and returned home in the evening, would produce a more balanced child who would have consistent affection from their parents, with a healthy sense of belonging to and detachment from the school environment. Similarly important was the idea that girls and boys should go to school together, so that each gender brought its own charms and strengths to the other.
Today, co-educational day schools – such as Acorn House – are the norm. I our UdA lesson in Year 8, we discussed the merits of Wollstonecraft’s case, and then we set about considering what we could do to take her ideas further in to the future. As part of our UdA project on the future of education, the students were asked to come up with a definitive list of requirements for a school of the future, to be new Mary Wollstonecrafts.
Their collective efforts yielded the following suggested criteria:
[google-drive-embed url=”https://docs.google.com/document/d/1RIHuama0QUNxfe5_6xEQgSm3EVrcG_9Gbq3YnmjUhOg/preview?usp=drivesdk” title=”Year 8 UdA Education” icon=”https://drive-thirdparty.googleusercontent.com/16/type/application/vnd.google-apps.document” width=”100%” height=”400″ style=”embed”]
Happily, it would seem that Acorn House is already well on its way to being a school of the future today, and the thoughtful curriculum content shows a mature and balanced approach from our young co-ed day-schoolers. Wollstonecraft would no doubt be impressed by their vision and thoughtfulness,