Women and Rural School Reform: California, 1900-1940

Rural school reform in California in the period 1900–1940 was motivated by many of the same concerns that underlay the national movement to reform rural education. As was true throughout the country, reforms in this period in California led to the expansion of state regulations and control over the work of teachers. But while these reforms emphasized the need for greater scientific and bureaucratic control, they were also framed in terms of gender, since the majority of rural teachers were women working in relatively autonomous one- and two-room schools. Some educational reformers, influenced by ideas of scientific management and control, argued for the need for supervision of rural women teachers because of women's presumed weaknesses; they argued for expert, usually male, control and supervision. However, this view was not uncontested; other reformers, much more frequently women who had experience working in rural schools, celebrated the capabilities and potential of rural women teachers. This more positive view was particularly strong among California educators, who were influenced by both progressive politics and conceptions of Deweyan progressive education. Increased state control over rural teaching did in fact occur in California, but the creation of institutional structures did not inevitably mean the imposition of male control or of a single view of teachers or rural schools.