Free Emma Willard Essay Sample

Emma Willard was born in 1787 on February 23rd. She was the 16th out of 17 children and in 1802 (when she was 15) she was enrolled in the village school by her father. She soon surpassed everyone’s expectations and began teaching at the school 2 years after she enrolled. In 1806, she became the headmaster for a term but was offered a job as the principal of a girls’ academy in Middlebury, Vermont. While in Vermont, she married a physician 28 years older than her, named John Willard. While living in the Willards’ home, her husband’s nephew, who was a student at Middlebury College, gave Emma her first look of the difference in the educational opportunities open to men versus opportunities for women. She studied her nephew’s textbooks and learned and mastered subjects as philosophy and geometry. 

In 1809, when Emma Willard was only 22 years old, she was fed up with the American Education system in regards to female education. Girls were not allowed to go to school with boys, so they had to go to a girls school. These schools were in the plenty, but usually what the offered was a little sewing, a little French and perhaps a little music. The schools were mostly in business just to make money. The chances were that the teachers didn’t know more than what they were teaching the girls. The whole thing was insubstantial compared to the vast number of subjects the boys were taught. 

Emma Willard had a different idea of what a school for young women should be. She wanted her students to study geography, philosophy, mathematics, science, history, and the ancient and modern languages. In short, she wanted them to learn what men learned in college in a time that no college anywhere in the world was open to women.

Her ambition was limitless. She made a plan to present before the New York legislature, asking the state to pay for several high-grade female seminaries. She carefully denied that she wanted to make colleges for women. But, she believed that women were just as likely to be geniuses as men were, and that women could learn any subject men could learn. She knew this was true from her own experience, and she wanted to prove it to the world. The legislator failed to provide any funds for a school, but she did not give up and didn’t waste anytime. She took donations and funds from the city fathers of Troy and opened up the Troy Female Seminary. 

Emma trained the teachers and planned the curriculum. She told her friends that, at last, there was a school for their daughters; taught herself more philosophy, science, and higher mathematics, since she wanted to rely as little as possible on male teachers; and, before long, young women from all over New York and New England were coming to the school. 10 years later, students were coming from the South and West, and occasionally from Europe. The school did extremely well and is still in business today.

Emma Willard remained head of the Troy Female Seminary until 1838, by which time hundreds of graduates—many of them teachers—had been shaped by her philosophy. Willard’s later years were filled with writing, traveling, and lecturing. In 1854 she represented the United States at the World’s Educational Convention in London. Willard published several textbooks, including History of the United States, or Republic of America and A System of Universal History in Perspective. She also published a volume of verse titled The Fulfilment of a Promise. Of her poems, only “Rocked in the Cradle of the Deep” is remembered. Among her later books were A Treatise on the Motive Powers Which Produce the Circulation of the Blood, Willard’s Historic Guide: Guide to the Temple of Time; and Universal History for Schools, Last Leaves of American History, Astronomical Geography, and Morals for the Young. She died on April 15, 1870. In her memory the Troy Female Seminary was renamed the Emma Willard School in 1895.