Some of you will remember the little poem quoted above. Schlereth's chapter looks at the relationship between religion and education and the effects that religious ideas prevalent in the period acted as a stimulus for self improvement. This is all part of the movement to reform and clean up The gilded Age, which began in the 1890s. We'll follow this through formal institutions like schools and colleges and into informal institutions like the Chautauqua Circuit and various schemes of self-education.
Internet Assignment:
Visit http://sdrc.lib.uiowa.edu/traveling-culture/essay.htm which is an essay on the Chautauqua Movement. After you've read about the movement and its history, go to the home page of this collection from the University of Iowa. Browse through the materials there, choosing ONE of the pre 1910 lecturers or performers which stikes your fancy. Record your character's reactions to the event. Give yourself some time for this, so you can select carefully, as a goodly portion of the materials are outside of our period. Note there are sound files as well as pamphlets and the like.
Three seminal social philosophers of the late 19th century and early 20th centuries. Click on their portraits for further information about them and their work. Do you see any elements of their arguments in the political arguments of today?
The pictures above are in order from earliest to latest, and should give you a sense of how sociological ideas changed in the Gilded age and early Twentieth Century
Read, in Schlereth,
Chapter 8, Living and Dying. pp. 271 - 293
This concludes our work in Schlereth. It is appropriate that this chapter reviews the life cycle as experienced by Americans at the turn of the century. Note that some of the "stages" of life are as much cultural and psychological as they are biological. Adolescence, for example is an invention of the late nineteenth century. Be aware, too, that changes in medicine, nutrition, and public health are changing American's sense of what the expectations and limitations of any given age were.
Internet Assignment:
While it would be useful to pursue additional insights into all the stages of life represented in the concluding chapter of Schlereth, it would hardly be practical. Following up on Monday's assignment, I'd like you to download and look at these as representative samples, recognizing that the experiences represented are quite distant from the direct experiences of many Americans of our era. Obviously I've chosen this stage for today partly because of the stage of life which preoccupies you now. The number of Americans who experience this stage in the Gilded Age directly was minuscule. However, then, as now, Americans experienced many things vicariously.
NOTE: There is an error in the bookmark for this essay. It actually begins on page 429, not page 424.
His College Life , (William De Witt Hyde, Scribner's magazine, 1895)
These two together will give you some idea about the differences between college life and college expectations for men and women. In both instances the emphasis is a bit more on the “lighter side” of college life, and you may want to compare the experiences of these students of about one hundred years ago with experiences of your own.
The Picture below (left) takes you to another edition of The Century Magazine. In the table of contents, you'll find an "Open Letter" entled Shall Women go to College.It begins on p. 323, if the bookmark doesn't take you right to ie.
The Life Stages of Man and Woman. You will note some conventional iconography here. For example, consider the weeping willow tree at the right in each print
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Note, too, the woman's costume changes at the top of the arch, and from that point she wears wears various shades of black. What happened, do you think?
