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Paulo Freire was a Brazilian educator and philosopher, known for his revolutionary approach to education. His most important work, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970), advocated for a student-centered, conversational approach to learning. Freire stressed education as a tool for social change. He developed the concept of "conscientization," which refers to the process of developing a critical awareness of one's social reality through education. His ideas influenced the global literacy movement and laid the foundation for critical pedagogy, a movement that continues to influence educators focused on justice, equality, and inclusivity.

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Paulo Freire’s Philosophy of Education: Key Concepts

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According to the Maria 150 Montessori website " From an early age she broke through the traditional barriers for women, attending a technical school with initial ambitions to be an engineer, to go on to choose a degree in medicine.

In 1896 Montessori became one of the first Italian women ever to obtain a medical degree. In her early career as a doctor, she was asked to represent Italy at the International Congress for women's rights in Berlin, where she called for equal pay for women. As a doctor her interests led her to join a research program at the Psychiatric Clinic at the University of Rome, where she came to work with differently abled children. Through her in depth research, observation and analysis, Montessori developed a pedagogical approach which resulted in incredible outcomes for these children. At just 28 she addressed medical and pedagogical congresses, advocating for greater support for children with such difficulties and putting forward the controversial notion of education for social reform.

While her work in this area received a great deal of acclaim, Maria Montessori discovered her techniques were applicable for use with all children, with extremely successful outcomes. She established the first of her " Casa dei Bambini"( children's house) in Rome in 1907 and delivered her first training course in 1909. The success of the Montessori method spread throughout the world and Montessori traveled and lectured extensively on her unique, child centered approach, establishing schools and a loyal following of educators and researchers. In her career she came up against opposition from fascists, witnessed some of her work being destroyed during the war, and had to reside in India for 7 years until she was able to return to a war free Europe.

As an advocate of education for peace, Maria Montessori spoke in Geneva on the topic of peace in 1932 at the Bureau de I "Education (forerunner of UNESCO). She believed strongly in the power of education to bring aboul social reform and was nominated three times for a Nobel Peace Prize. Her son, Mario Montessori, worked with her across the world and continued her work following her death in 1952. Today Montessori education is present in more than 25,000 schools across the world and in more than 140 countries.

Montessori left the world a legacy of a truly universal approach to the education of not just the child, but the whole human being, with a global impact which continues to be felt today."

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Maria Montessori, The Pioneer | Montessori 150

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Maria Montessori was born on the 31st August 1870, in Chiaravalle, Italy. From an early age she broke through the traditional barriers for women, attending a technical school with initial ambitions to be an engineer, to go on to choose a career in medicine. In 1896 Montessori became one of the first Italian women ever to obtain a medical degree. In her early career as a doctor, she was asked to represent Italy at the International Congress for women’s rights in Berlin, where she called for equal pay for women.

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W.E.B. Du Bois was a major early black Civil Rights activist in the United States. According to Rudwick (2025), W.E.B. Du Bois came out in opposition to fellow early civil rights activist Booker T. Washington, who favored a form of appeasement to White America in arguing that Black Americans can essentially "earn" their way to equality if they temporarily accept racism and become economically useful within society. Du Bois argued that the only way to fight against racism was for Black America to, in Rudwick's (2025) words, "[engage in] agitation and protest". To do this, Du Bois suggested that a so-called "talented tenth", would ultimately be necessary to help uplift black America (Du Bois, 1903). In this view, he suggested that education for African Americans should focus firstly on building up a select number of Black Americans (the tenth), who would then uplift the "masses" with them as they grow. Only then, Du Bois argued, could Black America attain emancipation. In his view, because slavery was in the past, it would no longer act as a bulwark to the growth of the Black community. In his own words, he says:

"He is, as he ought to be, the group leader, the man who sets the ideals of the community where he lives, directs its thoughts and heads its social movements. It need hardly be argued that the Negro people need social leadership more than most groups; that they have no traditions to fall back upon, no long established customs, no strong family ties, no well defined social classes. All these things must be slowly and painfully evolved." (Du Bois, 1903).

To summarize, Du Bois actions within educational theory was largely based around the concept of black emancipation: that is, for Black America to achieve any level of economic independence and social equality, they have to earn these things on their own, with community leadership, without expectations of the white community assisting.

Sources:

Rudwick, E. (2025). W.E.B. Du Bois. Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/biography/W-E-B-Du-Bois

Du Bois, W. (1903). “The Talented Tenth,” in The Negro Problem: A Series of Articles by Representative American Negroes of Today. Edited by Booker T. Washington, 33-75. United States: J. Pott, 1903. https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Negro_Problem/A8RtAAAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0.

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W.E.B. Du Bois: Activist Leader in Niagara Movement & Co-Founder of the NAACP | Biography

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Catharine Beecher was born in a time when even wealthy women received minimal formal education. Beecher took up the cause of educational reform and the promotion of women as teachers. Catharine managed to get a n education primarily through independent study and became a school teacher in 1821. In 1823, she co-founded the innovative Hartford Female Seminary, whose purpose was to train women to be mothers and teachers. Claiming that the work of a teacher was more important to society that that of a lawyer or doctor. Beecher felt that women's talents were wasted, particularly women of the upper middle classes, if they did not marry or have any children.

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Catharine Beecher was born into a prominent family at a time when even wealthy women received minimal formal education. From a family of crusaders (her sister was abolitionist author Harriet Beecher Stowe), Beecher took up the cause of educational reform and the promotion of women as teachers. As the country expanded and the common school began to vie with the church for position in American society, educational reformers like Beecher recognized the school's responsibility to stress the moral and physical, as well as intellectual, development of children. The country's rapid growth also led to a greater need for teachers. While men were leaving teaching and pursuing work in the developing fields of business and industry, Beecher recognized the untapped potential in the growing population of educated women and advocated for the wider education of females to fill this increasing need for teachers. Henry Adams Catharine Beecher (1800-1878)
Catharine Beecher

Catharine Beecher managed to get an education primarily through independent study, and she became a schoolteacher in 1821. In 1823, she co-founded the innovative Hartford Female Seminary, whose purpose was to train women to be mothers and teachers. In 1829, she published a seminal essay on the importance of women as teachers, "Suggestions Respecting Improvements in Education." In this essay, she promoted women as natural teachers, but also advocated for an expansion and development of teacher training programs, claiming that the work of a teacher was more important to society than that of a lawyer or doctor.

In 1841, she published her most well-known work, A Treatise on Domestic Economy, which aimed to codify domestic duties and emphasized the importance of women's labor. Beecher extolled the feminine virtues and believed that femininity was innately suited to the responsibilities of both mothers and teachers. Beecher did not believe that women necessarily had to marry and have children, as she herself never did. A single woman could become a teacher, thus allowing her to share her feminine virtues with society and preparing her for the role of mother she might eventually assume.

A mass of contradictions, Beecher championed the intellectual capabilities of women, but remained an anti-suffragist throughout her life, believing that women could best influence society by their work in the home and the schoolhouse. In her "Address to the Christian Women of America" in 1871, she also expressed her concern that suffrage would cause "the humble labors of the family and school to be still more undervalued and shunned."

As she grew older, she continued to work tirelessly on behalf of the teaching profession. In the 1830's, she moved to the Midwest with her father and began her campaign for more schools and teachers on the midwestern frontier. In 1852, she founded the American Woman's Educational Association with the goal of recruiting and training teachers for frontier schools. She continued to advocate for teachers until her death in 1878. Although she was influential in providing women with the education necessary to become teachers, her efforts to transform teaching into women's work ultimately led to a further decline in the social esteem accorded the teaching profession.

In Her Own Words

"Woman's great mission is to train immature, weak and ignorant creatures to obey the laws of God; the physical, the intellectual, the social and the moral." -- An Address to the Christian Women of America

"It is to mothers and to teachers that the world is to look for the character which is to be enstamped on each succeeding generation, for it is to them that the great business of education is almost exclusively committed. And will it not appear by examination that neither mothers nor teachers have ever been properly educated for their profession?" -- Suggestions Respecting Improvements in Education

"[Women] have acquired wisdom from the observation and experience of others on almost all other subjects, but the philosophy of the direction and control of the human mind has not been an object of thought to study. And thus it appears that, though it is woman's express business to rear the body and form the mind, there is scarcely anything to which her attention has been less directed." -- Suggestions Respecting Improvements in Education

"That there is a best way of teaching as well as of doing everything else cannot be disputed, and this can be no more learned by intuition than can any of the mechanical arts." -- Suggestions Respecting Improvements in Education

"If all females were not only well educated themselves but were prepared to communicate in an easy manner their stores of knowledge to others; if they not only knew how to regulate their own minds, tempers, and habits but how to effect improvements in those around them, the face of society would be speedily changed." -- Suggestions Respecting Improvements in Education

Scholars on Catharine Beecher

Nancy Hoffman
Professor of Education, Brown University

Catharine Beecher was a woman who in many ways was an extraordinary entrepreneur. She had a school when she was very young, she developed this passion about sending women to civilize young children in what was then the west. She also took upon herself to write a book- several books, instructing women on the domestic virtues. So, the contradictions there are that while she was on the one hand creating the philosophy that linked school with home and was very committed to helping women develop housewifery as a profession, she was living the life of a professional woman herself, doing none of the things, in the sense, she was arguing housewives ought to do.

Beecher was telling women they should be teachers, but she certainly saw teaching as an extension of the domestic role. She was not telling them that they should be physicians, lawyers, bankers, that they should be industrialists. She, in many ways, was the person who most fully spelled out the connection between learning the domestic virtues and carrying them out in the school room as well as in the home in rather similar ways.

Beecher was very much aware that women's talents were wasted, particularly women of the upper middle classes and middle classes, if they didn't marry and did not have children. And in some ways, Catharine Beecher's most poignant sentences to me, which are repeated in other works of the period, talk about middle class women essentially as ornaments in their father's parlors, waiting. There was nothing that an unmarried woman could do except be a resident in her home and her intellectual talents would not be stimulated or used.

Kathleen Weiler
Professor of Education, Tufts University

Catharine Beecher says you've got all these young women who are essentially bored and wasting their life in frivolous gossip and fashion and so they should become school teachers and do something that is morally good and prepares them for motherhood.

Further Reading

Beecher, Catharine.

Evils Suffered by American Women and Children: The Causes and the Remedy, 1846
Treatise on Domestic Economy, 1843
True Remedy for the Wrongs of Women, 1851
Hoffman, Nancy. Woman's True Profession: Voices from the History of Teaching, 1981
Sklar, Katherine Kish. Catharine Beecher: A Study in Domesticity, 1973
John Dewey
Elaine Goodale Eastman
Charlotte Forten
Margeret Haley
Horace Mann
Julia Richman
Laura Towne

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PBS Online: Only A Teacher: Schoolhouse Pioneers

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Catharine Beecher was born into a prominent family at a time when even wealthy women received minimal formal education. From a family of crusaders (her sister was abolitionist author Harriet Beecher Stowe), Beecher took up the cause of educational reform and the promotion of women as teachers.

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Dr. Gloria Ladson-Billings is an accomplished pedagogical theorist and teacher. She has worked hard to emphasize the importance of social emotional education of students, especially for underprivileged students. She spoke about the importance of social emotional teaching in the video posted. I really appreciated what she said about what is classified as learning? She said a student who is constantly late and unprepared for the day now coming in on time with assignments completed has learned to do that and it should be acknowledged and celebrated just the same as learning the material taught in a lesson. I also liked when she asked the audience what is something they would change, and one person responded with being open to learning from the students. I feel it is important for teachers to remember that the students have a lot to teach as well. We can learn about teaching and life from students if we take the time to truly listen.

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Dr. Gloria Ladson Billings "Time for a Hard Re-Set'" Breakout Session

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Frederick Douglas was mainly known for being an escaped slave who became a loud abolitionist, as well as an author and journalist. He was forbidden to learn how to read or write whilst a slave, so he found ways to teach himself. As a child he would finish all his chores and errands he was obligated to school that way there was time left over for him to learn anything he can from the kids playing outside or borrow some of their books. Due to his views on education he became a huge influence on education in America. Douglas states, "an integrated and universal education encouraged ‘forms of moral responsibility that are essential to civic life,’ ‘responsible behavior because educated people [. . .] are less likely to behave immorally." He believed that education should follow the "Yankee" approach, which emphasized public education, individual responsibility, and community participation in order to be better humans in general. Although Douglas was self- taught, he knows the importance of the community aspect of education and the freedom that comes with knowledge due to the opportunities that arise when one is educated.

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Montessorium represents the philosophy of Higher Ground Education.

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Noah Webster (1758-1843) was an American lexicographer, grammarian, and language reformer who is best known for his dictionaries and spelling books. Fed up with American dependence on British textbooks after the Revolution, he published “A Grammatical Institute of the English Language” in 1783 — better known as the “Blue-Backed Speller” — which became a mainstay of American education, selling nearly 100 million copies in a century. Webster supported spelling changes that matched American speech, suggesting, for example, "color" instead of "color" and "center" rather than "center," seeking to make American English easier and more uniform. His devotion paid off with the publication of “An American Dictionary of the English Language” in 1828 and with it 12,000 words that had never before appeared in dictionaries, including distinctly American terms like “skunk” and “squash.” Outside of lexicography, Webster was a defender of universal education, convinced that an educated citizenry was key to the success of the republic. His work constructed not only the American linguistic identity but also the basis of a national educational system that represented ideals and language of Americans

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Horace Mann’s first direct involvement with the American education system was in 1837, when he became the head of the newly created State Board of Education in Massachusetts. Including with Mann’s induction to the board, he actively promoted a new concept of “The state is the father of children.”  This is where Mann had earned the title as being the “Father of American Public Education.” This also was in due part to Mann’s advocation for the Prussian model to be implemented in American Schools. This schooling method was developed in Prussia, modern-day Germany, and was the first introduction of free, compulsory education, focusing on developing students to be unified, patriotic, and obedient. While additionally, having professionally trained teachers that could secularly train students to be effective members of society for the purpose of their country and military. While Mann did not directly apply every concept of the Prussian model to the American education system, he did heavily utilize it to format our education system in the United States. From 1837 to 1848 while Mann was on the State Board of Education in Massachusetts, he continually made efforts to analyze and refine the redirection of the American education system. This can be shown through the 12 (total) annual reports that Mann had made addressing both the purpose for public schools and their associated difficulties.

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The Origins of the American Public Education System: Horace Mann & the Prussian Model of Obedience