The American teacher memoir: From "Confessions" to the inspirational true story
Item
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Title
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The American teacher memoir: From "Confessions" to the inspirational true story
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Identifier
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d_2009_2013:0040ad002d46:11289
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identifier
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11780
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Creator
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Cantiello, Jessica Wells,
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Contributor
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Nancy K. Miller
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Date
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2012
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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American literature | Education history | American studies | Biographies | American | Autobiography | Memoir | Narrative | Teacher | Teaching
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Abstract
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Over 225 American teachers have published autobiographies that recount their lives in public school classrooms, but the teacher memoir, as a literary genre, has yet to receive sustained scholarly consideration. Since at least the beginning of the common school movement in the 1830s, a movement that is chronicled by the first teacher memoirist William Alcott in his aptly named Confessions of a School Master (1839), Americans have put enormous faith in the power of schooling to create an educated citizenry that can sustain a functional democracy. Teacher memoirs combine with portrayals by historians, administrators, policymakers, and scientists to assess the success or failure of education, which is often entangled with the perceived success or failure of America itself. I read teacher memoirs in the context of educational policy and literary history to demonstrate how the cultural climate in a given era shaped the way in which teachers narrated their experiences, and, in turn, how the memoirs influenced educational debates. This study raises complex questions about the political efficacy of literary texts, contributes to discussions within autobiography theory of the ethical considerations of life writing, and enriches historical narratives of teaching and learning.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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2009_2013.csv
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degree
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Ph.D.
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Program
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English
