“Een braaf en leerzaam meisje”. Rekenonderwijs voor biedermeijermeisjes in Nederland, 1800-1860

Abstract

Arithmetics teaching for Biedermeier girls in The Netherlands, 1800-1860 During the first half of the nineteenth century arithmetic textbooks, according to the title page explicitely written for girls, were published in the Netherlands. Before 1800 and after i860 they simply do not exist. When compared to contemporary textbooks 'for boys' the didactical approach is very similar to the didactics most common in textbooks for pupils at so-called French schools: many different kind of word exercises, to show the pupil how useful mathematics was and at the same time preventing him or her from taking refuge in rote learning. The subjects treated are the same as those in textbooks for boys, although the most popular arithmetic for girls does not deal with ordinary fractions -only decimal fractions. Most of the authors also published textbooks 'for boys', and taught at a French school. Either in the prefaces or in the exercises of these textbooks it is made clear that although girls were destined to become good housewives, they needed to have clear notions about elementary mathematics as well. The most striking difference between the textbooks 'for boys' and those for girls was the phrasing of the word exercises: the girls were given exercises about a woman going to the market, or the amount of silk needed for a dress, while the boys were confronted with (mathematically) similar exercises about merchants and cloth. In moralistic exercises ideals of female behaviour (women acting as decent housewives etc.) played an important role. Reviewers in the most important Dutch teachers' journals at the time were enthousiastic about these 'feminine' phrasings. It seems that during the early nineteenth century, at least for a part of the Dutch girls, arithmetic education was more serious than has been suggested before.