They let us learn to work, to dance or sing,
Or any such trivial thing,
Which to their profit may increase or pleasure bring.
But they refuse to let us know
What sacred sciences doth impart
Or the mysteriousness of art.
In learning’s pleasing paths denied to go,
From knowledge banished, and their schools,
We seem designed alone for useful fools…
“The Emulation: A Pindric Ode,”
Author Unknown,
(London, 1683 in Goreau, 1984)
This chapter analyzes literacy advice to mothers in the Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries, with the purpose of locating contemporary forms of literacy advice to mothers within a broader socio-historical framework. To weave the many threads of this topic together as cohesively as possible, I have structured this chapter in the form of a genealogy, tracing the shifting meanings and roles ascribed to mothers as “their child’s first and most important educators” in the Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries, with a particular emphasis on mothers’ roles as educators of literacy. My decision to adopt a genealogical approach to analyzing literacy advice in the Nineteenth Century arises out of a question that persisted as I familiarized myself with data of literacy advice to mothers from 1990 to 2004: From what set of beliefs or desires does this advice come from? More specifically, what is the history of contemporary literacy advice to mothers? Pursuing this question promises insights into the ways in which the habitus associated with the ideal “mother as teacher of literacy” is historically situated.
While the discourse of the mother-as-teacher of literacy offers a promising starting point from which to progress to a deeper analysis of strategies and techniques this discourse employs (Carabine, 2001), it seemed important to first understand the power/knowledge relationships that have produced literacy advice over time. In other words how have present discourses of literacy advice to mothers become true? What meanings have these discourses taken on over time? What insights can a genealogical investigation offer to inform an analysis of literacy advice texts from 1950–2004? These questions guide this genealogy.