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New Horizons 2 Teachers Book: A Review and Evaluation



In governess research, the assessments of the teachers differ widely. While the field has mainly flourished in Great Britain since the 1970s, and came into its own in Germany a decade later, so far it has received little notice in France (these disparities are also consistent with the spread of the profession.). Some studies emphasize the material hardship, poor and arbitrary education, and the precarious social situation.4 Others, including more recent studies, stress the emancipative character of these young women's lives, who showed their contemporaries and peers new, self-determined life paths.5




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In Great Britain, on the other hand, as German guidebooks and governess accounts liked to lament, the prospect of social recognition was rather minute anyway. A German pedagogue bemoaned, for instance, that a governess was never asked to attend social gatherings since she was not presentable at table ("nicht dinnerfähig"). The image of the lonely governess, who, homesick and banished to her sparse living quarters, wistfully listens to the family hustle and bustle from a distance, was not only depicted in novels. The stereotype was also seized by painters and writers dispensing advice. One encyclopedia article remarks that if the governess sporadically appears in the salon "she remains stuck between the roles of guest and beggar ... she is neither fish nor frog, and onerous to the family which condemns her to this position as a foreign element."17 In retrospect, though, it is difficult to determine whether families in Great Britain actually maintained an unambiguous distance to their governesses. Generally speaking, there were more possibilities for doing so in England than in Germany and France. The vertical floor structure of English houses in the suburbs allowed the servants to be placed in the basement and the governesses in the attic. Whenever this was not possible, the employers sought alternatives. "Unlike our cousins, we had daily governesses; they did not live in, chiefly because my mother thought it would be a bore to have them in the house", recalled a daughter of a professor at Cambridge.18 In Germany, where wealthy middle-class families usually lived in elegant city flats, contact with the governesses was less avoidable. Unlike the maids, they could not be accommodated in the loft space originally intended for storage. This, too, may have contributed to the fact that governesses were rarer is such settings, whereas their presence helped in suburban villas to raise a family's prestige as sign of bourgeois gentility. In the Great Britain, on the other hand, the governess was a familiar phenomenon, even in petty-bourgeois households of more modest reputation. Their relatively large number around the middle of the century gave rise to the "Governess Question" or, as it was translated in German, to the "Gouvernanten-Elend" (governess plight). The supply of domestic governesses exceeded demand, not least because of often better-trained governesses from abroad.


These magazines also became much more self-confident in their style of writing: The pieces were not composed by timid pastors' daughters, but experienced teachers who insisted on their professional ethics and sought and used forums for exchanging experiences. Adelmann, for example, vigorously refuted the notion that no previous education was necessary for finding a post as a governess in England. She tells of young German women who step onto the ship in naive arrogance on one side of the canal and are then left stranded in England without employment.62 She rightly refers to the markedly higher employment standards since the middle of the century. The women who put their experiences to paper had known their vocation for years. Now, they aimed to stress the importance of their educational task with reference to their own achievements. It was therefore very much in their interest to select exactly those whom they found worthy of this profession.


Nonetheless, the lack of educational institutions also meant that teachers, at least in the first decades of the 19th century, primarily had to autodidactically train themselves and to independently take advantage of whatever courses were on offer. The availability of such offerings changed rapidly. Where Dorette Mittendorf, born in Hanover in 1826, was only able attend a girl's secondary school (Töchterpensionat) for two and a half years in Einbeck, the education of Thekla Trinks about two decades later was much more multi-faceted. In her own words, she first visited "the best institution in town" and, after finishing her schooling, received private lessons in music, French, and English.64 "At the time, a systematic, state-regulated teacher training was not known in Thuringia." In contrast, the first teacher seminars had already been established in Prussia.65 In 1869, German state already had 39 teacher training centers.66 For the ambitious Thekla, this meant packing her bags: Starting in October 1851, she attended an 18-month-long teacher training seminar in Droysig in the district of Merseburg67 -nb.info/gnd/2027283-2. There, she describes benefitting from "a highly original educational course of study", especially at the hand of the institution's director. "He inspired everything, but we had to make our own contribution to developing his ideas."68 Furthermore, the institution took advantage of the presence of students from different nations with only one specific language being spoken each week. The training was concluded with a two-day examination in Düsseldorf.


Thekla Trink's experiences abroad had rather strengthened her national pride. Other governesses may have utilized their wealth of experience differently, seeing and adopting the advantages of the respective "other" on their journeys. To concede this, however, especially in the nationalistic German Reich, seemed inopportune. The opponents of well-trained teachers repeatedly raised their voices, and the teachers' struggle for recognition met with fierce resistance.86 When the increasing institutionalization of girls' education was accompanied by a nationalization of the teaching staff, opportunities for demonstrating a cosmopolitan attitude decreased yet again. It had once again become a rarity for girl pupils to be taught by female foreigners or a female teachers with experience abroad.


The notion that the chances of cultural transfer accordingly dwindled would overstate the importance of the governesses for this process: In addition to the mutual prejudices, which were apparently hard to break, young women had to contend with three levels of foreignness: They were strangers to the country, sometimes strangers to the class, and strangers to the families. This is made it a particular challenge to act as cultural mediators or to accept different cultural values. But the more they could look to role models and have their own experiences, the more self-confident the young women appeared and the more they challenged the traditional ideal of femininity. More than a few governesses truly opened up new horizons for the young women that followed.


The opening of the show features various New York landmarks as well as Charlie Moore's journey to work every day. Charlie lives in a building in Hell's Kitchen occupied by a plant distributor on the first floor, who gives him a ride to the subway at 50th Street on the back of the truck before he makes his first delivery of the day. After Charlie grabs a hot dog for breakfast, he begins running into trouble as the subway station is on fire and he cannot hail any taxis to take him to the school. Forced to walk out of frustration, Charlie arrives late to class to the chagrin of Dr. Samuels but once he enters the classroom, his expression immediately brightens as he sees the students. It wouldn't be until season two that the credits include adding the names of the characters portrayed by their respective actors/actresses. After three seasons with the same opening, it was changed to a group photo of the class for season four. After Hesseman left the show, it was changed to notebook graphics for its final season.


One major novelization was released, with the plot lines based on six episodes of the show.[citation needed] The book makes all the chapters flow together as one story, even though they didn't happen one right after the other on the show. It was written by Susan Beth Pfeffer and released in December 1989 by Bantam Books. The book is 120 pages long, with six chapters, each based on a different episode.[citation needed]


There is so much injustice and suffering crying out for our attention: victims of hunger, of racism, and political persecution, writers and poets, prisoners in so many lands governed by the Left and by the Right. Human rights are being violated on every continent. More people are oppressed than free. And then, too, there are the Palestinians to whose plight I am sensitive but whose methods I deplore. Violence and terrorism are not the answer. Something must be done about their suffering, and soon. I trust Israel, for I have faith in the Jewish people. Let Israel be given a chance, let hatred and danger be removed from her horizons, and there will be peace in and around the Holy Land.


Textual Records: Records of the Office of Administration,consisting of subject and administrative files, 1952-55; andinspection reports and related records of the Inspection Staff,1954-62. Monthly employee newsletters issued by the Office ofPublic Information, 1954-78. Oversize scrapbooks documenting VOAand USIA special projects, accumulated by the Special CollectionsBranch of the Library Programs Division, 1947-58.


Textual Records: Records accompanying the soundrecordings described below, consisting of VOA Tape Librarylogbooks, 1942-71; VOA daily broadcast content reports and scripttranslations, 1950-55; and VOA 35th anniversary scripts, 1977.


Finding Aids: John E. Maddox, comp., "List of Titles in theGeneral Photographic Subject File of the International PressService, 1948-57," NC 22 (1963). Subject and personality cardindexes and shelf list to "Master File" photographs. Captionsheets for "Picture Stories." Logbooks of USIA staff and stringerassignments. Index to photographic series SUB. 2ff7e9595c


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