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Abstract: Women music educators in the USA have been active in public and private schools, churches, and community organizations. In the nineteenth century, Julia E. Crane founded the Crane Institute of Music, the first institution to train music supervisors; and women developed kindergarten programs throughout the US. In the "private sphere," women taught in home studios and Sunday schools, and published children's songs and hymns. In 1907, the Music Supervisors National Conference (which became the Music Educators National Conference) was founded under the leadership of Frances E. Clark, although only thirteen women have been president of MENC between 1907 and 2010. In the twentieth century, women have edited music textbook series and served on editorial boards of music education journals. This survey of nationally prominent music educators shows the importance of quality education, guiding personal philosophies, positive supportive mentors, and leadership opportunities within the profession for developing successful lifetime careers.
Throughout American history women have taught music in their homes and communities, but women's experiences are missing from the historical narrative. Women have taught singing in nursery schools, churches, and public schools. They have taught in home studios, community music schools, and conservatories. They have directed instrumental ensembles, published textbooks, taught college courses, led organizations, and done research. What did these women think of their music teaching as a career and way of life? Did they have a guiding philosophy directing their lives? Did they reflect on their successes, frustrations, and disappointments? Does the traditional historical account include their significance?
While scholars have begun to write the biographies of some outstanding women in music education, there is no literature on how these women viewed their careers. Musicologists since the 1980s have published numerous books on women composers, making "invisible women" visible and highlighting women composers who were exceptions in their historical period. Music educators need to uncover women music teachers of the past as they are developing feminist theories in music education. Jane Roland Martin comments that some will accuse scholars of being elitist if they concentrate on the exceptional women of the past, but we need to know these exceptional women to learn how they solved the "dilemma of being living contradictions" so we do not reinvent the past.1
Music educators in public...