ABSTRACT
The cornerstone of late eighteenth-century middle-class pedagogy was the formation of healthy, ordered subjects capable of resisting destructive passions and of disciplining themselves. Once this groundwork was in place, the child would be capable of acquiring the specific skills needed to perform his or her eventual adult role productively within the changing social and class structures of the period. This chapter will explore how the practical skills and lessons parents and pedagogues deemed essential were represented and taught in the literature for and about children. It will also investigate how the evolving middle-class distinction between male public sphere and female domestic sphere manifested itself in the educational practices of the late eighteenth century. Simple distinctions between what constituted male and female types of learning in the late eighteenth century cannot be made. Boys and girls of the middle classes were expected to acquire many of the same skills; at the same time, the proper objectives and extent of female education was the subject of much debate in the period.
