author
Anna C. (Anna Callender) Brackett
1836–1911
A pioneering educator and early feminist voice, she argued that girls deserved the same serious education as boys and helped bring major German ideas about teaching to American readers. Her work joined philosophy, classrooms, and reform in a way that still feels strikingly modern.
1 Audiobook
The Education of American Girls
by Anna C. (Anna Callender) Brackett
About the author
Born in Boston in 1836, Anna Callender Brackett became an American philosopher, educator, translator, and advocate for women’s education. She studied at the State Normal School in Framingham, Massachusetts, and went on to build a career in teaching and school leadership at a time when women rarely held such authority.
She is especially remembered for serving as principal of the St. Louis Normal School, a major teachers’ training institution, and for her connection to the St. Louis Hegelians, a circle interested in philosophy and education. Brackett also translated Karl Rosenkranz’s Pedagogics as a System, helping bring important European educational thought into English.
Her best-known book, The Education of American Girls, answered arguments against coeducation and made a clear, forceful case for women’s intellectual development. She died in 1911, but her writing still stands out for its calm confidence, practical idealism, and belief that education should open the fullest possible life to women.