Beale, Dorothea, 1831-1906; Cheltenham Ladies' College -- History; Teachers -- England -- Biography
When the Association for Assistant Mistresses was formed, Miss Beale
regarded it at first with some anxiety. She feared the clash of interests
and promotion of suspicion between a head and her staff. Later, when she
understood the work of the Association, she received it into favour, and
on one occasion addressed a meeting of the western branch at St. Hilda’s.
Members of the Association were welcomed, and sometimes spent the morning
at College when they came over for branch meetings. Miss Beale, too,
was always willing to let those of her staff who belonged to the A.A.M.
Committee go up to London to attend meetings in term time, and was
pleased when it fell to Miss Lumby, as President of the Association, to
give evidence together with Mrs. Withiel, before the Bryce Commission in
1895.
The Teachers’ Guild, founded by Miss Buss in 1883, met with warm support
from the head-mistresses of the Association. A branch was started at
Cheltenham in the following year, and a paper by Miss Beale read, she
herself being indisposed at the time. She used her influence with her own
teachers to join the Guild, and frequently addressed the branch meetings
on such subjects as the Value of Examinations. In the Froebel Society she
was also much interested and subscribed to it regularly. When the Church
Schools’ Company was founded in 1883, Miss Beale became at once a member
of the Council. She was proud that the College supplied head-mistresses
to both the Graham Street and Baker Street Schools.
The hopefulness no increase of years or disappointment could abate, the
open mind ever quick to receive what was good and original from those
younger and less experienced than herself, were seen in the way Miss
Beale greeted the work of the Child-Study Association.
With her consent Miss Louch, then a member of the College staff,
proceeded to America in 1894 to attend a course of lectures by Dr.
Stanley Hall on child-study. On her return the Association was formed in
Edinburgh, and in the same year a branch was started in Cheltenham, with
Miss Beale as local president. Before her death she was president of the
whole Association, and presided over the conference held in Cheltenham
in 1906, the year of her death. When the _Paidologist_, the organ of the
Child-Study Association, was started, Miss Beale contributed largely
to the guarantee fund, and for five years was a member of the Magazine
Committee. She promoted the work of the Association by trying to get the
College staff, boarding-house mistresses, and parents of pupils to join
and assist in it.
Miss Beale was among those consulted by Miss Mason when, in 1888, she
definitely sought to give the Parents’ Educational Union, which had had
a successful year’s work in Bradford, a national name and character. The
work of the society appealed greatly to Miss Beale, and the Cheltenham
branch was one of the earliest founded. Her name appears among those of
the vice-presidents in 1892.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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