This article examines the connection between religion and literacy efforts on behalf of girls and young women in the early nineteenth-century United States by looking at the rapid proliferation of Catholic convent academies and the anti-Catholic sentiment that spurred the growth of proprietary academies, such as those of Mary Lyon and Catharine…

The Federal School was a correspondence art school in Minneapolis, Minnesota in the early 20th century. At that time, scientific methods changed the organization and practice of commercial art training and industrial education, which included correspondence courses from the Federal School. Standards of intelligence were determined with…

A variety of national data sources concerning proprietary schools was used to examine the general attributes of such schools, the kinds of training offered, student characteristics, amount and type of student financial aid available to the students, and student costs for training. (MSE)