Background
Anna Callendar Brackett was born May 21, 1836 to Samuel and Caroline Brackett and the oldest of five children.
Anna Callendar Brackett was born May 21, 1836 to Samuel and Caroline Brackett and the oldest of five children.
She attended a private school in Boston and then state school in Framingham, Massachusetts.
She translated Karl Rosenkranz"s Pedagogics as a System and wrote The Education of American Girls, a response to arguments against the coeducation of males and females. In 1861, Anna started teaching in Charleston, South Carolina. At the start of the Civil War, she left for Saint Louis where she met with the Saint Louis Hegelians.
During her tenure, Brackett worked to ensure female students had access to higher education and liberal studies as preparation for professional teaching.
She made two proposals to the Board of Education that were eventually adopted. The first proposal was an age requirement for entrance to the school.
Second, there should be an entrance exam for admission to the Saint Louis Normal School. In 1872 Anna Brackett resigned as principal after there were changes in the curriculum that went against her beliefs.
In New York, Brackett started The Brackett School for Girls, located at 9 West 39th Street.
Among her pupils was Ruth Sawyer, in whose Newbery Award-winning semi-autobiographical children"s novel, Roller Skates, Brackett is remembered fondly as an imposing but beloved educator. Anna Brackett retired from teaching in 1894 and died in 1911.