Articles
Newman’s thoughts on the Role of Women in Education
December 1, 2025
St. John Henry Newman understood just how important a woman’s role is in the education of children, both for their hearts and their souls. He had learned from personal experience when founding the university in Dublin that children need to be prepared before they could successfully attempt university life. So do all children need preparation to become the people they are meant to be in adulthood. An important part of this preparation is in schooling, whether it be in the home or in separate school. The necessary preparation for adulthood and then university life, he realized, would come from a good preparatory school. The preparatory school for life could be considered the home, or the domestic church. Newman’s conception of this boy’s school gives evidence of his understanding of the importance of caring for the whole person. In a “Memorandum relating to the Catholic University” written on February 19, 1853, to the Archbishops and Bishops of Ireland, he wrote an outline to argue for his plan for its structure. The memorandum was written in his capacity as the rector of the new Catholic University of Ireland, but we can glean much from this memorandum and his subsequent plan for the Oratory School just how much importance he placed on the role of women for education of children.
In the memorandum, St. John Henry Newman described what an Alma Mater, a kind mother, should be in the context of schooling, but in these words we can see directly what he thinks of the role of mothers and women for children. It is astounding. He wrote,
“ . . . . a kind Mother, an Alma Mater, who inspires affection while she whispers truth; who enlists imagination, taste, and ambition on the side of duty; who seeks to impress hearts with noble and heavenly maxims at the age when they are most susceptible, and to win and subdue them when they are most impetuous and self-willed; who warns them while she indulges them, and sympathizes with them while she remonstrates with them; who superintends the use of the liberty which she gives them, and teaches them to turn to account the failures which she has not at all risks prevented; and who, in a word, would cease to be a mother, if her eye were stern and her voice peremptory. If all this be so, it is plain that a certain tenderness, or even laxity of rule on the one hand, and an anxious, vigilant, importunate attention on the other . . . . to maintain a persevering, gentle oversight, to use a minute discretion, to adapt . . . treatment to the particular case, to go just as far as you safely may with each mind, and no further, and to do all this with no selfish ends . . . “.
The knowledge of Newman’s concept of what guidance should consist of in schooling illustrates perfectly how much he emphasized the maternal role. It follows that when structuring the Oratory School his innovation came in the person of a motherly woman to be that heart for the students. There was to be a Headmaster in charge of the academic side. As shown in the memorandum, Newman understood that children need love and affection, along with motivation and responsibility, that is, more than rules and rigor. The same is true for children in a family. Newman’s upbringing and good relationship with his sisters and his mother had shown him that a sympathetic woman would be integral to the formation of the whole child, to aid the religious formation. To this end, he conceived of the role of Dame, a “Guardian of the Children,” for the Oratory School. His choice of first Dame for the Oratory school was Mrs. Frances Wootten, the widow of Newman’s physician (1801-1869). She was maternal, kind, intelligent, and capable.
Newman appreciated the unique gifts women possess as illustrated by his creation of this important role in the school. Mrs. Wootten’s sensitivity, her understanding of the needs of boys and mothers, helped make the school successful. Mrs. Wootten also understood how a young child’s spirit could be broken with corporal punishment. She was instrumental in stopping this practice at the school.
The Oratory School was ahead of the time under Newman’s presidency, allowing for a partnership between the Headmaster and the Dame, giving equal stature to a woman in a leadership role. Newman believed that the success of the school was due to Mrs. Wootten’s great care for the person of the boys, both soul and body, and the parents would have agreed. For its first seventeen years, Frances Wootten was the heart of the school, as often the mother, or mother figure is the heart of a home. As the school flourished under the guidance of Frances Wootten, so does the home and therefore society benefit from faithful women forming the children under their care.
Frances Wooten’s one aim was to serve God, and she fulfilled this vocation through the love of children. This was appreciated and acknowledged by St. John Henry Newman in his creation of the role of Dame. The formation of the whole child within a family is the job of both parents, and the love and education from the heart of a caring woman is integral. The Oratorians honored the importance of the role which Francis Wootten provided so much that she was buried in their cemetery, the only woman who received such an honor. We too should honor the woman’s role in the lives of children, encouraging this important vocation as a noble way to serve God.
