Kjellbergska flickskolan

Kjellbergska flickskolan ('Kjellberg Girl School') was a Girls' School in Gothenburg in Sweden active between 1835 and 1967.

History

The school was founded by a fund granted in the will of the rich merchant Jonas Kjellberg (1752–1832).

The stated purpose of the school was to provide education to make it possible for females to support themselves professionally. This separated the school from most other contemporary girl schools, which had the purpose to educate their students to ideal wives and mothers, and it was thereby a part of the wave of a new type of girl schools, which was established in Sweden in the mid 19th-century in response to a contemporary Swedish debate about women's education. Further more, Kjellbergska flickskolan accepted students free of charge, which made it possible to accepts just the kind of student which answered to the description: a female who would likely need to support herself, normally from the middle classes. In this, the school followed the example of the Fruntimmersföreningens flickskola from 1815.

The most common occupation socially acceptable for a professional middle class woman in the 19th-century was that of a teacher or governess, and the school also functioned as an educational institution for female teachers. Between 1908 and 1932 (after a temporary experiment in 1884-86), it also offered teachers training courses to adult women. The graduates of these courses were, from 1910 onward, counted as equal to that of a graduation from the Högre lärarinneseminariet in Stockholm.

Kjellberg died in 1832, and the school was inaugurated in 1835. The subjects were religion, French, German, English, Swedish, history, geography, writing, mathematics, music, drawing and handicrafts. The number of students counted 15 in the ages of 91-5 in 1835; 24 in 1842 and 92 in 1875. The school was managed by a female principal supervised by a direction. It moved from one address to another until it was finally provided with a permanent house in 1870.

At the time of the introduction of the compulsory elementary school in Sweden in 1842, it was one of five schools in Sweden to provide academic secondary education to females: the others being Societetsskolan (1786) and Fruntimmersföreningens flickskola (1815) in Gothenburg, Askersunds flickskola (1812) in Askersund and Wallinska skolan (1831) in Stockholm.

In 1943, the school became a part of the communal school system in accordance with a new educational law, and in 1967, it was abolished in accordance with the new law against girl schools.

References

• Göteborgs Kalender för 1857, Utgifven af S. A. Hedlund och Anton Berg, Hedlund & Lindskog, Göteborg 1857 s. 113
• Kronologiska anteckningar om viktigare händelser i Göteborg 1619-1982, Agne Rundqvist, Ralf Scander, Anders Bothén, Elof Lindälv, utgiven av Göteborgs hembygdsförbund 1982 s. 40, 60, 74, 112
• Från Börsen till Park Avenue: Intressanta göteborgsbyggnader uppförda mellan 1850 och 1950, uppställda i kronologisk ordning och avbildade på vykort, Ove Nylén, Haspen Förlag 1988 ISBN 91-970916-3-4 s. 46
• Kjellbergare : om en flickskola, red. Helena Jos Person, Kjellbergska flickskolans kamratförening, Göteborg 2010 ISBN 978-91-978806-5-7
• Marianne Johansson.En studie av synen på kvinnor och högre utbildning. I samband med läroverksreformen 1927