Isabelle Gatti de Gamond

Isabelle Gatti de Gamond

Born: July 28, 1839, Paris, France

Died: October 11, 1905

Gatti de Gamond grew up in Brussels in a middle-class family with a long progressive, socialist tradition. Father Jean-Baptiste Gatti was a painter. Mother Zoë de Gamond, who belonged to the lower nobility, was a worldly and literate woman. She was the founder of the first girls' schools in Brussels, based on the idea that the social importance of women as mothers and wives necessitated an intellectual education. With her pedagogical and liberating ideas, Mother Gatti had a great influence, especially on her eldest daughter.

After her mother's death in 1854, Gatti de Gamond entered the service of a noble family in Poland as a governess. She contributed to the upkeep of the family, which had fallen into poverty since her mother's death. The Polish family, which had an extensive library, taught her Latin. Knowledge of Latin was quite exceptional for a girl. In 1861 Gatti returned to Brussels, where she sought contact with her mother's social circles. Her new friendship with Marie Errera, Leo's mother, was a ticket to the Brussels liberal and progressive elite, who frequented Errera's salon. Gatti also took classes in chemistry and physics at the Cours publics de la ville de Bruxelles.

In 1863, Gatti began to petition the Brussels liberal city council to establish an urban high school for girls. At this point, no similar initiative existed anywhere. Although Brussels already had a relatively large number of elementary school for girls in the 1860s-the religious and private boarding schools, the lodge schools, and the private Ecole primaire supérieure pous desmoiselles, which provided teacher training. The latter offered the highest degree a girl could obtain at the time. Gatti received support from Bergé, who appealed to his political contacts at the lodge - alderman Watteeuw and town clerk Lacomblé. The influential municipal councillor Jean-François Tielemans, the co-founder of the University of Brussels, who had belonged to Zoë Gatti's circle of friends, also supported the project.

On October 3, 1864, the municipal Cours d'Éducation pour Jeunes Filles - Institution communale was a reality. The school, located in the Rue de la Marais, was the first Belgian institution to offer secondary education for girls. The grading of the school was different from that of the boys' schools. Instead of primary and secondary education, the Gattis school had three grades. In this way the law of 1850, which reserved secondary education exclusively for boys, could be circumvented. There was also a kindergarten. According to the founder, the school was intended to prepare well-to-do girls for their socially crucial role as wives and mothers. The curriculum included sciences, languages, history and music. Emphasis was placed on exercise and reasoning skills. Religion was not included. Some classes, the cours généraux, were also open to mothers.

Gattis school was an immediate success. In the following years, seventeen similar schools saw the light of day in other large and medium-sized cities where a liberal government was in power. Teachers who had worked in the Brussels school for girls dedicated themselves to making her model a reality in these schools. The Brussels school itself also expanded: a cours spéciale was established in 1867 and a cours normal was added in 1877. A regents' training department followed in 1880. It was the highest degree a woman could obtain at that time. For the teaching of this department, Gatti brought in professors from the University of Brussels and the Ecole industrielle for the first time. At the time, the gates of the university were closed to women, but with the new regents' education, the jump to higher education was suddenly not so great.

The first three women to successfully enroll at the university - Leclercq, Emma (1851-1933), Marie Destrée and Louise Popelin - all came from Gatti's school. Each had worked there as a teacher.

The 1890 law gave women explicit access to university for the first time, but at the same time linked this access to the presentation of a secondary studies diploma. The legislator provided as a loophole that those who could not present a humanities certificate had to pass an examination of the central jury. Because Belgian women could not at this time obtain an official diploma of secondary education anywhere, Gatti established a three-year pre-university section in 1892, with the collaboration of a number of professors from the University of Brussels. The section's explicit goal was to prepare young women for the university entrance exam at a rapid pace. The curriculum included advanced mathematics, Latin and Greek, subjects that boys were taught at six years.

In 1899, Gatti "retired" as principal. However, she remained very active in the socialist women's movement until her death.