Educating Señorita: Teacher Training, Social Mobility, and the Birth of Costa Rican Feminism, 1885-1925

A photograph from turn-of-the-century San Jose shows a new Italianate palace rising two imposing stories above a fenced-off pasture and a row of humble adobe houses.1 In I903, during ceremonial gatherings in this great building, a chorus of young female voices could be heard intoning a novel hymn: "Let us sing of the triumphs of Art and Science that have dignified noble womankind, for humane consciousness has converted yesterday's slave into the queen of the world.'2 The choir was made up of students from all social classes, the majority of them training to become public school teachers at this temple of liberal civilization, the Colegio Superior de Sefioritas, Costa Rica's first modern normal school. In June I919 "yesterday's slaves" were at the vanguard of the civic movement that broke the back of the Tinoco regime, Costa Rica's one prolonged