'A New Departure': Frances E. Willard's Moral Horticulture

Frances E. Willard's idea of moral horticulture asserts that the student's experience of community, the teacher serving as role model, and the physical setting of a school all matter in education as ethos forms the learners. She developed while she was President of Evanston College for Ladies (1871-1873), as a means for shaping the ethos of a school where young men and young women could learn together successfully as residential co-education was being developed in North America. In October, 1874, she presented and published moral horticulture as Dean of Women, Northwestern University to the Association for the Advancement of Women which met in New York.;As President of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, she used the principles of moral horticulture as she led the women to change society in order to make their homes safe. In 1889, she again used the principles of moral horticulture as she wrote her autobiography to shape an exemplary model of the ideal home and new American woman for her readers to emulate, thereby writing her own hagiography. As a teacher, leader, and writer, her use of moral horticulture, in all three vocations, provided a zone of proximal development for the women who followed her as they transitioned from the cult of true womanhood to becoming modern women.;The principles of moral horticulture are still useful in education, especially in faith formation in the ministry of the local church.