The Young Ladies' Academy of Philadelphia was the first government recognized institution established for women's higher education in the United States.
It provided young women with a diverse curriculum, notably teaching students about various components of English, science, arithmetic, history, and geography.
However, women who embodied Republican Motherhood were restricted in the scope of their education; their learning was supposed to focus on serving home and family, that is, the domestic sphere.
Rush believed that women's education ought to be practical for domestic tasks, as well as include traditional academic disciplines such as history and geography.
[1][3] However, daughters of immigrants and less wealthy students attended the school starting around 1794, perhaps to learn skills to be economically self-sufficient rather than to teach members of the household as expected of Republican Motherhood.