Karin Åhlin


Karin Dorothea Wilhelmina Åhlin was a Swedish educator. She was the founder and director of the Åhlinska skolan in Stockholm, and its principal in 1847- 1900.

Biography

Karin Åhlin was born and raised in Stockholm as the eldest daughter of Major Paul Pehr Åhlin and Wilhelmina Gustafva Norberg. After the death of her mother in 1847, she was left with the responsibility to raise and educate her younger siblings at the age of seventeen. At this point, the normal profession for a female of the middle class in need to support herself was that on a teacher, and she started to give lessons in her home to not only her siblings but also to paying pupils. She was an appreciated educator and was able to accept more and more pupils, some of them as guests in her home, an enterprise which gradually developed into the larger and larger expanding Åhlinska skolan. During the expanding of the school, she initially employed her sisters as teachers as they reached adulthood, and eventually also educated teachers she could provide a proper salary.
Karin Åhlin was principal of the school until 1900 and subsequently succeeded by Lydia Wahlström, who remained until 1934. Karin Åhlin remained the school's director until her death at the age of 68 in 1899. The work of Karin Åhlin was a significant contribution to the educational system for girls, which experienced a rapid expansion in the mid 19th-century from girl's schools which only offered a shallow education in accomplishments, to the net of private secondary education schools for girls which covered Sweden in the 1870s, a development in which she played an important part.
In 1890, Karin Åhlin was presented with the royal medal Illis quorum meruere labores in gold for her achievements in the education of women in Sweden.

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