THE EDUCATIONAL AGENCIES INVOLVED
The three agencies most vitally concerned in this problem of "woman
making" are necessarily the home, the church, and the school--the home
and the church, because of their vital interest in the personal
result; the school, because, whatever public opinion has demanded,
schools have never been able to turn out merely educated human beings,
but always boys and girls, prospective men and women. And so they must
continue to do. Nature reasserts itself with every coming generation.
This being so, we must continue to "make women." If we desire to make
homemaking women, the most economical way to accomplish this is to use
the already existing machinery for making women of some sort. We
cannot begin too soon, nor continue our efforts too faithfully. The
school cannot leave the whole matter to the home, nor can the home
safely assume that the "domestic science" course or courses will do
all that is needed for the girl. Being a woman is a complex,
many-sided business for which training must be broad and
long-continued.
The teacher has perhaps scarcely realized her responsibilities or her
opportunities in this matter. For years, and in fact until very
recently, the whole tendency in education for girls has been toward a
training which ignores sex and ultimate destiny. The teachers
themselves were so trained and are therefore the less prepared to see
the necessity for any special teaching along these lines. They may
even resent any demand for specialized instruction for girls.
Yet we are confronted by the fact that the majority of girls do marry,
and that many of this majority are woefully lacking in the knowledge
and training they should have. Nor are these girls exclusively from
the poor and ignorant classes. There is no question about the
responsibility of the school in the matter. The state which "trains
for citizenship" cannot logically ignore the necessity for training
the mothers of future citizens.
"While I sympathize profoundly with the claim of woman for every
opportunity which she can fill," says G. Stanley Hall in
_Adolescence_, "and yield to none in appreciation of her ability, I
insist that the cardinal defect in the woman's college is that it is
based upon the assumption, implied and often expressed, if not almost
universally acknowledged, that girls should primarily be trained to
independence and self-support; and matrimony and motherhood, if it
come, will take care of itself, or, as some even urge, is thus best
provided for." This criticism, of existing educational conditions is
quite as applicable to schools for younger girls as to those which Dr.
Hall has in mind. There is no reason why both school and college may
not fit girls for a broad and general usefulness, for "independence
and self-support," and at the same time give them the training for
that which, with the majority already mentioned, comes to be the great
work of their lives.
Through all the lower grades of school life, and to a certain extent
through the whole course, the methods of instruction used will be
largely indirect. The child will-seldom be told, "This is to teach you
how to keep house." I can think of no field in which this indirect
method will produce greater results than the one we are considering.
[Illustration: Montavilla School garden, Portland, Oregon, where boys
and girls raise vegetables for serving in the lunchroom. Here the
science of growing things is taught as part of the "training for
citizenship"]
[Illustration: Lunchroom where vegetables grown in the Montavilla
School garden are prepared and eaten]
[Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros.
A model school home. One way of teaching children how to "keep house"
is by means of the model home where they are given instruction in all
the duties of the homemaker]
The teacher, in most cases, must begin her homemaking training by
realizing that her own example is by the very nature of things opposed
to the homemaking principle, the unmarried teacher being the rule in
most of our schools. Her first care, then, must be to counteract her
own example. Her references to home life must be always of the most
appreciative and even reverent sort. If, as is quite possible, she
comes from unsatisfactory conditions in her own home, she must be
doubly careful lest her prejudices be passed on to her pupils. She
will find ways in which to let it be understood that her ideals of
home life are not wanting, although she has not as yet--perhaps for
some reason never will--become a homemaker. I have sometimes thought
that teachers, in their effort to impress children in more direct
ways, lose sight of the great effect of their unconscious influence.
After all, it is what the teacher does, rather than what she says,
that impresses; and what she _is_, regulates what she does. The
teacher must, therefore, have the right attitude toward homemaking and
domestic life. It may be of the greatest value in determining the
force of her influence in this direction for the children to catch
intimate little glimpses of her domestic accomplishments, of her
sewing, or of her cooking, or of her quick knowledge and deft handling
of emergency cases. The teacher whose influence is felt most and lasts
longest is the one whose "motherliness" supplements her academic
acquirements and supplies a sympathetic understanding of the child.
[Illustration: Canning tomatoes at the Montavilla School. In such a
class the mothers of future citizens are given training in one of the
fundamental needs of the home--scientific cooking]
[Illustration: Lunchroom where children benefit by the scientific
cooking of the vegetables they grow]
With innate motherliness as a basis, the teacher must build up a
careful understanding not only of child nature, but of man and woman
nature as the developed product of child growth. She must be a student
of the "woman question" as a vital problem, always recognizing that
the whole social structure inevitably depends upon the status of woman
in the world. She must face without flinching her responsibilities in
sex matters. She may, or may not, be called upon to furnish sex
instruction to the girls under her care, but no rules can free her
from her moral responsibility in striving to keep the sex atmosphere
clean and invigorating. The "conspiracy of silence" on these subjects
is broken, and we must accept the fact that modesty does not require
an assumed or a real ignorance of the most wonderful of nature's laws.
"The idea that celibacy is the 'aristocracy of the future' is soundly
based if the Business of Being a Woman rests on a mystery so
questionable that it cannot be frankly and truthfully explained by a
girl's mother the moment her interest and curiosity seek
satisfaction."[4] And what the mother should tell, the teacher must
know.
Practical use of the teacher's carefully worked-out theories will be
made all along the line of the girl's, and to a certain degree the
boy's, education. The indirect teaching of the primary grades will
give place in the higher grades to more direct dealing with the
science, or, better, sciences, upon which homemaking rests. The
classroom becomes a "school of theory." The home stands in the equally
vital position of a laboratory in which the girl sees the theory
worked out and in time performs her own experiments. The finest
teaching presupposes perfect coöperation between school and home.
[Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros.
Mothers' and daughters' meeting on sewing day. Coöperation between
the home and the school makes for the best teaching of domestic
science]
The first duty of the mother, like that of the teacher, is to preserve
always a right attitude toward home life. The girl who grows up in an
ideal home will be likely to look forward to making such a home some
day. Or, if the home is not in all respects ideal, the father or
mother who nevertheless recognizes ideal homes as possible may show
the girl directly or otherwise how to avoid the mischance of a less
than perfect home.
The prevalence of divorce places before young men and women sad
examples of mismating, of incompetent homemakers, of wrecked homes. We
can scarcely estimate the blow struck at ideals of marriage in the
minds of girls and boys by these flaunted failures. Nor can we even
guess how many boys and girls are led to a cynical attitude toward all
marriage by their daily suffering in families where parents have
missed the real meaning of "home." However practical we may become,
therefore--and we must be practical in this matter--we must never
overlook the need for parents to give home life an atmosphere of
charm. No one else can take their place in doing this. Hence it is
their first duty to make homemaking seem worth while.
The home must take the lead also in giving the idea of homemaking as a
definite and scientific profession. The school may teach the science,
but unless the home shows practical application of the scientific
principles, it would be much like teaching agriculture without showing
results upon real soil. Skillful teachers recognize the home as a
valuable adjunct to their school equipment and are able by wise
coöperation to use it to its full value.
The home, in its character of laboratory for the school of domestic
theory, must possess certain qualifications. Like all laboratories, it
should be well equipped. This does not mean necessarily with expensive
outfit, but with at least the best that means will allow. It implies
that the home shall be recognized as a teaching institution quite as
much as the school. Like other laboratories, it must be a place of
experiment, not merely a preserver of tradition. The efficient
laboratory presupposes an informed and open-minded presiding genius.
[Illustration: Courtesy of L.A. Alderman
First crop of radishes and lettuce at the Alameda Park School,
Portland, Oregon, June, 1916. Even in the primary grades children may
learn much about the science of growing things]
[Illustration: Bringing exhibits to a school fair in Tacoma,
Washington. Skillful teachers who recognize the home as a valuable
adjunct to the school equipment encourage the children to make gardens
at home]
The greatest service that the home can render in the cause of training
girls for homemaking is probably close, painstaking study of its own
individual girl--her likes, dislikes, aptitudes, and limitations.
Home-mindedness shows itself nowhere so much as in the home; lack of
home-mindedness shows there quite as much. The results of such study
should throw great light upon the problem of the girl's future.
Combined with the observations recorded by her teacher during year
after year of the girl's school life, this study offers the strongest
arguments for or against this or that career. Frequent and sympathetic
conferences between parent and teacher become a necessity. There is
then less likelihood of opposing counsel when the girl seeks guidance
toward her life work.
It is quite probable that, while the school undertakes to lay a
general foundation for homemaking efficiency, the home, when it
reaches the full measure of its power and responsibility, will be best
fitted to help the girl to specialize in the direction most suited to
her individual power. It can, if it will, _give_ the girl individual
opportunities such as the mere fact of numbers forbids the school to
give.
The special work of the church in training the girl is necessarily
that which has to do with her spiritual concept of life, the
strengthening of her moral fiber. Here school, home, and church must
each contribute its share. None of them can undertake alone so
important and delicate a task. Any attempt to make arbitrary divisions
in the work of these three agencies is bound to be at least a partial
failure. Conditions differ so widely that we can only say of much of
the work, "at school or church or in the home," or, better, "at
school and church and home in coöperation." Each must supplement the
efforts of the other, and where one fails, the other must take up the
task. It really matters little where the work is done, provided that
it _is_ done. The ensuing chapters of this book are written in the
hope that they may bring the vital problems of girl training and girl
guidance home to both teacher and parent; and especially that they may
convince both of the value of coöperation in the inspiring work of
helping our daughters to make the most of their lives.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 4: Ida M. Tarbell, _The Business of Being a Woman_.]