THE GIRL'S INNER LIFE
While we are occupied in teaching the girl the "ways and means" by
which she is later to carry on the business of homemaking, we must not
overlook the fact that, although ways and means are vitally necessary,
it is after all the spirit of the girl which will supply the motive
power to make the home machinery run. With this in view we must so
plan the girl's training as to secure not only the concrete knowledge
of doing things, but also the more abstract qualities which will equip
her for her work.
False ideals and ignorance of housekeeping processes are responsible
for thousands of homekeeping failures; but lack of fairness, of good
temper, patience, humor, courage, courtesy, stability, perseverance,
and initiative must be held accountable for thousands more. For these
qualities, then, the girl must be definitely and painstakingly
trained. In other words, we must work for the highest type of woman,
spiritually as well as industrially.
It may seem that definite instruction in such abstract qualities as
good temper or stability or fairness is difficult or perhaps
impossible to Secure. Since, however, all the girl's intercourse with
her kind affords daily opportunity for practice of these qualities,
instruction may easily accompany and become a part of her daily life.
The lack of these qualities handicaps the girl even in her school life
and shows there plainly the handicap that, unless help is given her,
she will suffer for life.
Her school work offers ample opportunity for the cultivation of
patience and perseverance. Teachers must combat vigorously the
"give-up" spirit, and the troublesome "changing her mind" which leads
the girl along a straight path from "trying another" essay subject or
embroidery stitch as soon as difficulties present themselves to trying
another husband when the first domestic cloud arises. Play hours as
well as work hours are invaluable in teaching the girl the difficult
art of getting along with the world. The educational value of games is
largely found in their social training. Experience teaches that
children require long and patient instruction to enable them to play
games. They have to learn fairness, courtesy, good temper; honesty,
kindness, sympathy. They have to learn to be good losers and to
consider the fun of playing a better end than winning the game.
[Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros.
Play hours as well as work hours are invaluable in teaching the girl
the difficult art of getting on with the world]
Games must be carefully distinguished from the more general term play.
All play not solitary has recognized social value; games, because the
idea of contest is involved, have a special value of their own. Close
observation of young children in their games, especially when
unsupervised, shows us self supreme. According to temperament, the
child either pushes his way savagely to the goal or furtively seeks to
win by cunning and craft. He must win, regardless of the process. How
many of these unsupervised games end in "I sha'n't play," in angry
bursts of tears, or even in blows! How many fail upon close scrutiny
to show some less assertive child, who never wins, who is never
"chosen," who might better not be playing at all than never to "have
his turn"!
[Illustration: Copyright by Underwood & Underwood
Hunter High School girls playing hockey in Central Park, New York.
The educational value of games lies in the fact that they teach fair
play, self-control, and proper consideration of others]
During the individualistic period games must be for the satisfaction
of individualistic desires. Team work must await a later development
of child nature. But while each child may play to win, his future
welfare demands that his efforts be in harmony with certain
principles.
1. He must respect the rules of the game.
2. He must "play fair."
3. He must control anger, jealousy, boastfulness, and other of the
more elemental emotions.
4. He must consider the handicaps suffered by some players, and
see that they get a "square deal."
Girls' games and boys' games at this period happily show little
differentiation. Almost any game not prejudicial to health serves to
call into action the moral forces we strive to cultivate. The game to
a certain extent typifies the larger life--the life of effort,
contest, striving to win. Self-control and proper consideration of
others in the one must serve as a help in fitting for the other.
[Illustration: Courtesy of L.A. Alderman
Drill work as well as games is beneficial to health and also teaches
self-control]
Teachers are often inclined to overlook or undervalue the training of
girls in games. The fact is that girls especially need this training
as the woman's sphere in present-day life is widening. Men have always
had contact with the world. Women have in times past had to content
themselves with a single interest involving contest--the social game.
How far we may safely go in utilizing the game element--that is, the
contest or competition element--in school work is a question for
thought. The "rules of the game" are less easy to enforce here;
jealousies are harder to control; handicaps are more in evidence and
less easy to make allowance for in contests; the discouragement of
failure may have more serious results. The mere fact of class grouping
involves a natural competition, healthful and beneficial and wisely
preparatory for future living. More emphasis than this upon rivalry
may produce feverish and unhealthful conditions, far removed from the
mental poise we desire for our girls. The school can give the girl few
things finer than the ability to attack work quietly and yet with
determination and a sense of power to meet and overcome obstacles.
The school and the playground form the growing girl's community life.
In them she must learn to practice community virtues, to shun
community evils, and to accept community responsibilities. For her the
school and the playground are society. Here she will take her first
lessons in the pride of possessions, in the prestige accompanying
them, in the struggle for social supremacy, in doubtful ideals brought
from all sorts of doubtful sources. Here she will find exaggerated
notions of "style" and its value, impure English, whispered
uncleanness in regard to sex matters, and surreptitious reading of
forbidden books. Here also she will find worthier examples--clean,
pure thought, honesty and fair dealing, pride of achievement rather
than of externals, fine ideals exemplified in the best homes. And no
finer or more delicate task lies before teacher and mother than the
guidance of the girl in her choice.
[Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros.
A school playground. The school and the playground form the growing
girl's community life]
[Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros.
A model playground. The model playgrounds in the parks are doing much
to aid the playground movement]
Going to school is rightly considered an epoch in the child's life. No
longer confined to the narrow circle of home and family friends, the
child may lose all the tiny beginnings of desired virtues in this
larger life. Or, on the contrary, when the school recognizes and
continues home training, or supplies what has not been given, these
foundation virtues may be so applied to the old problems in new places
as to form a foundation for the life conduct of the girl and the woman
that is to be.
Take the question of sex knowledge, so widely agitated of late. We
cannot guard our girls against contact with some who will exert a
harmful influence. We can only forearm them by natural, gradual
information on this subject as their young minds reach out for
knowledge, so that sex knowledge comes, as other knowledge comes,
without solemnity or sentimentality on the one hand or undue mystery
and a hint of shame on the other. No course in sex hygiene can take
the place of this early gradual teaching, answering each question as
it comes, in a perfectly natural way, and with due regard for the
child's wonder at all of nature's marvelous processes. The little girl
_who knows_ presents no possibilities to the perverted mind which
seeks to astonish and excite her. And if she knows because "my mother
told me," the guard is as nearly perfect as can be devised.
Upon this foundation the formal course in sex hygiene may be built.
Such a course will then be a scientific summing up, with application
to personal ideals and requirements. It can easily, safely, and wisely
be deferred until the adolescent period.
Teachers and mothers can find scarcely any field more worthy of their
thoughtful concentration than the cultivation of good temper in the
girls under their care. The number of marriages rendered failures, the
number of homes totally wrecked, by sulking or nagging or outbursts
of ill-temper, can probably not be estimated. Neither can we count the
number of innocent people in homes not apparently wrecked whose lives
are rendered more or less unhappy by association with the woman of
uncertain temper. Think of the families in which some undesirable
trait of this sort seems to pass from generation to generation,
accepted by each member calmly as an inheritance not to be thrown off.
"It's my disposition," one will tell you with a sigh. "Mother was just
the same." Surely the time to combat these undesirable traits is in
childhood, and probably the first step is for the mother, who looks
back to her mother as "being just the same," to stop talking or
thinking about inherited traits and at least to present an outward
show of good temper for the child to see.
Then there is the teacher, who is under a strain and who finds
annoyances in every hour which tend to destroy her equanimity. Her
serenity, if she can accomplish it, will prove an excellent example.
And little by little the mother and the teacher who have accomplished
self-control for themselves may teach self-control and the beauties of
good temper to the little girls who live in the atmosphere they
create.