THE GIRL'S WORK (Continued)--VOCATIONS DETERMINED BY TRAINING
The question of vocation choosing begins to make itself felt far down
in the grammar school, first among the retarded and backward children
who are old for their grades and are merely waiting and marking time
until the law will allow them to leave school and go to work. These
children are usually either mentally subnormal or handicapped by
foreign birth and so unable to grasp the education which is being
offered them.
As soon as they are released the girls go to the factory, to the
store, or to help with some one's baby or with the housework. No other
places are open to them, and their possibilities in any place are few.
They cannot rise because they are mentally untrained.
The upper grades of the grammar school lose annually many children who
would be able to profit by the help the school offers to those who can
remain. Some drop out because they see no need of remaining when the
factory will employ them without further knowledge. Others chafe at
spending time on what seems to them, and what sometimes is, quite
unrelated to the life they will lead and the work they will do. Some
leave reluctantly, because their help is needed in financing a large
family. Many go gladly, because they will begin to earn and to have
some of the things they ardently desire. And until yesterday the
school paid little attention to their going, regarding it as one of
the necessary evils. Still less attention did it pay to what these
pupils became after they left. The school's responsibility ended at
its outer door.
Now that these conditions are being changed, the school is finding
responsibilities and opportunities on every hand. The foreign-born are
taken out of the regular grades where they cannot fit, and are taught
English by themselves first of all. The subnormal children are studied
for latent vocational possibilities, and where minds are deficient,
hands are the more carefully trained for suitable work. Courses are
being revised with a view to holding in school the boy or girl who
wants practical training for practical work. Secondary schools have
taken their eyes off college requirements long enough to consider
fitting the majority of their pupils to face life without the college.
Studies of vocations are being made; vocational training is being
offered; vocational guidance is at last coming to be considered the
concern of the school.
Vocational work is sometimes concentrated in the high school, but this
is reaching back scarcely far enough, since those who do not reach
high school need help quite as much as the older ones, while those who
expect to continue their training can do so better if they have some
idea of the goal to be reached.
What are the options that the grammar-school teacher may present to
the girls under her care?
First of all, as we have already said, the school records must be kept
with care and discrimination, so that the teacher may know the girl to
whom she speaks. With the records in hand, she will ask herself the
following questions:
1. Is further training at the expense of the girl's family
possible? Do the girl's abilities warrant effort on her
parents' part to give her further opportunity?
2. Could the girl's parents continue to pay her living expenses
during further training if the training were furnished at the
expense of the state?
3. Could the girl obtain training in return for her personal
service, either with or without pay?
4. Would the girl be able to repay in skill acquired the expense
of her training, whether borne by herself, her parents, or the
state?
[Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros.
A flower-making class for girls of various ages. There is no reason
why vocational work should not begin in the grammar school]
Lines between obtainable work for the trained and the untrained girl
are fairly sharply drawn, and the possibilities for each type must be
clearly understood by the guide. If it is evident that training cannot
be obtained before the girl must begin to earn, the choice is
necessarily a narrow one. The factories in the neighborhood should be
thoroughly studied, and, under the guidance of the teacher, girls
should prepare detailed reports with respect to their working
conditions. The "blind-alley" job should be plainly labeled, that it
may not catch the girl unaware. Girls who must take up factory work
should at least be enabled to choose among factories intelligently,
and if possible should be fortified with an avocation that will supply
them with the interest their daily task fails to inspire and that will
provide an anchor against the instability toward which the factory
girl tends.
[Illustration: Millinery class in a trade school. Where trade schools
do not offer such training, there are opportunities for apprentice
work for girls]
The possibilities for apprentice work with dressmakers or milliners or
in other handwork should also be made known. Girls begin here, as in
the factory, at simple and monotonous tasks, but the possibilities of
advancement are far greater and mental development is unquestionably
more likely. The ability acquired by such workers, as they progress,
to undertake and carry through a complete piece of work is not only
satisfying to the workers themselves, but of value in later years.
They learn to analyze their constructive problems and to work out the
various steps of the work to its ultimate conclusion--a knowledge
which the factory girl never attains.
Some few girls will need to be shown the possibilities which lie in
independent productive work. For the girl who has talent or even
merely deftness in manual work, coupled with initiative and some
degree of originality, such work may bring a better return than
working for others. Most girls, however, lack courage to start upon
independent work, especially if they are in immediate need of earning
and are untrained. It often happens, however, that they do not
appraise at its true value the training they have received. The
grammar-school girl, under present methods of teaching, is often fully
qualified to do either plain cooking or plain sewing, but since she
does not desire to enter domestic service, she considers these
accomplishments very little or not at all in counting her assets for
earning. Some girls have found ready employment and good returns in
home baking, in canning fruit and vegetables, or in mending, making
simple clothes for little children, or in making buttonholes and doing
other "finishing work" for busy housewives. Work of these sorts,
undertaken in a small way, has often assumed the proportions of a
business, requiring all of a young woman's time and paying her quite
as well as and often better than less interesting work in shop or
factory. A girl of my acquaintance earns a comfortable living at home
with her crochet needle. Another has paid her way through high school
and college by raising sweet peas.
The untrained girl who loves an outdoor life has fewer opportunities
than other girls unless she is capable of independent work. If she is
capable of this and has sufficient ability to study her work,
gardening and poultry or bee culture may open the way for her to work
and be happy. School gardens, poultry clubs, and canning clubs have
shown many a girl what she may do in these ways.
[Illustration: Courtesy of U.S. Department of Agriculture
Some girls have built up a good business canning fruits and
vegetables at home]
Many times too little is realized of the possibilities of these
grammar-school girls who are crowded by necessity into the working
ranks. We cannot shirk our responsibilities in regard to them,
however, although they escape from our school systems and bravely take
up the burden of their own lives. Quite as many of these girls as of
more favored ones will marry and be among the mothers of the next
generation. The work they do in the interval between school and home
will leave its impress even more strongly than upon the girl whose
school life lasts longer and who is therefore older as well as better
equipped when she enters upon her work. Few of these younger girls in
times past can be said to have done anything other than drift into
work which would make or spoil their lives and perhaps those of their
children after them. It is well that the responsibility of the school
toward them is being recognized and met.
[Illustration: A prosperous poultry farm. Poultry farming opens the
way for the girl who loves an outdoor life to work in the open and be
happy]
A distinct duty of the grammar-school teacher is to make known the
facts concerning short cuts for grammar-school girls to office work.
Unscrupulous business "colleges" sometimes mislead these immature
girls into believing that a short course taken in their school will
enable the girls to fill office positions. Facts are at hand which
show the futility of attempting office work under such conditions, and
teachers should be very careful to see that all the facts are in the
possession of their pupils.
In the early days of high schools usually the only distinction, if
any, in courses was "general" and "classical." To-day we have many
courses, or in the larger cities different schools fit boys and girls
for varying paths in life. The college-preparatory course or the
classical high school leads to college. The commercial course or
school leads to office work. The manual training or industrial or
practical arts course or high school leads to efficient handwork. The
trade school leads to definite occupations. The difficulty now is to
help girls choose intelligently which course or school will best meet
their requirements. This involves vocation study in the grammar
school.
[Illustration: Benson Polytechnic School for Girls, Portland, Oregon.
The trade school leads to definite occupations. The girl with
mechanical ability may find her vocation in millinery, dressmaking, or
the various sewing-machine trades]
The girl who terminates her formal education with her graduation from
high school may find herself not very much better placed, apparently,
than the girl who has dropped out of school farther back. Many
openings into desirable occupations are still closed to her. Often
her opportunities, however, are much greater than they seem. All facts
go to show that the high-school girl makes more rapid progress in
efficiency, and therefore in pay, than the younger girl, even when she
seems to begin at the same work. Some fields, too, are open to her
that are not usually possible for the grammar-school girl. In office
work the high-school girl who has specialized in her training may make
a very creditable showing. Many thousands of high-school graduates are
received into telephone exchanges where with a brief period of
practice they become efficient workers. A very few high-school girls
become teachers in country schools without further training, but the
number is decreasing every year. If she meets the age requirement, the
high-school girl may enter a training school for nurses, gaining her
specialized training in return for her services to the hospital.
The high-school girl who can spare time and money for some further
training finds a larger field open; but, to make the most of what high
school has to offer, her plans should be made as early as possible in
the high-school course--at the very beginning if it can be managed.
The girl must know what further training she is making ready for, must
choose electives in high school to help her make ready, or possibly to
offset the specializing of this later work by some general culture she
may otherwise miss entirely. Vocation study, therefore, and vocational
guidance must be quite as much a part of the course for the girl who
will "train" for her special work as for the girl who goes directly
from the secondary school to her vocation.
One high-school Senior writes: "My special vocation has not yet been
chosen, but if it becomes necessary for me to earn my own living I
should like to be either a nurse, a teacher, milliner, or director of
a cafeteria. I would probably choose the position that was open at the
time."
Here we have the girl who is in no hurry to choose, and who probably
has a more or less vague notion of the comparative conditions,
requirements, and rewards of the four vocations she mentions. In
contrast to this, listen to a high-school student who has been
studying herself and her possible vocation in much detail in class
work. She says: "I find that I have made good school records only in
subjects where I had materials I could see and handle. I have never
done well in arithmetic or mathematics, but in drawing, physics,
elementary biology, and domestic science I made good marks. I do not
like to sew, because it tires me to sit still. I enjoy cooking and
marketing.
"I like to plan meals and to make up new recipes. I hear that
hospitals and institutions employ women at very good salaries to buy
all the foodstuffs used in their kitchens. The expert dietitian also
plans meals and arranges dietaries. I learn that Teachers College,
Columbia, has courses of study leading to this profession, and I have
written to ask for full information."
In the class of which this girl is a member, each girl is considering
her future as this one is doing. Each gathers all available data in
regard to the vocation she is studying. Her reports become a part of
the class records. She makes as full a report as possible as to the
duties and responsibilities of the occupation, the schools or training
classes that prepare for it, the length and cost of preparation,
possibilities of employment, salaries paid, and other details.
Since training cannot alter fundamentals, but merely builds upon the
girl's nature and heredity, the same classifications obtain in the
choice of the girl who can have training as in that of the girl who
goes untrained to her vocation. There are still the producers, the
distributors, and those who serve; and it is still important that the
girl should find a place in the right group.
The producers will include the designers, the interior decorators, the
expert dietitians, the municipal inspectors of food and housing, rural
consulting housekeepers, state or country canning-club agents, the
women who organize and carry on model laundries, either coöperative or
otherwise, the managers of manufacturing enterprises, the farmers, the
photographers, the artists, the journalists, and the authors.
The distributors are chiefly represented by the higher type of office
workers, who are the "idea thinkers" of the business world, since they
neither make nor handle products, but merely manipulate the symbols
which stand for the products they seldom if ever see. The women who
manage buying and selling enterprises for themselves usually belong to
the trained group.
The service group among trained women is a large one, including
nurses, teachers, doctors' and dentists' assistants, various social
workers, librarians, secretaries and other confidential office
assistants, directors or "house mothers" in school and college
dormitories and in institutions, dentists, physicians, lawyers,
ministers.
Within the group there is wide range of choice, differing
qualifications are necessary, and varying training is to be
undertaken. Girls, with the help of a vocational expert, should
analyze their physical and mental qualities and habits, and should
study somewhat exhaustively the vocation for which they seem to find
themselves fitted.
"I should like to be a nurse, or a teacher, or a milliner, or the
manager of a cafeteria" will not do, since those vocations presuppose
some years of widely differing training. Perhaps the girl will narrow
the choice to nursing or teaching. Then she must place over against
each other the two professions--special qualifications required,
length and cost of training, personal obstacles to be overcome, and
especially the demand and supply of nurses and teachers in her
locality. Upon these depends the girl's chance to succeed when she is
fitted and launched.
[Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros.
The children's ward in a hospital. The nurse must be resourceful and
possess good judgment]
The student who takes up college work, not as a specialized training,
but as a completion of her general education, stands somewhat by
herself. Such a girl may perhaps put off vocational decision until she
is part way through her college years. The college sometimes awakens
ambitions and brings to light abilities not hitherto discovered; and
even when this does not occur, the choice may be made from the highest
and most responsible positions filled by women. From the college girls
we draw our high-school teachers and college instructors, our
doctors, lawyers, and preachers, in so far as these professions are
filled by women.
[Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros.
Among the many vocations belonging to the service group teaching is
one of the most popular]
We are confronted by the statement, made again and again and
reinforced by formidable rows of figures, that the more training a
girl receives, the less she is inclined to marry or, if she does
marry, to have children. The fact seems undeniable that in our larger
eastern women's colleges, at least, not more than half the graduates
marry up to the age of forty, which we may accept as the probable
limit of the marriage age for the average woman. The natural inference
is that a college education in some way prevents or discourages
marriage. This may or may not be true. To be quite fair, the
statistics should cover the coeducational colleges as well as the
colleges for women alone. Also some attempt should be made to
discover how the likelihood of marriage is affected by the age at
which girls finish their college course. Do the younger girls of a
college class marry, while the older ones do not? Are the younger
married graduates more often mothers than the older ones, or do they
have more children?
[Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros.
The influence of the librarian extends far beyond the walls of the
library]
If it is true that training is interfering with marriage and
motherhood for our girls, the next step is not necessarily, as some
modern hysterical students of the question seem to suggest, that we
immediately cut out the training which, in case they do marry, will
make them far more valuable wives, mothers, and members of the
community; but rather so to time and place the training, and if
necessary so to alter its character, that any such tendency away from
marriage will be removed and that the trained women of the college and
professional school shall be available for the great work of mothering
the nation of the future.
A final word as to the place of the vocational guide in the choosing
of vocations may not be amiss. That every teacher should consider
himself or herself a helper in this most important work we must agree;
but that any teacher must walk carefully, and use the guiding hand but
sparingly, is equally true.
The object of vocational help is not merely to keep the "square peg"
out of the "round hole." The girl arbitrarily placed in a suitable
occupation may never discover why she is there, and may be handicapped
all her life by a deep conviction that she fits somewhere else. "Know
thyself" is a good old maxim yet. The teacher or vocational guide is
fitted by the place of observation she holds to help the girl to study
herself and the possibilities that life holds out to such as she thus
finds herself to be. The final choice should be made by the girl.