It seems unnecessary even to allude to the propriety of teaching as
a profession for women. It is, however, a modern notion.
At present, in New England, an immense majority of the teachers are
women.
I have had a good deal to do with schools during the last twenty-
five years. I was a member of the Boston School Board for some time,
was at the head of the Seminary at Lexington during four years, an
have always been interested in the question of woman as a teacher.
I have interrogated, perhaps a hundred school committee men, in
different parts of the country. Their testimony, and my own, after
all this observation, is, that woman is a better teacher than man. I
think this is true even in the department of mathematics. I am sure
it is true in all those studies, in the teaching of which, the
social, moral or religious element is brought into play.
The proportion of female teachers in American schools is very
rapidly increasing, and it is noteworthy that they are constantly
rising into schools of a higher grade.
The state authorities in Massachusetts have recently placed a woman
at the head of one of our principal Normal schools. It is safe to
prophesy that, within fifty years, teaching, in the common schools,
High schools, and in the Normal schools, will be almost exclusively
in the hands of women. I think, within that time, a considerable
proportion of the professors in our colleges will be women. Already
several are doing themselves, and their sex, great honor, as
professors in colleges.
The only dark spot in this bright picture is, that women are starved
while performing this valuable labor.
I know a beautiful, bright young woman, in this city, who is
regarded as one of the best teachers in the city, who presides in
one of the most beautiful rooms in one of the grandest buildings in
Boston, but who, when out of the school palace, is obliged to crawl
away with her mother into a dingy, miserable garret, where they
spend their time in contriving how to make their pennies last
through the year.
The schools known as Kindergarten have already become quite
numerous. They will rapidly multiply. Within a few years, children
three years old will be sent to these beautiful Kindergarten
schools, where, in each others society, and under the management of
bright, cheery, loving teachers, they will engage in a great variety
of pleasant games and infantile studies.
The physical exercises which constitute a prominent feature of these
baby schools, are very fascinating and profitable to these little
ones.
In these schools children of from three to five years of age will
not only be brighter and happier, but they will be much healthier,
than when left to the chances of the average home, without system,
times or seasons.
It need hardly be said that such schools will fall into the hands of
women, and will, within a quarter of a century, employ a great
number of them. The hours will be short, the occupation perfectly
adapted to the finest girls, and, as these little ones are objects
of the tenderest love, the compensation for such persons as can
successfully manage them, will always be large.
Lord Brougham gave it as his opinion, that a child learns more
during the first eighteen months of its life, than at any other
period, and that it settles, in fact, at this early age, its mental
capacity, and future well-being.