fifth, the college numbered over six hundred. The demand for its
graduates has been constant. The register of graduates indicates this
demand and shows the variety of positions for which the students have
been technically trained and which they are now acceptably filling. The
range of compensation exceeds that of the average college graduate,
and in some fields is far above it. This is particularly true where
executive ability, creative imagination, and the power of directing
others are essential. In such positions technical training shows its
worth.
The work of the secretary illustrates the need of technical training.
The young woman who enters the course arranged for the secretarial
school knows in advance something of the scope and character of
the duties awaiting her. She knows that she must possess technical
skill, that she must become an accurate and expert stenographer and
typewriter, must understand accounts, must be able to file letters
and find them after they have been filed, must transcribe dictation
whatever the vocabulary involved, and must be familiar with business
methods. She cannot follow the prescribed technical courses without
becoming familiar with the personal requirements as well,--dignity,
reserve, professional honor, promptness, patience, courtesy, adherence
to contract, responsibility for service. All these are clearly set
forth in the preparation of the secretary. This technical preparation
is added to academic training, including English, modern languages,
certain courses in science, economics, psychology and ethics, as in the
ordinary college. At the end of the course the student is technically
prepared for a position as college registrar, secretary to president
or professor, to author or publisher, to lawyer or physician. She soon
becomes capable of research or of executive organization. She commands
from the beginning a better compensation than the apprentice could
possibly receive. Already experience has shown the economic value of
the training. Similar experience has proved the wisdom of vocational
courses outlined for managers of institutions, for dietetians in
hospitals, for stewards, for directors of lunchrooms, for visitors to
the poor, for librarians, nurses and social workers.
“What is my work to be? How can I prepare myself to do it successfully
and through it to minister to human need?” These are the questions
which the student is constantly asking as she confronts her task. The
very presence and recognition of the task give point to the preparation
and prevent it from being a mere course of training for one’s own sake.
Conference with parents as well as with students shows the origin of
the demand for vocational training in colleges. The assured expectation
of self-maintenance; the desire to be prepared for self-maintenance,
should necessity arise; the recognition of the necessity of preparation
for home responsibilities; the demand for executive experts with an
understanding of industrial conditions; the dearth of workers properly
trained for their task; the taste and liking for practical affairs; the
desire to be of definite service in the world--all these are factors in
the student’s demand for vocational training. The woman with one talent
emerges from the course prepared to perform some one task well and glad
to meet its demands. It is a privilege and not a burden to be shirked.
The ten-talent woman goes out with the power to modify circumstances,
to improve conditions, to direct enterprises, to assume executive
control. In either case the vocational aim is essential.
Already trade schools, technical high schools and technical colleges
are answering the demand for vocational training, and proving the
existence of the need. Public opinion asks that woman be trained
for her work. The one thing needful is that the school, as a public
servant, shall come to recognize its true relation to this economic
problem.
TRAINING THE YOUNGEST GIRLS FOR WAGE EARNING
SYSTEMS TO BE FOUND AT PRESENT IN EUROPE AND AMERICA
MARY SCHENCK WOOLMAN
Professor of Domestic Art, Teachers College, Columbia University, and
Director of the Manhattan Trade School for Girls
At the present time, even though the work has been but lately begun,
excellent examples of trade and vocational education for girls can be
seen in both Europe and America. The European schools have long since
passed the experimental stage and are usually a regular part of the
system of public instruction, supported by governmental grants. On the
other hand with us this class of training, being new and as yet in a
more or less tentative stage, is chiefly in private hands. The foreign
schools give us valuable suggestions, but the direct copy of their
work, successful as it is according to the special needs of paternal
governments, is not altogether fitted to a growing democracy like the
United States. National desires and needs plus the requirements of
the community where the schools are placed must influence the trades
selected, the course of study and the methods of instruction in every
good school. European systems are adapted to the national and municipal
conditions of their varied peoples.
The majority of the professional schools for girls abroad are planned
for the middle classes who are in fairly comfortable circumstances
and can therefore pay fees and take several years for training. It
is only incidentally that such institutions help the poorer working
people. With us such instruction must be arranged for all classes. It
is no unusual thing to hear those who have visited the professional
schools abroad recommend the incorporation of such instruction into
our educational system to help wage earners, forgetting that four or
five-year trade courses, often with fees and competitive examinations
for entrance, would be impossible for the daughters of the poor
working classes in our large industrial cities. Our problem deals
with the poorest as well as the well-to-do, the foreigner and the
native-born.
The meeting of the need of the lowest-class worker is perhaps more
pressing with us, for in European countries children are apt to
continue in the occupation of their parents, and labor on the farm or
at small home trades or in little shops or markets, as their ancestors
did before them. Lines of class demarcation greatly effect schemes of
education in Europe, and such discrimination is accepted as necessary.
With us on the other hand the workers of the lowest rank are always
struggling to get ahead, hence our schools must allow for such upward
movement. Moreover, the wages of workers in this group are at the
lowest figure, as they are forced by poverty to accept any wage they
can get. The schools, then, must also study the industrial condition of
the group and improve it.
Different types of education have been organized to train the youthful
workers who rush into positions the moment the law will allow them to
obtain working papers. The girls of this type cannot take advantage
of the _Ecoles Professionnelles_ of France, Italy and Belgium, of the
_Frauenarbeitsschulen_ of Germany or of the vocational and technical
high schools of America. They have not the requisite education for
entrance in the majority of cases and they have at best but a few
months or a year to spare for training. The schools which have been
planned to aid them in self-support may be grouped roughly under the
following heads:
1. Elementary Vocational Schools.--Industrial training of a general
character in the last two or three grades of the elementary school,
which sends the pupils into life with a good practical working
foundation.
2. Continuation Schools.--Weekday or Sunday classes for workers
under sixteen years of age, which will help them to obtain a further
practical education while they are working for self-support.
3. Apprenticeship, Trade or Factory Schools.--Special trade training
after the compulsory school age is passed or in the year following
graduation from the elementary school, consisting of shop practice
which can be taken by those who can still give a little additional
time to training and who can thus be prepared to enter some good trade
or business position closed to the untrained. Girls can thus enter
industry with the ability to make a living wage and with the hope of
rising.
1. The elementary vocational school aims to help the poorest and
youngest workers. As large numbers of girls in the great industrial
cities of the world are forced, on account of the poverty of their
families, to go to work as soon as they reach the age when the law
allows them to take out working papers, this class of school aims to
provide them with an education immediately available for use. The
_Volksschulen_ of Germany and the _Ecoles Primaires_ of France and
Belgium have tried to meet this situation by making handwork compulsory
through each year of the school. The American public school has done
this intermittently, but now that the country is awake to the needs of
the working class, severe criticism is heard everywhere of the general
trend of our common schools in helping the few who go on to higher
education, but doing little for the many who do not. Investigation of
the mental and manual condition of the great body of our young wage
earners shows them unable to use their hands well or to utilize their
academic education. The unskilled trades which alone are open to them
do not require much use of their academic education which after a year
or two is almost forgotten. If they manage to get into the better
positions they are unable to hold them, for their education has not
been of the kind to help them practically in trade. The trouble is not
that the education is not good, but that it is not put to practical use
by these young wage earners after they leave school.
Workers of the lowest grade in the large industrial cities of the
United States have to face a difficult economic problem. The father
can seldom make enough to support his family well, so the mother is
compelled to assist. The children as they reach fourteen, usually
before they have completed the elementary school, are forced to take
any position they can get, whether healthful or not, whether offering
opportunities or not. These fourteen-year-old workers are too young to
go to school at night to continue their education, for their strength
is sapped by day work; they are too poor to go to a trade school,
for their wage cannot be given up by their families and the public
school can offer them no more than free education (except in rare
instances). Competitive examinations to obtain a supporting scholarship
are generally beyond their reach, for they are handicapped by foreign
birth, underfeeding and lack of mental acumen. As a consequence they
are easily distanced in scholarship by the children of the middle-class
workers who need the help less. The girls have to meet the most severe
strain of the labor market; they must have money; they underbid their
fellows and overcrowd the unskilled trades. The life itself is harder
on them than on the boys, both physically and spiritually. These little
girls are crowding into the labor market in appalling numbers. Their
parents naturally want them to be self-supporting, but know not how
to help them. They are often willing to sacrifice themselves and keep
the children in school until graduation, but the girls resent the
present course of study as useless and get out of school as quickly
as possible. On the other hand both parents and children appreciate
a curriculum which offers directly available, practical training,
and they will do much to obtain it. Hence lately some of the wiser
educators have offered industrial courses in the last three grades of
the school to induce children to remain longer and to give them a good
foundation adaptable to trade or to home use.
In 1907 the public schools of Boston began experiments in various parts
of the city looking toward special vocational courses in the sixth
and seventh grades. The North Bennett Street school was chosen as
one center for industrial work. A special building was set aside and
furnished with class rooms for sewing, textiles and design and was also
equipped with kitchen, dining room and bedroom, thus giving excellent
opportunity for applied lessons in housekeeping and housefurnishing.
Fifty girls from the Hancock school in the neighborhood are chosen
and are divided into two groups. They alternate with each other in
taking academic and industrial work, both morning and afternoon being
utilized. They have six and a half hours of academic work to three and
a half of industrial. The course of study recognizes woman’s relation
to wage earning and to the home, and the culture and technical work
are well interrelated. The movement, already showing success, aims to
vitalize the regular school studies, to gain the interest of the girls
so they will remain in school until graduation, to enable each girl to
determine intelligently her life work and finally to direct her into
higher grades of occupation.
New York City has also started similar work in the special classes
organized to help pupils who while old enough to have their working
papers have not met the educational requirements. Other cities have
also begun experiments of a like character, handwork and connected
academic study being features in all these schools. Some of our private
schools also are making special investigation of the varied conditions
and needs of the people and are trying to adapt their work to these
needs, so that when boys and girls are forced to leave school they will
have a usable education. Examples of such wise adaptation to conditions
can be found in the Ethical Culture school and the Speyer school in New
York City.
Perhaps the most significant work of this character at the present
time is in Germany. _Stadtschulrat_ Dr. Georg Kerschensteiner of
Munich, realizing that both boys and girls were dropping out of the
_Volksschulen_ at the first opportunity possible, planned a new and
excellent course of practical study elective in the eighth school year.
The work was begun in 1896. Many children remained in school to try
it and so valuable did the experiment prove that the course was later
made compulsory. Dr. Kerschensteiner felt that girls will eventually
fall into one of the following classes: housewives who take charge of
affairs at home, domestic servants, workers in commercial or industrial
positions, governesses, teachers or companions. After the seventh grade
each girl chooses the field for which she would like to prepare, and
in the eighth grade the foundation is laid for future success in her
chosen occupation. The eighth-grade work is not professional but is
broadly vocational. The pupils take the entire course, after which
they are given a “leaving certificate” and can go to work; but formal
education is not yet over, for they must attend a continuation school
for one year at hours allowed by their employers. Each one is thus
prepared for future usefulness, and German life and industries reap the
benefit.
The curriculum of the eighth-grade class is as follows:
Religion (always given in German schools) 2 hours weekly; household
management and cookery, 8 hours; needlework, such as is needed in
the household, 4 hours; German, in business correspondence, moral
and ethical training, reading lessons, including domestic subjects,
hygiene and German family life, 6 hours.
Arithmetic, management of domestic accounts, elements of commercial
arithmetic, cost of living and the maintenance of the home, 4 hours.
Gymnastics and singing are also included in the curriculum.
As a part of the training in household management there is instruction
in clothing and housing which covers:
_a._ Study of the body.--Its functions and its care, breathing,
circulation of the blood and properties of heat radiation and
evaporation, and the preservation and regulation of heat through
clothing.
_b._ The textile materials, raw and manufactured.--Their physical
properties and use as clothing, hygienic rules, taste and suitability
in dress, wet and dry cleansing of clothing, the bed and bedding.
_c._ Housing.--The properties of building materials, the position of
the house, heating, lighting, ventilation and disinfection, hygienic
rules in the household, and furnishing.
II. The continuation school helps those girls who are forced by poverty
to go to work without sufficient education by giving them opportunity
for further training in the evening, on Sunday or on weekday
afternoons. Such schools are well developed in Germany. Compulsory day
continuation schools (_Fortbildungsschulen_) are found in Bavaria,
with Baden, Württemberg and Prussia inclined to follow closely. They
aim not only to continue the intellectual and moral culture of the
students, but to prepare them for definite trades and occupations. The
work for girls is less developed along commercial and industrial lines
than that for boys, but in domestic features is very comprehensive.
There are usually three divisions of work for girls--commercial, for
clerks and secretaries; domestic, for training in home occupations;
and industrial, for arts such as dressmaking, millinery, lingerie, art
needlework, machine embroidery, designing, bookbinding and photography.
Germany considers that such schools prevent the waste of life which
occurs when workers are uneducated and unprepared. As these schools
have employers of labor on their boards of management the work is
practical and is kept up to the requirements of industry.
In Bavaria, as has been said before, when a girl legally finishes her
compulsory education she can go to work, but she is not therefore
released from school. She is offered her choice of the following
courses:
_a._ The eighth-grade class for one year, 30 hours weekly, and the
Sunday school or weekly continuation class for a year following.
_b._ A school which meets on Sunday for three years, 3¹⁄₂ hours a week.
_c._ A commercial or domestic continuation school for three years, 5
to 10 hours weekly.
_d._ A division of the three years of required education between these
various kinds of schools.
Thus the Bavarian girl has a fine opportunity to prepare for her
future and to be ready for her lifework no matter what it is. The
eighth-grade work is duplicated in the continuation class, so that if
the family finances are so straitened that the daughter cannot attend
the eighth-grade class for a year, she can still obtain this valuable
training in afternoon and Sunday classes. The government requirement
that employers must allow their young employes to attend day school
during each week is a wise one, for these girls are too young to profit
by night instruction. The training has been found to give a good
economic return, for the workrooms gradually obtain skilled help and
the worker is enabled to obtain a good position and become a valuable
citizen.
An excellent _Fortbildungsschule_ is the _Frauenarbeitsschule_, carried
on at _Oberangerstrasse 17_, Munich. The building, once a palace, is
large, simple and adequate; the work is excellent and well organized.
The handwork is carried to a high pitch of technical skill and the
domestic instruction offers opportunities for specialists.
One of the earliest continuation schools for girls was the Victoria
_Fortbildungsschule_ in Berlin, opened in 1878. The majority of the
pupils are from the families of artisans and small tradesmen, and
not from those of day laborers and factory hands. Opportunities
for training on all sides of woman’s life are offered, the work is
excellently done and a beautiful spirit of service pervades the school.
Each girl’s characteristics are carefully studied and she is given the
training best adapted to her. From such teaching it is not wonderful
that there is an appearance of thrift and happiness among the German
people.
Continuation classes in America up to the present have not been exactly
like the German ones. Night classes under public instruction have
offered academic, commercial and domestic courses of all kinds; but
the aim has been general helpfulness rather than direct aid to young
wage earners by supplementing with special training their defective
preparation for business positions. The difference between the two
governments is a factor in the situation. The German government can
make such courses compulsory between definite ages and can require
manufacturers to give up their young employes during certain hours
of the day; but with us the wish of the voters of a city must be
considered. The majority of our employers assert that competition is
too close for any one firm to try the experiment unless all do the
same, and to compel all means tedious legislation. It is of interest
to know, however, that this interrelation between factory and school
has already been tried with success for boys in Massachusetts and Ohio,
and that the latter state will make the same experiment for girls. The
following plan is in use in Cincinnati: The manufacturers agree to send
boys from among their employes to attend school and at the same time to
pay them a regular wage. The board of education provides the teachers,
and the work in general is technical with as close application as
possible to the special factory in which the boys are employed. A
period each day is devoted to general shop questions, shop practise,
economic and civic questions. Practise in spelling, writing and reading
in connection with the story of industries is given. It is expected
that it will take four years for the average boy to complete the
course, a period which corresponds to the four years of apprenticeship
demanded by the unions. Reports are sent to employers of the attendance
of their employes. As children under sixteen can work but eight hours
a day, _i. e._, 48 hours a week, the employer gives up four hours of
this for school training. The boy therefore is in the shop for 44 hours
and at school four hours per week. A bill has been introduced into
the Ohio legislature recommending that this kind of instruction be
made compulsory. The fact that a girl’s business life is of uncertain
duration makes more difficult a similar plan for her education, as
employers are less inclined to allow her to take instruction in
business hours. Many of the Cincinnati workrooms, however, have agreed
to try the experiment.
A form of continuation work which promises well in trades employing
boys is the school within the factory. When this education aims to
develop the students broadly and not alone for specific use in one
enterprise, it is the best kind of training. Beginnings of such
instruction for girls have appeared in the training forewomen are
obliged to give green girls, and more orderly courses are already
developing. The social secretary now employed in so many large stores
to look after the women workers has in some cases added the instruction
of new employes to her duties. Courses in salesmanship, elementary
studies, technical and domestic training, are at present being given
as a part of the work of certain department stores. Filene’s in Boston
and the Wanamaker stores in Philadelphia and New York are doing work of
this character for their employes.