We have already noted how this power might be used to regulate not only the quality but the character of products in the factories. If women merely passed by the outlandish hats, the high heels, the hobble skirts, of fashion, their stay would necessarily be short. The woman, therefore, if she choose, is absolutely the controller of production along most lines of food and raiment. That she shall use this controlling power wisely is one of her obligations. And to meet the obligation she must be wisely trained.

It would seem that the homemaker, as we have conceived her, has a part in most of the concerns of the community. We speak of "woman and citizenship." To many this means, perhaps, "woman and suffrage." Woman in politics is already an accomplished fact in fourteen western states. Suffrage has been granted her in the state of New York. That her political influence will widen seems a foregone conclusion. She must therefore be prepared for real service in civic concerns. Women have already applied their housecleaning knowledge and skill to the smaller near-by problems of civic life. As time goes on they must render the same service to state and nation.

We shall soon see nation-wide "votes for women," in our own country, at least. But whether we do or not, or until we do, woman and citizenship are, as they have always been, closely linked together. In every community relation the homemaker is the good, or indifferent, or bad citizen; and in every home relation she is the citizen still, and, more than that, the mother of future citizens.

In spite of the "uneasy women" who feel that the home offers insufficient scope for their intellectual powers, the executive ability required to run a home smoothly and well is of no mean order. "This being a mother is a complicated business," as one mother of my acquaintance expresses it. Can we afford to have homemaking underrated as a vocation, to be avoided or entered into lightly, often with neither natural aptitude nor training to serve as guide to the "complications"? It would seem not. We must then consider "guidance toward homemaking" as a necessary part of a girl's education and as a possible solution of the home problems on every hand.

We have thus far in this book concerned ourselves with making plain our ideal of girlhood and womanhood and with considering the problems which our girl and woman, when we have done our best to prepare her, will have to meet. We have thus far not concerned ourselves with the questions of how, when, and where the work of preparation is to be done. A clear vision of the end to be attained, not obscured by thought of the means used in reaching it, seems a necessity. From this we may pass on to careful, detailed consideration of agencies and methods. Knowing what we desire our girls to be, we may enlist all the forces which react upon girls to make them into what we desire.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 3: No studies of present-day conditions are available. The proportion spent for food, clothing, etc., will remain nearly the same. It is safe to multiply the above estimates by two to obtain the actual cost of living in the year 1919.]



PART II

GUIDING GIRLS TOWARD THE IDEAL



"A vocational guide is one who helps other people to find themselves. Vocational guidance is the science of this self-discovery."



CHAPTER V

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.



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.



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 cooeperation between school and home.



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 cooeperation 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.



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 cooeperation." 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 cooeperation 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.]



CHAPTER VI

TRAINING THE LITTLE CHILD

"Children are the home's highest product." That means at the outset that we have children because we believe in them, and that we train them, as the skilled workman shapes his wood and clay, to achieve the greatest result of which the human material is capable.

A factory's output can be standardized. An engine's power can be measured. But he who trains a child can never fully know the mind he works with nor the result he attains. We do know, however, that if it is subject to certain influences, trained by certain laws, the chances are that this mind which we cannot fully know will react in a certain way.

To attempt in a chapter to outline a system of training for children would be an attempt doomed to certain failure. Books are written on this subject, and the shelves of the child-study and child-training department in the libraries are rapidly filling. What I have in mind here is rather a single line of the child's development—that which leads toward making him a useful factor in the home life of which he forms a part. The boy or girl who fills successfully a place in the home of his childhood will be in a fair way to undertake successfully the greater task of founding a home of his own.

In the days of infancy and early childhood, training for boys and girls may be more nearly identical than in later life. A large part of the differentiation in the work and play of little boys and girls would seem to be quite artificial. We give dolls to girls and drums to boys, but only because of some preconceived notion of our own. The girls will drum as loudly and the boys care for the baby quite as tenderly, until some one ridicules them and they learn to simulate a scorn for "boys' things" and "girls' things" which they do not really feel.

Throughout this chapter, therefore, it is to be assumed that the training suggested is quite as applicable and quite as necessary for one sex as for the other.

Young mothers sometimes ask the family doctor, "When shall I begin to train the baby to eat at regular intervals, to go to sleep without rocking, in general to accept the plan of life we outline for him?" The answer seldom varies: "Before he is twenty-four hours old." It is therefore evident that all the basic principles of living, whether physical or mental, must have their foundations far back in the child's young life.



As a basis for all the rest, we must work for health. A truly successful life, rounded and full, presupposes health. Regular habits, nourishing food, plenty of sleep, are axiomatic in writings treating of the care of young children, yet it is surprising how often these rules are violated. "It is easier" to give the child what he wants or what the others are having; easier to let him sit up than to put him to bed; easier to regard the moment than the years ahead.



Aside from the physical foundation, the training that we are to give our little children will probably be based upon our conception of what they need to make them good sons and daughters, good brothers and sisters, good friends, good husbands and wives, and good fathers and mothers. In other words, it is the social aspect of life that we have in mind, and our social ideals. Whatever the boy "wants to be when he grows up," he is sure to have social relations with his kind. Whether the girl marries or remains single, she cannot entirely escape these relations. Indeed they are thrust upon both boy and girl already. What then do they need to enable them to be successful in the human relations of living?

We might enumerate here a long list of virtues that will help, but, since long lists shatter concentration, let us narrow them to four: (1) sympathy, (2) self-control, (3) unselfishness, (4) industry.

I do not mean to say that, with these four qualities only, a man will make a successful merchant or farmer, or that a woman will become a good housekeeper or a skillful teacher. But I do mean that in family relations these four qualities are worth more than intellectual attainments or any sort of manual skill. It is really astonishing to see how much these four will cover. We desire thrift—what is thrift but self-control? Tolerance—what but sympathy—the "put yourself in his place" feeling? Courtesy—what but unselfishness?

Let us, then, in the child's early years concentrate upon sympathy, self-control, unselfishness, and industry. You will doubtless remember Cabot's summary of the four requirements of man[5]—work, play, love, and worship. Suppose we could write on the wall of every nursery in the land:

Sympathy } { Work Self-control } in { Play Unselfishness } { Love Industry } { Worship

Would not this writing on the wall be a fruitful reminder to the mothers?

The period of early childhood is the one in which the home may act with least interference as the child's teacher. Later, whether she will or no, the mother must share the work of training with the school, the church, and that indefinite influence we class vaguely as society. During these few early years, then, the mother must use her opportunity well. It will soon be gone.

How shall she teach such abstract virtues as sympathy, unselfishness, self-control? Recognizing the fact that the little child acts merely as his instinct and feelings prompt, she must make all training at this stage of his life take the form of developing the instincts. Probably the strongest of these at this time is imitation. Consequently most of the teaching must take advantage of the imitative instinct. The first care should be to surround the child with the qualities we desire him to possess. The mother who scolds, gives way to temper, or is unwilling or unable to control her own emotions and acts can hope for little self-control in her child. In the same way the father who kicks the dog or lashes his horse or is hard and cold in his dealings with his family may expect only that his child will begin life by imitating his undesirable qualities. This necessary supervision of the child's environment is a strong argument for direct oversight of little children by the mother. It is often difficult even for her to keep an ideal example before the child; and if she leaves it to hired caretakers, they seldom realize its necessity or are willing to take the pains she would herself. Especially is this true of the young and ignorant girls who are often seen in sole charge of little children.

This first step being merely passive education, it is not enough. We must not only set an example; we must go farther and strive to get from the child acts or attitudes of mind based upon these examples.

Let us take first the quality of sympathy, which is closely allied to reflex imitation. It is difficult to say just when the child merely reflects the emotions of those about him and when he consciously thinks of others as having feelings like his own. This conscious thought is, of course, the foundation of real sympathy, and it comes early in the child's life—probably before the fourth year.



A little girl of three was greatly interested and pleased at the appearance of a roast chicken upon the family dinner table. She chattered about the "birdie" as she had done before on similar occasions. But when the carving knife was lifted over it, she astonished everyone by her terrified cry of "Don't cut the birdie. Hurt the birdie." No explanation or excuse satisfied her, and it was finally necessary to remove the platter and have the carving done out of her sight. Most children are naturally sympathetic when they have experienced or can imagine the feelings of others. The cruelty of children, is usually due to their absorption in their own feelings without a realization of the pain they inflict.

Training for sympathy then must consist of enlargement of experience and cultivation of imagination. Some mothers do not talk enough with their children. They talk to them—that is, they reprimand or direct them, but do not carry on conversations, as they might do greatly to the child's advantage. Telling stories is one of the most fruitful methods of training at this age. Even "this little pig went to market" has possibilities in the hands of a skillful mother. The bedtime story is a definite institution in many families. It deserves to be so in all. Beginning with the nursery rimes, the stories will gradually broaden in theme, and if their dramatic possibilities are at all realized by the story-teller, the children will broaden in their conception of the lives and feelings of others. Sympathy will thus in most cases be a plant of natural and easy growth.

Intercourse with other children and with the older members of the child's family will also furnish constant material for the thoughtful mother. The baby bumps its head, and the mother soothes it with gentle, loving words. It is more than likely that the three-or four-year-old will express his sympathy also. Surely he will if the mother says, "Poor baby. See the great bump. How it must hurt!" Or perhaps "big sister" is happy on her birthday. Again, the three-year-old is likely to show happiness also, and the wise mother will help the child by a timely word to take the step from reflex imitation of happiness to true sympathy. Nor must we overlook the occasions when some one in the nursery has been "naughty" and must be punished. "Poor Bobby! He is sad because he cannot play with us this morning. He feels the way you did when you were naughty and had to sit so still in your little chair. I am sorry for Bobby—aren't you? We hope he will be good next time, don't we?"



Teaching self-control is quite a different matter from the foregoing, and one which requires infinitely more work and patience. The first step is, however, the same. If you would have sympathy, show sympathy. If you would have self-control in a child, control yourself. Remember the strength of the imitative instinct. Next, strive to obtain control in the young child in some small matter where control is easy. Any normal child will learn that control pays—if you make it pay. Encourage the hungry child to stop crying while you prepare his food, but prepare it quickly, or he will begin to cry again to make you hurry. Mothers usually work hard to teach control of bodily functions, but often far less to obtain control of mental and moral conditions. Obedience, considered from time immemorial the chief virtue of childhood, is really only of value as it conduces to self-control in later life. The wise parent, therefore, while requiring obedience for the convenience of the family and the safety of the child, will lay far more stress upon teaching the child to control himself. The work must be done almost entirely by indirect methods during the early years. Offering artificial rewards and dealing out artificial punishments are the crudest forms of encouraging effort. The natural reward and the inevitable natural punishment are far better when they can be employed.



The child who overcomes his tendency to play before or during his dressing may be rewarded by some special morning privilege which will automatically regulate itself. In our family it is the joyful task of bringing in and distributing the morning mail. The child not dressed "on time" necessarily loses the privilege. We are not punishing, but "we can't wait." Lack of control of temper presupposes solitude. "People can't have cross children about." Quarrels inevitably bring cessation of group play or work—solitude again. The child's love of approbation may also be made of great assistance. Always we must remember that doing what we tell him to do is not after all the main thing. It is doing the right thing, being willing to do the right thing, and being able to hold back the impulse to do the wrong thing, that count. We are working "to train self-directed agents, not to make soldiers."

Unselfishness is a plant of slow growth. Indeed it is properly not a childish trait at all, and the most we can probably get is its outward seeming. But it is important that we at least acquaint the child with ideals of unselfishness. We must find much in the child to appeal to, even though altruistic motives do not appear until much later than this. The love of approbation will prove a strong help again, also the sense of justice with which children seem endowed from the beginning. "Help him because he helped you," or "Give her some because she always gives you part of hers," is often effective. Just as in the case of self-control, the child will learn to overcome his innate selfishness "if it pays" to do so. It may seem wrong to encourage any but the highest motive, but a habit of unselfish acts, resting upon a desire to win the approbation of others, is a better foundation upon which to build than no foundation at all. Purely disinterested or altruistic motives do not appear in the normal child much before the age of adolescence, and by that time selfishness, which accords so well with the individualistic instincts of the child, will have hardened into a fixed habit if not vigorously checked.

Care must be taken to lead the child toward unselfish acts, but not to force them upon him. The common courtesies of life we may require, but, beyond that, example, tactful suggestion, wisely chosen stories, and judicious praise will do far more than force.

The idea of kindness may be grasped by young children and, together with the great ideal of service, should be emphasized in their home life and in their intercourse with other children. The "only child" suffers most from lack of opportunity to learn these two great needs of his best self—kindness and service. Occasions should be systematically made for such a child (indeed for all children) to meet other children on some common ground. Playthings should be shared, help given and received, and the idea of interdependence brought out. "We must help each other" should be emphasized from early childhood.

Much must be made of the little helps the child is able to give in the home—bringing slippers for father, going on little errands about the house for mother, picking up his own playthings, hanging up his coat and hat, caring for the welfare of the family pets. Careful provision should be made for the child's convenience in performing these little services. There must be places for the toys, low hooks for the wraps, and constant encouragement and recognition of the small helper. Some day he may help you because he loves to help. Now he loves to be praised for helping.



Activity is a natural and absorbing part of a child's life. He is always doing something. It remains for the parent to direct this restless movement and to transform some of it into useful labor. Work, in the sense of accomplishing results for the satisfaction and benefit of the parent, is quite foreign to our plan for training the young child. But work for the child's own satisfaction and for the formation of the habit of industry must occupy our attention in large measure. The child's playthings should from his earliest days be chosen in recognition of his desire to do things and make things. The shops are filled with showy toys, mechanical and otherwise, and children find the toyshop a veritable fairyland. But once satiated with the sight of any particular toy, however cunningly devised—and satiety comes soon—the child forsakes the gorgeous plaything for his blocks, or paper and a pair of scissors, or even his mother's clothespins. He can do something with these.

The Montessori materials are perhaps the most thoughtfully planned in this direction of anything now obtainable; and no one having the care of young children should be without some knowledge of this now famous method. All the materials have this advantage: they offer definite problems and consequently afford the child the joy of accomplishment. A few of the occupations of life afford us unending enjoyment at every stage of the doing, but not many. It is rather the achievement of our end, the "lust of finishing," which carries us through the tiresome details of our work. The child must therefore be early introduced to the joy of accomplishment. Instead of unending toys, give him something to work with. He will appreciate your thoughtfulness, and he will find not only joy but real development in their use.

At first the child's work will consist of fragmentary efforts, but at a remarkably early age he will show evidence of a power of concentration and persistence which will make possible the accomplishment of finished undertakings. He begins to know what he wants to do and to exhibit considerable ingenuity in finding and combining materials. Most of all, he wants to imitate the activities he sees around him.

In the strain of modern life a widespread restlessness seems to have seized mankind. Whatever people do, they want to be doing something else, and the pathway of the average individual is strewn with crude beginnings, half-finished jobs, abandoned work. The child very easily falls into line with this tendency of his elders. Hence he needs definite encouragement to see clearly what he has in hand and to bring his industrial attempts to a worth-while conclusion. Avoid, even with a little child, that inconsiderate habit of "grown-ups" of calling the little worker away whenever you desire his attention or help, quite regardless of the damage you may do to his work by your untimely interruption. Keep the child, as far as possible, too, from undertaking tasks too difficult or requiring too much time for completion. Discourage aimless handling of tools. A cheerful "What are you making?" sometimes crystallizes hitherto rambling desires. A timely suggestion often meets with enthusiastic response.



The working outfit of a child under school age may or may not include kindergarten or Montessori material. Balls, blocks, pencils and paper, paste, colored crayons, scissors, a blackboard, a cart, a wheelbarrow, stout little garden tools, a sand tray or, better, in summer an outdoor sandpile, will furnish endless work and endless delight to a child or group of children. It is not so much what sort of material we use as the way in which we use it. Even at this age the child longs to be a producer, to "make things"; and his best development requires that we train this inclination. There is a prevalent notion that women especially are no longer required to be producers and that all our energies should be bent toward the sole task of making them intelligent consumers. There is, however, a joy in producing without which no life is really complete. And no scheme of education can be a true success which ignores or neglects the necessity of producing. The joy of work, the delight in achievement, should be the keynote of all industrial training. This should be kept constantly in view.

To most people there is something wonderfully appealing about the innocence of the little child. We watch with delight the marvelous development of the little mind keeping pace with the growth of bodily strength and dexterity. We are reluctant to see the day drawing near when the child must begin his long course of training in school. Sometimes we fail to recognize the fact that before school days come the child has already received a considerable part of his education; that the habits which will make or mar his future are often firmly implanted and in a fair way to become masters of the young life. An elaborate plan for the little child's training would probably be abandoned even if undertaken, since elaborate plans involve endless work. If, however, we attempt no more than I have outlined in this chapter, we have some reasonable chance of success. Given good health, with regular bodily habits, as a physical foundation, the child will have had much done for him if we have begun to build the habits of sympathy, self-control, industry, and service which will purify and sweeten the family relations of later years and make the one-time child worthy himself to undertake the important task of home building.

It is naturally a matter for regret that the teacher into whose hands the child comes first at school usually knows so little of the home training he has had or failed to have. Children whose parents have made little or no attempt to teach these fundamental qualities which we have had under discussion are sometimes forever handicapped unless the teacher can supply the deficiency. Children who have made a good beginning may lose much of what they have been taught unless the teacher recognizes and holds them to the ideal. The kindergarten or primary teacher needs to know the homes of her pupils; and the time is not far distant when the school will recognize the home as after all the first grade in school life. Then mothers will receive the inspiration of contact with the teachers and their ideals, not alone when their children reach school age, but from the time the first child arrives in the home. The Sunday school has its "cradle roll." The day school may emulate its example.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 5: Cabot, What Men Live By.]



CHAPTER VII

TEACHING THE MECHANICS OF HOUSEKEEPING

Going to school marks an epoch in every child's life. Hitherto, however wide or narrow the child's contact with the world has been, the mother has been, at least nominally and in most cases actually, the controlling power. Now she gives her child over for an increasingly large part of every day to outside influence.

More and more we are coming to see that the evolution of a successful homemaker requires that the school as well as the home keep the homemaking ideal before it. And so the best schools of the country are doing. The greatest needs of the little girl's early school days would seem to be a definite understanding between teacher and mother of the share each should assume in the homemaking training. This necessitates personal conferences or mothers' meetings, or both.

The little girl of primary-school age points the way for both teacher and mother by her adaptation and imitation of home activities in her play. In primary grades girls are approaching the height of the doll interest, which Hall and others place at eight or nine years. A doll's house, therefore, may be made the source of almost infinite enjoyment and profit in these grades. Indeed it is hardly too much to say that no primary room is complete without one. Nor is there any reason why any school should remain without one, since its making is the simplest of processes. Four wooden boxes, of the same size, obtained probably from the grocer, the dry-goods merchant, or the local shoe dealer, will make a most satisfactory house if placed in two tiers of two each, with the open sides toward the front. This gives four rooms, which may be furnished as kitchen, dining room, living room, and bedroom. Windows may be cut in the ends or back, if the boys of the school are sufficiently expert with tools or if outside assistance can be secured for an hour or so.

The best results with the doll's house are obtained if the children are allowed to furnish it themselves, with the teacher's advice and help, rather than to find it completely equipped and therefore merely a "plaything" of the sort that children have less use for because they can do little with it. An empty house presents exciting possibilities, and perhaps for the first time these little girls look with seeing eyes at the home furnishings, for they have wall paper to select, curtains and rugs to make, and indeed no end of things to do.



It is perhaps scarcely necessary to call to mind the educational advantages possible in the planning and making of bedding, draperies, table linen, towels, couches and pillows, window seats, and other furnishings, as well as in the ingenuity brought into play in evolving kitchen utensils and in stocking the cupboards with the necessities for housekeeping. The free interchange of ideas should be encouraged, and the spirit of seeking the best fostered.

The conspicuous results in this work are two: we secure the child's attention to details of housekeeping, and we build up a foundation ideal of what housekeeping equipment should be. Children in poorly equipped homes may find the most practical of training in this way. My experience has been that teachers have only to begin this work in order to arouse enthusiasm in any class of little girls. Once begun, it carries itself along. There should be no compulsion in this work. Choice and not necessity must be the rule in all our training for homemaking. To compel a child's attention to that which she will later do voluntarily, if at all, will at the very outset defeat our purpose.



The finest sort of cooeperation arises in this work when parents are led to provide the little girl at home with a doll's house fashioned like the one at school. Perhaps they may go a step farther and find space for a larger scheme of housekeeping, in the attic or elsewhere. Cooeperation among the children means interchange of ideas, materials, and labor, most helpful to social ideals.

From the furnishing of the doll's house it is easy to pass to plays involving the activities of home life. Children delight in sweeping, dusting, washing dishes, arranging cupboards and pantries, and making beds in their miniature houses, and if their efforts are wisely directed, orderly habits easily begin to form. In all these varieties of work the children must be led to feel that there is a right way, and that only that way is good enough, even for play.

The great result of all play housekeeping is the formation of ideals. It is just as easy to learn at seven or eight the most efficient way of washing dishes as it is to defer that knowledge until years of inefficient work harden into inefficient habits. The teacher will find abundant and interesting studies in household efficiency in recently published books to inspire her guidance of the children's activity.

The step from washing play dishes at school to washing real dishes at home is easily taken, and children are delighted to take it. Here again the school and home may—indeed must, for best results—work together. Some schools are giving school credit for home work along domestic lines. That there are complex elements entering into the successful working out of such a plan one must admit. A school giving credit for work it does not see may put a premium upon quantity rather than quality. The teacher who asks her little pupils to wash the home dishes according to school methods may encounter adverse comment from certain parents who are quick to resent outside "management." Nevertheless, home practice in accordance with school theory is the ideal of any cooeperative education in the mechanics of housekeeping; therefore some scheme must be worked out whereby the girls will practice at home, and, having learned to do by doing, will continue to do in the families where their doing will be a help.

Let us consider for a moment the present condition of the school-credit-for-home-work idea. Schemes are being worked out in various places, under one or the other of the following plans.

Plan I (often known as the Massachusetts plan). Each pupil, with the advice of his teacher and the consent of his parents, selects some one definite piece of work to do at home regularly, under direction of the school and with some study at school of the practical problems involved. School credit depends upon approval by the teacher on the occasion of a visit of inspection to the home.

Plan II (sometimes called the Oregon plan). This is more directly concerned with the cultivation of a helpful spirit than with perfect technique or broad knowledge. No attempt is made to correlate home and school work. Credit is given merely for the fact that the dishes were washed, the table set, or the baby bathed, the fact being properly certified by the parent. Whether the work was acceptably done or not rests entirely with the parent. In the carrying out of the latter plan blanks are usually issued to be filled out and handed in once a week or once a month. Each task carries a certain value in school credit.

That either of these plans possesses certain weaknesses doubtless even their makers would admit. But they are at least opening wedges. A plan might be worked out whereby little girls are taught one household task at a time, through their play housekeeping, after which credit may be given for satisfactory performance of the task at home. Later another household duty may be taught, and put into practice, with credit, at home, thus building up a body of known duties for which the little house-helper has been duly trained. For its highest efficiency such a plan would require more than consent on the part of mothers. Its success would depend upon cooeperative leadership and its value upon the acceptance, for school credit, of only that work done in conformity with school ideals.

But at all events, whether school credit be given or not, the stimulus of interest in home tasks may be given strength by the teacher's wise suggestion, and thoughtful consideration of the matter in teachers' and mothers' meetings will insure cooeperation of the most helpful sort. The tactful teacher will find ways to suggest to mothers that children be held up at home to the ideals of efficiency she has been at pains to put before them at school.

The suggestion has been recently made by several thoughtful educators that the noon hour, in schools where children do not go home for dinner, be made use of for the simplest of cooking lessons. The children who at seven are quite content to play house soon pass into the stage where they wish to see results from their work. They want to "make things," real things, that they or some one can use. Children of nine or ten can learn to cook cereals and eggs in various ways, to make cocoa, and to prepare other simple dishes. Their pride and delight in these accomplishments are intense. These activities are equally suited to the small rural school and to the consolidated schools which are happily taking the place of the one-room buildings. In both, the teacher may find the lunch hour a real educational force if it is used aright. If the teacher allows and guides these efforts in the schoolroom, she must keep in mind her "ideal of efficiency." Accurate measurements, logical processes, elimination of awkward and unnecessary movements, care in following directions, neatness, and precision are the real lessons to be learned.



School gardens are perhaps already too familiar to require more than a word. Their possibilities for good are numberless. In them many children get their first insight into the joys of making things grow and are led by this joy to undertake the care of a home garden and to beautify the home surroundings as they had never thought of doing before. School-garden work leads to beautifying the school grounds, with resulting pride and interest in the school.

Accompanying the activities we have suggested, teachers will find a wide field in attractive stories of helpful cooeperative home life. Extracts from many of Miss Alcott's stories, the Cratchits' Christmas dinner from Dickens' Christmas Carol, and many other delightful glimpses of home life can be read, or, better, dramatized, with little effort and with good results.

It may seem that the homemaking training here suggested for younger children is too desultory, too slight, in fact, to affect the situation much. But let us consider. Homemaking is an art, coming more and more to be based on a foundation of science. For it is undoubtedly true that, while the pessimists are telling us that the home is doomed, we who are optimists see coming toward us a great wave of homemaking knowledge which if seized upon will put the homemaker's art upon a surer foundation than it has ever been.

The elements of housekeeping are the ABC of homemaking. We shall do well to teach them early, incidentally, and with no undue exaggeration of their place in the scheme of living. We simply familiarize the girl, by long and quiet contact, with the tools of the homemaker, for future scientific use, just as we teach the multiplication facts for later use in the science of mathematics.

A definite list of the simple homemaking tasks suitable for little girls to undertake may not be out of place here:

1. Setting the table. (A card list of table necessities is useful. Such a list may be given each little girl when she undertakes home practice work.) 2. Clearing the table. 3. Washing the dishes. 4. Sweeping the kitchen. Sweeping the piazza. 5. Dusting. 6. Making beds and caring for bedrooms. 7. Arranging her own bureau drawers and closets. 8. Simple cooking. 9. Hemming towels and table linen. 10. Ironing handkerchiefs and napkins.

As the child grows older, methods of teaching grow increasingly direct. Even here we shall perhaps not talk a great deal about "preparing for homemaking." But we shall see that the tools grow increasingly familiar, and that ideals once taught are retained and added to. We shall see that our science, our mathematics, our art, all contribute to the acquirement of homemaking knowledge. We shall give a practical turn to these more or less abstract subjects.

Sewing and cooking classes are by this time a recognized part of grammar-school courses in many city schools. That they are not so firmly intrenched in the country schools is due usually to difficulties in the way of securing equipment and to the already crowded condition of the school program. The ideal remedy is the substitution of the consolidated school with its domestic science room and its specially trained teacher for the scattered one-room buildings. Wherever the consolidated school has come, it has been enthusiastically received and supported. No one wishes to go back to the old way. But in many localities the consolidated school has not come and cannot be immediately looked for; and in these places the need of the homemaking work is just as great. The teacher must find the way to give these girls what they need. If no other way presents itself, the teacher will do well to ask the help of the mothers of the neighborhood. Perhaps one who is an expert needlewoman will give an hour or two a week in the school or at her own home to carrying out the sewing course which the teacher cannot crowd into her own already overcrowded program. Perhaps another will do the same for the cooking, making her own kitchen for one afternoon a week an annex of the school. It is important, however, when such arrangements are made that they be recognized as school work, and if possible the courses followed should be planned and supervised by the regular teacher of the school. Thus only can they be held to standardized accomplishment.

The inadequacy of the "one-portion" method of teaching girls to cook has aroused serious thought, and remedies of various sorts have been applied. You know, perhaps, the story of the Chicago cooking-school student who "had to make seven omelets in succession at home last night" because one egg would not make enough omelet for the family. The first remedy tried was cooking for the school lunch room. This was, however, usually going from one extreme to the other, since the lunch room is as a rule maintained only in large schools. "Institutional cooking," some one calls it. Instead of one egg-cooking, it became one-hundred-egg cooking, and the difficulty of the average student in adapting school methods to family use was not by any means at an end.

The Central High School of Newark, New Jersey, has solved its problem by putting its girls to work, not at the task of providing the sandwiches, soups, and other luncheon dishes for its large lunch room, but at providing "family dinners" at twenty-five cents a plate for the faculty of the school. Other schools follow similar plans.

The grammar-school girls of Leominster, Massachusetts, serve luncheon to a limited number every day at their domestic science house. Here the girls do the marketing, cook and serve the meal, and keep the various rooms of the house in order. In Montclair, New Jersey, work of this same sort is done. In each of these cases the cooking is done as it would have to be in the home, not for one person, nor for hundreds, but for approximately a family-sized group.

Sewing courses also grow more and more practical. In some schools the girls make their own graduating dresses as a final test of their ability. Courses are definite, and girls completing them will have definite knowledge of everyday processes of hand sewing. The schools which add to their hand-sewing courses well-planned practice in the use of the sewing machine are further adding to the accomplishment of their girls. Those which go farther still and teach garment planning and making may consider their sewing courses fairly complete.



The formation of ideals must go hand in hand with practice in manual processes. The girl must learn to know good work when she sees it, to know a properly constructed garment from one carelessly put together, and to value good work and construction.

Time was when domestic science meant sewing and cooking, and these alone. That time, however, is past. The care of a house is practically taught in many schools throughout the country by the maintenance of a model apartment in or near the school building. In Public School No. 7, New York City, grammar-school girls, many of whom are of foreign parentage and tradition, are thus introduced to the American ideal of living. The school is thus establishing standards of equipment, of food, of service, of comfortable living, that tend to Americanize quite as much as the establishment of standards of speech, of business methods, or of civic duties. The work done in this school is typical of that prevailing in hundreds of towns and cities.



The question arises: How much of her housekeeping training should a girl receive before entering upon her high-school course? After careful consideration it seems wise to urge that the greater part of the practical household work be taught during the period from eleven to fourteen. This does not imply that homemaking training should cease at fourteen, but rather that after that age attention shall be centered upon the more difficult aspects of the subject—upon "household economics" rather than the skillful doing of household tasks.

In view, however, of the fact that the majority of girls never reach the high school, every bit of household science which they can grasp should be given them in the elementary school. Knowing how to do is only part of the housekeeper's work. Knowing what and when to do is quite as important. Elementary study of food values is quite as comprehensible as elementary algebra. Home sanitation and decoration are no harder to understand than commercial geography. The principles of infant feeding and care may be grasped by any girl who can successfully study civil government or grammar.

Shall we then crowd out commercial geography or government or grammar to make room for these homemaking studies? Not necessarily, although, if it came to a choice, much might be said for the practical studies in learning to live. Fortunately it need not come to a choice. There is room for both. We must, however, learn to adapt existing courses to the requirements of girls.



There is arithmetic, for instance. Most of us have already learned to skip judiciously the pages in the textbook which deal with compound proportion, averaging payments, partial payments, and cube root. Now we must learn to insert the keeping of household accounts; the study of apportioning incomes; the scientific spending of a dollar in food or clothing value; the relative advantage of cash or credit systems of paying the running expenses of a home; the dangers of the "easy-payment plan"; the cost of running an automobile; comparison with the upkeep of a horse and wagon; comparison of the two from the point of view of their usefulness to a family; mortgaging homes, what it means, and what it costs to borrow; when borrowing is justified; the accumulation of interest in a savings account; the comparative financial advantage of renting and owning a home; the cost of building houses of various sorts; the cost of securing, under varying conditions, a water supply in the country home; and other locally important problems. We already have "applied science" in our courses, and we are making a strenuous effort to apply arithmetic; but we have not usually tried to apply it to the education of the prospective homemaker.

Take the one question of the "installment plan." Where, if not in the public school, can we fight the menace offered to the inexperienced young people of the land by this method of doing business? And where in the public school if not in the arithmetic class? Consider the possibility of lives spent in paying for shoes and hats already worn out, of furniture double-priced because payment is to be on the "easy plan," of families always in debt, with wages mortgaged for months in advance. The pure science of mathematics will be of little avail in fighting this possibility, but "applied arithmetic" can be a most effective weapon.

In our geography classes we may find time for the study of food and clothing products, of their sources, their comparative usefulness, and their cost. We may learn whether it is best to buy American-made macaroni or the imported variety; whether French silks and gloves are superior to those made in America; what "shoddy" is, what we may expect from it if we buy it, how much it is worth in comparison with long-wool fabrics, how to know whether shoddy is being offered us when we buy. Countless other matters concerning the markets and products of the world will repay the same sort of treatment.



Food questions are opened up by study of our meat, vegetable, and fruit supply. Every town may make this a personal and immediate problem. From whom did Mr. Blank, the local grocer, obtain his canned tomatoes? It is sometimes possible to follow up those canned tomatoes to their source. In one investigation of this sort they were found to have passed through six hands. The arithmetic class may pass upon the question of profits and comparative cost between this and the "producer-to-consumer" method.

The art work of the schools may also contribute generously to the body of homemaking knowledge. For the average girl the designing and making of Christmas cards and book covers, or even the prolonged study of great paintings, is a less productive use of time than the designing of cushion covers, curtains, bureau scarfs, or candle shades. In a certain town in New England considerable effort was expended in bringing about the introduction of art work in the schools a few years ago. A normal-school art graduate took charge of the work. It has now been abandoned because "the children took so little interest." And really, if you knew the conditions, you could not blame them They studied art and copied art and tried to cultivate an artistic sense in ways as remote from their daily lives as could apparently be contrived. And the pity of it all is that here were girls whose homes, whose personal dress, were crying out for the application of art; whose artistic sense was growing of failing to grow according as their individual conditions would allow; and the public school has passed its opportunity by.

Art, as applied to school work, is divided usually into appreciative and creative work. We place before children the best in picture and sculpture and music. Why do we not teach them also the foundation principles of good taste in matters less remote from the lives of many of them? Why not teach the girl something of artistic color combination? Why not apply the test of art to the lines of woman's attire? Why not study the contour of heads and styles of hairdressing?

Happily, in these days, these things also are being done. We have "manual arts" rooms and teachers by whose aid girls are taught to use the principles of design they study in their everyday planning of everyday things. A visitor to the Central School of Auburn, Washington, reports interesting work going on in such a room. On the blackboard was written:

The general aim of design work—order and beauty. The three principles governing design are: Balance—Harmony—Rhythm. Balance: opposition of equal forms. Rhythm: movement in direction—joint action—motion. Harmony: similarity.

In the room were girls doing various sorts of work—coloring designs on fabrics for curtains and pillow covers; making original designs for crocheted lace; hemstitching draperies; preparing color material for a primary room; while on a table in the center of the room were many finished articles, made by the girls and carrying out their principles of design—"not one of which," says the visitor, "but would serve a useful purpose in home or office."

House building, interior decorating, and furnishing are all worthy of serious attention in the art course. Simplicity, harmony, and suitability may well be taught as the principles of good taste. Girls must learn these principles somewhere to make the most of their homes by and by. And again the public school, and probably the elementary school, must do the work.

Physiology and hygiene are already contributing to the knowledge which makes for human betterment, but they also can be made to contribute much more than they have sometimes done. The physiology of infancy must be widely and insistently taught.

With proper education she [the young mother] would know the meaning of the words food and sleep; she would know something of their overwhelming importance upon the future being and career of her child, who in his turn is to be one of the world's citizens with full capacity for good or evil. Knowing what were normal functions, she would be able to recognize and guard against deviations from them. No day would pass in which she would not find opportunity to exercise self-restraint, keen observation and sensible knowledge in furthering the normal and healthful evolution of her child.[6]

The "little mother" classes in settlement houses, in community social centers, and in some public schools are doing excellent work in beginning this knowledge of infancy. No elementary school can really afford to miss the opportunity such work holds out. Have we any right to let a girl approach the care of her child with less than the best that modern science can offer in this most important and exacting work of her life? If not, it is again the public school which alone can be depended upon to do the work, and we must get at least the beginning of it done before the girl escapes us at the close of her elementary-school course.

If you are impatient with a program which presupposes that practically all women will be homemakers and mothers, either trained or otherwise, let me remind you that the majority of women do marry, that most of these and many of the unmarried do become homemakers, and that it will be far safer for society to train the few—less than 10 per cent—who never enter the career than to pursue the economically wasteful plan of assuming educationally that no women will be homemakers, or that if they are they can successfully undertake the most complicated, difficult, and most important profession open to women with no preparation at all, or with only what they have unconsciously absorbed at home in the brief pauses of the education which did not educate them for life.

The education for homemaking will never lose sight of the fact that girls must really be prepared for a double vocation, since it is a question whether or not they will become homemakers, and they must at all events be prepared for the years intervening between school and home. On the contrary, the education which prepares the homemaker will exercise special care in training for those intervening years, or for life work if it should prove to be such. Of all distinctly vocational training, it is only fair, however, that the homemaking training should come first, as a foundation for all later work. Whether the girl thus trained ever presides over a home of her own or not, the training will have made her a broader woman and a better worker, with a finer understanding of the universal business of her sex.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 6: Oppenheim.]



CHAPTER VIII

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.



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"!



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.



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.



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.



CHAPTER IX

THE ADOLESCENT GIRL

Adolescence, the critical period of the training of the boy and girl, presents a complexity of problems before which parents and teachers alike are often at a loss.

The adolescent period, the growing-up stage of the girl's life, is physically the time of rapid and important bodily changes. New cells, new tissue, new glands, are forming. New functions are being established. The whole nervous system is keyed to higher pitch than at any previous time. Excessive drain upon body or nerve force at this time must mean depletion either now or in the years of maturity.

But, on the other hand, the keynote of the girl's adolescent mental life is awakening. Her whole nature calls out for a larger, fuller, more intense life. Home, school, society, dress, all take on new aspects under the transforming power of the new sex life stirring and perfecting itself within. The world is beckoning to the emerging woman, and her every instinct leads her to follow the beckoning hand.

Now, if ever, the girl needs the influence and guidance of some wise and sympathetic woman friend. It may be—let us hope it is—her mother; or, failing that, her teacher; or, better than either alone, both mother and teacher working in sympathetic harmony.



The first care demanded for the maturing girl is the safeguarding of her health. School demands at this age are likely to be excessive under existing systems of instruction. In many ways the secondary school, in which we may assume our adolescent girl to be, merits the criticism constantly made, that it works its pupils too hard or, perhaps more accurately, that it works them too long. Nothing but the closest cooeperation between parents and teachers can afford either of them the necessary data for working out this problem. It can never be anything but an individual problem, since girls will always differ whether school courses do so or not, and adjustment of one to the other must be made every time the combination is effected. Some schools content themselves with asking for a record of time spent on school work at home. Many parents merely acquiesce in the girl's statement that she does or doesn't have to study to-night, and the matter rests. Other schools and other parents go into the question with more or less detail, but usually quite independently of each other in the investigation. It is only very recently that anything like adequate knowledge of pupils has begun to be gathered and recorded to throw light upon the home-study question.

School girls naturally divide into fairly well-defined classes: the girl who is overanxious or overconscientious about her work, the girl who intends to comply with rules but has no special anxiety about results, and the girl who habitually takes chances in evading the preparation of lessons. How many parents know at all definitely to which class their girl belongs?

The same girls may be classified again with regard to activities outside the school. They may help at home much or little or not at all. They may have absorbing social interests or practically none. They may be in normal health or may already be nervous wrecks from causes over which the school has no control.

There is no question about the value of definite information on all of these points gathered by home and school acting together for the best understanding of the child. The modern physician keeps a carefully tabulated record of his patient's history and condition. The school should do the same thing and should prescribe with due reference to such record.

It frequently happens, however, that the schoolgirl's health is menaced less by her hours of school work than by misuse of the remaining portion of the twenty-four hours. No mother has a right to accuse the school of breaking down her daughter's health unless she is duly careful that the girl has a proper amount of sleep, exercise in the open air, and hygienic clothing, and that her life outside the school is not of the sort that we describe in these days as "strenuous."

It is this strenuous life which our girls must be taught to avoid. Any daily or weekly program which is crowded with activities is a dangerous program for developing girlhood. The very atmosphere of many modern homes is charged with the spirit of haste, and parents scarcely realize that the daughter's time is too full, because their own is too full also. They have no time to stop and realize anything. A quiet home is an essential help in preserving a girl's health and well-being.



It need scarcely be said that the children of a family should be troubled as little as possible with the worries of their elders. Parents are often unaware how much of the family burden their sons and daughters are secretly bearing, or how long sometimes they continue to struggle under the burden after it has mercifully slipped from father's or mother's shoulders.

Good health means buoyancy, a springing to meet the future with a tingle of joy in facing the unknown. The adolescent period is essentially an unfolding time, in which probably for the first time choice seems to present itself in a large way in ordering the girl's life. In school she is confronted with a choice of studies or of courses. To make these choices she must look farther ahead and ask herself many questions as to the future. What is she to be? Nor is she loath to face this question. Some of the very happiest of the girl's dreams at this time are concerned with that problematical future. There was a day when girls dreamed only of husbands, children, and homes. Then, as the pendulum swung, they dreamed of careers, a hand in the "world's work." Now they dream of either or both, or they halt confused by the wide outlook. But of one thing we may be sure—our girl is dreaming, and she seldom tells her dreams.

It is during this period in a girl's life that she is most likely to chafe at restraint, to picture a wonderful life outside her home environment, and to demand the opportunity to make her own choice. As she goes on through high school, she longs more and more for "freedom," quite unconscious of the fact that what seems freedom in her elders is, in reality, often farthest removed from that elusive condition. Her imagination is taking wild flights in these days. Sometimes we catch fleeting glimpses of its often disordered fancies, although oftener we see only the most docile of exteriors standing guard over an inner self of which we do not dream.

The wise mother and the wise teacher are they whose adolescent memories, longings, misapprehensions, and mistakes are not forgotten, but are being sympathetically and understandingly searched for light in guiding the girls whose guardians they are. They recognize once and for all that normal girls are filled with what seem abnormal notions, desires, and ideals. They recall how little they used to know of life, and the pitfalls they barely escaped, if they did escape. Thus only can they keep close to the girl in spirit and help her as they once needed help. They respect her longing for freedom of choice and they teach her how to choose. It is of little use to attempt to clip the wings of the girl's imagination, however riotous. The wings are safely hidden from our profaning touch. Instead we must teach her to dream true dreams and to choose real things rather than shams.



At this time the girl's life often seems to the casual observer to be bounded by her schoolroom walls. As a matter of fact, however, school work appeals to her much less than it has probably done earlier or than it will do in her college days. Dress is becoming an absorbing subject. "The boys," however little you may think it, are seldom far from her thoughts. Intimate friendship with another adolescent girl perhaps affords an outlet, beneficial or otherwise, for the crowding life which is too precious to bear the unsympathetic touch of the world of her elders. Or perhaps the girl becomes solitary in her habits, living in a world of romance found in books or in her own dreams, impatient with the world about her, feeling sure she is "misunderstood."

What can home, school, and society in general do for the adolescent girl, that her awakening may be sweet and sane, that her future usefulness may not be impaired or her life embittered by wrong choice at the brink of womanhood?

Any wise plan for the training of girls "in their teens" must include provision for:

1. Outdoor play and exercise. In the country this is much more easily accomplished. City problems bearing on this question are among the most acute of all concerning boys and girls.

2. Systematic attention to the work of the schoolroom. Thus the girl acquires habits of concentration and industry that she will need all her life.

3. Some manual work in kitchen, garden, sewing room, or workshop. Here the girl's natural tastes and inclination may be discovered and trained.

4. Food for the imagination. Books, music, pictures, inspiring plays. The Campfire Girls' movement is valuable in its imaginative aspect.

5. Attention to dress. Laying the foundation for wise lifelong habits.

6. Healthful social intercourse under the best conditions with boys and with other girls, both at home and at school. Croquet, tennis, skating, offer fine opportunities for such intercourse. "Parties," dancing, present more difficulties, but have their value under right conditions. Not all "fun" should include the boys. Athletic contests between girls do much to develop a neglected side of girl nature.

7. Companionship with her mother, or some other woman of experience. Nothing can quite take the place of this. The girl is sailing out upon an uncharted sea. She needs the help of someone who has sailed that way before.



8. Preparation for marriage and motherhood. Much that the girl should know can come to her through no other medium than that indicated in the preceding paragraph—confidential intercourse with the woman of mature years. For the sake of the girls who fail to find this woman elsewhere every school for adolescent girls should have on its faculty a woman who will "mother" its girls.

9. Acquaintance with the lives of some of the great women of history, as well as of some who have lived inspiring lives in the girl's own country and time. A long list of such women might be made.

10. Some unoccupied time. Our girl must not be permitted to acquire the bad habit of rushing through life.

11. Study of vocations and avocations for women. Avocations—the work which serves as play—should be wisely studied, and some avocation adopted by every girl.



Part of this training girls everywhere in this country may get if the opportunities open to them are seized. The proportion of purely mental work and of handwork will vary according to the locality in which the girl finds herself. In general, however, such matters receive more consideration than the more complex ones of direct social bearing.

How a girl shall dress, with whom and under what conditions she shall find her social life, what she shall know of herself, of woman in general, of the opposite sex, what her relations with her mother shall be—these things are more often than not left to chance or to the girl's untrained inclination.

The dress question rests fundamentally upon the personal question, What do clothes mean to the girl? Behind that we usually find what clothes mean to her mother, to her teachers, to the women who have a part in her social life. Instinct teaches the girl to adorn her person. Environment is largely responsible for the sort of adornment she will choose. To bring the matter at once to a practical basis, what standards shall we set up for our girls to see, to admire, and to adopt as their own?

"Well dressed" may be interpreted to mean simply, or serviceably, or conspicuously, or becomingly, or fashionably, or cheaply, or appropriately, according to the standard of the person who uses the term. It would necessarily be impossible to establish a common standard for any considerable group of women, since individual conditions must govern individual choice. A wise standard for girls and their mothers, however, will conform to certain principles, even though the application of the principles be widely different.

These principles may be expressed somewhat as follows:

1. Beauty in dress is expressed in line, color, and adaptation to personal appearance, not in expense.

2. Fitness depends upon the occasion and upon the relation of cost to the wearer's income.

3. Simplicity conduces to beauty, fitness, and to ease of upkeep.

4. Upkeep, including durability and cleansing possibilities, is as important a consideration in selecting clothes as in selecting buildings and automobiles. Freshness outranks elegance.

5. Individuality should be the keynote of expression in dress.

Conformity to the foregoing principles in establishing a personal standard will of necessity prevent slavish imitation and the striving to reach some other woman's standard which bears again and again such bitter fruit. The erroneous notion fostered by thousands of American women, that if you can only look like the women of some social set to which you aspire you are like them for all social purposes, is a fallacy, in spite of its general acceptance. We might as well expect blue eyes, straight noses, or number three shoes to form the basis of a social group.

The mother or the teacher who bases her instruction in this matter on the assumption that pretty clothes of necessity breed vanity and all its attendant evils is merely sowing the seed of her influence upon stony ground when once the girl discovers her belief. Nature is telling the girl to make herself beautiful. It is not only useless but wrong to set ourselves against this instinct. Instead we must show her what beauty in clothes means, and how to attain it without paying for it more than she can afford, in money, in time, or in sacrifice of her spiritual self. The school does its share when it teaches the general theory of beauty, with practical illustration in study of line and color schemes. The individual teacher and the mother have to impart the far more delicate lessons concerning influence and cost—mental, moral, and spiritual—in other words, the psychology of clothes.

Our girl must grow up fully cognizant of what her clothes cost. When she desires, as she doubtless will desire, silk petticoats, and an "up-to-date" hat, and high-heeled shoes, and an absurdly beruffled dress, and a wonderful array of ribbons, she must discover what each and every one of these things costs and whether it is worth the price. The high heels sometimes cost health; the conspicuous dress may cost the good opinion or the admiration of those who value modesty above style; the silk petticoat may be bought at the cost of mother's or father's sacrifice of something needed far more; the trimming on the hat may have cost the life of a beautiful mother bird and the slow starvation of her nestlings. Nothing the girl wears costs money only.

She must also learn that fine clothes are out of place on a girl whose body is not finely cared for; that money is better expended for quality than for show; and, most of all, that clothes are secondary matters, when all is said.

Wisdom and sympathy and tact are never more needed than in this sort of teaching. The principles of good dressing cannot be laid down baldly and coldly, like mathematical rules, for the guidance of a girl palpitating with youthful and beauty-loving instincts. The mother who says, merely, "Certainly not. You don't need them. I never had silk stockings when I was a girl," is failing to meet her obligations quite as much as the mother who allows her daughter to appear at school in a costume suited only to some formal evening function. There are mothers of each of these sorts.

The wise mother whose daughter has developed a sudden scorn for the stockings she has worn contentedly enough hitherto does not dismiss the subject in the "certainly not" way, however kindly spoken. She treats her daughter's request seriously, asks a few questions, in the answers to which "the other girls" will probably figure largely, and talks it over.

"Of course, there is the first cost to consider. The price of three or four pairs of silk stockings would give you a dozen pairs of fine cotton. Yes, I know there are cheaper silk ones to be had, but their quality is poor. We should scarcely want you to wear coarse, poorly made ones. And of course you know silk ones do not last so long. They are pretty, and pleasant to wear, and cool, I know. How would it do to have silk ones to wear with your new party dress, and keep on with the cotton ones for school? We don't want to be overdressed in business hours, you know. Then, it seems to me, it is a little hard on the really poor girls at school if the rest of you are inclined to overdress. They are so likely to get into the habit of spending their money for cheap imitations of what you other girls wear—or if they are too sensible for that they are probably unhappy because they have to look different. Wouldn't it be kinder not to wear expensive things to school at all?"

The object is not so much to keep the girl from having unsuitable garments as to teach her to see all sides of the clothes question, to realize her responsibilities, and to learn to choose wisely for herself.

It is highly desirable that mothers keep up their own standards of dress as they approach middle life and their daughters enter the adolescent period. Some women even make the mistake of dressing shabbily that they may gown their daughters resplendently. They are educating their daughters to a false standard and to a selfish life.

Teachers also probably seldom realize how wide an influence they may exercise upon their adolescent girl pupils in the matter of dress. Many a girl forms her standard and her ideal from what her teacher wears. Teachers must accept their responsibility and make good use of the opportunities it gives them.

It is approximately at the time of her awakening to the beautifying instinct that the girl begins to take a special interest in social matters. Here again she needs wise guidance, and usually more guidance and less direction than most girls get. The American mother is prone in social questions to trust her daughter too much, or not enough, and to train her very little.



In many cases adolescent society centers about the school. There are the everyday walks and talks of the boys and girls, the games and meets and contests, with their attendant social features, the literary societies and debating clubs, the school parties and dances. The school thus comes to assume a considerable part in the boy's and girl's social training, much more than was the case twenty or even ten years ago; and the whole trend of educational movement in this matter is toward doing more even than it now does.

In some cases schools have merely drifted into this social work, without definite aims and without conspicuously good results, just as some parents have drifted into acceptance of the situation, with little oversight and a comfortable shifting of responsibility.



When this sort of school and this sort of parent happen to be the joint guardians of a girl's social training, it usually happens that the girl discovers some things by a painful if not heartbreaking trial-and-error method, and other things she quite fails to discover at all. Most of all, she needs her mother at this time—a wise, interested, companionable mother, who knows much about what goes on at school parties and at school generally, but who never forces confidences and, indeed, who never needs to; an elder sister sort of mother, who helps. And she needs also teachers who supervise and chaperon social affairs with a full realization that social training is in progress and that lives are being made or marred.

There are schools and there are mothers who look upon every phase of school life as contributing to the educative process, and these find in the social affairs of the school their opportunities to teach some vital lessons. Some schools are lengthening the free time between periods, merely for the purpose of adding to the informal social intercourse between pupils.

Wise teachers as well as wise mothers will see that the social phase of school life, especially in the evening, is not overdone. Not only health but future usefulness and happiness suffer if the girl "goes out" so much that going out becomes the rule and staying at home the exception. It is not usually, however, the social affairs of the school alone which cause the girl to develop the habit of too many evenings away from home. It is the school party plus the church social, plus the moving pictures, plus the girls' club, plus the theater, plus choir practice, plus the informal evening at her chum's, plus a dozen other dissipations, that in the course of a few years change a quiet, home-loving little schoolgirl into a gadding, overwrought, uneasy woman.

Unless one has tried it, it is perhaps hard to realize how difficult it is for an individual mother to regulate social custom in her community even for her own daughter without causing the girl unhappiness and possibly destroying her delight in her home. No girl enjoys leaving the party at ten when "the other girls" stay until twelve. Nor does she enjoy declining invitations when the other girls all go. But what the individual mother finds difficult, community sentiment can easily accomplish. The woman's club or the mothers' club or the parent-teacher association, or better yet all three, may profitably discuss the question, and may set about the creation of the sentiment required.

Quite as important as "How often shall she go?" is the question "With whom is she going?" There are two ways of approaching the problem here involved. One requires more knowledge for the girl herself, that she may better judge what constitutes a worthy companion. The other is reached by the better training of boys, that more of them may develop into the sort of young men with whom we may trust our daughters.

Parents who take the time and trouble to acquaint themselves with the boys in their daughter's social circle will find themselves better able to aid the girl in her choice of friends. The very best place for this getting acquainted is the girl's own home, to which, therefore, young people should often be informally invited. Nor should parents neglect occasional opportunities to observe their daughter's friends in other environment—at the church social or supper, at entertainments, at school, or on the street. Fortunately the revolt against a dual standard of purity for men and women holds promise of a larger proportion of clean, controlled, trustworthy boys.

It will never be quite safe, however, to trust either our boys or our girls to resist instincts implanted by nature and restrained only by the artificial barriers of society, unless we keep their imaginations busy, and unless we implant ideals of conduct high enough to make them desire self-control for ends which seem beautiful and good to themselves. The adolescent period is especially favorable for the formation of ideals, and a high conception of love and marriage will probably prove the truest safeguard our boys and girls can have.