The American Country Girl Part 19

CHAPTER XX

THE COUNTRY GIRL'S TRAINING

Here in America, for every man touched with n.o.bility, for every man touched with the spirit of our inst.i.tutions, social service is the high law of duty, and every American university must square its standards by that law or lack its national t.i.tle.

--_President Wilson._

The object of all education is to fit men for service.

--_Edmund Janes James._

CHAPTER XX

THE COUNTRY GIRL'S TRAINING

It would indeed be fortunate if every young woman who has been raised in rural surroundings could go to some educational inst.i.tution where there is a department of home economics, and there prepare herself by a thorough four years' course for a life of service in her home and community. One could hardly ask for a more ideal life than a Country Girl prepared in that way would see before her, a life that would be joy-giving not only because it would be efficient, but because it would be inspired throughout by the n.o.blest motives. There is, in fact, not an hour of the day that may not be full of joyously productive labor, if the Country Girl can take advantage of her present opportunities; and there will soon be no excuse for her, since it is now becoming the fashion in many States for most of the family to leave their farm for a time in the depths of the leisurely winter and to hie away to the university where the men listen to conferences on problems of business and produce, and the mothers and daughters hear lectures on the industrial and other features of the home.

Of this and other methods of special training for special work, some thousands among the millions of country girls must avail themselves if they will do their duty by their generation. At the basis of success in any field lies the drudgery of preparation; excellence and reward are beyond. The task of the household administrator is no exception to this law of efficiency. The work is no haphazard matter, no question of luck; housekeeping is emerging from the realm of medieval magic now.

Other things being equal, the one that has been trained for a work invariably commands the higher salary. An investigation made by the Department of Agriculture in the States of Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa, showed that the men with no schooling had an average annual income of $301, those with a common school education earned $586, while those that were college-bred received $796. These figures tell the story and impress the lesson that these sweet fruits grow high and that the ladder to reach them is a superior education. If the Country Girl really is in earnest in asking for further appreciation in the farm budget she must train for the responsibility.

But where shall she begin?

The work of caring for and building up a home is so complex, there is so much to it, that it is difficult to pin it down into a curriculum. It really fits into every department of education. It is science--chemistry, physics, mechanics; it is art--pictures, sculptures, architecture, costume, color, form, proportion; it is pageantry, drama, music; it is history--the family, law, records, relationships, eugenics; it is literature--poetry, story, myth, folk lore, epic, expression, drama; it is philosophy--conduct, the ends of effort, the individual; it is religion--the mission of love, the ultimate things in life, the use of training, the ministry of discipline; it is mathematics--accounts, percentages, adding up, and also (save the mark!) dividing and subtracting; it is economics--averages, outgo and income, the wage, the unearned increment, the community; what, in fact, is it not?

Such a calling of the roll gives us some hint of the scope and range of the work that makes the dignity of the woman's duty and privilege--of her "sphere." It is truly a "sphere," for it rounds out in every direction. There is not a single part of education that may not be useful to the homemaker. There is no least strand that will come amiss in her day's work when she is mother and overseer of the destinies of the family in her household.

A review like this makes it clear how little the education attained so far by the world reflects the whole of life when the needs of the woman in her so important role as nearest helper to the next generation of human beings finds in none of these mentioned subjects the aid she needs for her part--her half, shall it be said?--in the work of bringing forward those who are to lift the race into a larger life in the ever receding, ever growing future.

In the schools of to-day the education is modeled upon the needs of the man. In this country especially, when schools of the higher kind began to be built, the need was for emphasis on professional education. To prepare men for that need was the aim. This was what women found when they began to enter inst.i.tutions of higher education: they found a system adapted for men's needs, and especially to prepare them for the professions. At first it seemed strange to many men that women should desire to gain this kind of education. But there were other men who saw that the path toward their own needs was through the well-paved avenues of education as it then existed. So women went on; they felt that their first duty was to take the training that men were taking, if for no other reason than to show that they could. They did this. They showed it abundantly. Then they began to philosophize on the situation. They saw that they must have a system of education more adapted to their own needs. Hence the rise of courses of study adapted to the immediate needs of women in their work as home-makers and household administrators. So far these courses of study are usually found in the agricultural colleges or in inst.i.tutions formed for the special purpose of training women for home-making. This is because the agricultural college has been founded in the main since the new vision of the relation of education and the work of women has touched the eyes of educators. The old-line colleges preserve the ideals of decades ago. They are hopelessly masculinized and professionalized. There women will perhaps never find a natural normal education. At all events they will not find this until it is understood that psychology must as thoroughly prepare the young women to understand the development of the child's mind as it does the business man to understand the principles of advertising, and that chemistry should fit the housekeeper to gain aseptical cleanness in her household laboratory as efficiently as it does the manufacturer's expert to find a use for the by-product and turn it into money value. That the woman has a right to expect her college education in all its branches to prepare her for the duties that are hers, has not yet seemed to enter the minds of educators. She should no longer be required to go to a special inst.i.tution for this. She has shown that she can undertake the severest strains of educational training; she no longer needs to keep that purpose in view. What she now needs is adaptation for her own work.

The highest inst.i.tutions that exist should give her what she needs.

Until this comes along in the natural course of educational development--as it surely will--she must gain the training she needs in such ways as she can.

Nearly all the agricultural colleges now have courses of study in home science and art. For the benefit of any girls who may not be in the habit of studying the catalogs of inst.i.tutions and who would like to know what subjects the university considers to be of educational value in household economics, I give here some outlines of courses of study pursued at certain typical inst.i.tutions.

Home Economics Department, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A lesson in household economics, at Cornell University.]

_A Course in Household Sanitation._ A consideration of the sanitary conditions of the house and site; the relations of bacteriology to the household in cleaning, in the preservation of foods, in diseases, and in disinfection; personal hygiene, including the care of the body in health; heat, light, ventilation, and the disposal of refuse; general lectures by specialists, giving a survey of the field of sanitation.

Teachers' College, Columbia University, New York City.

_A Course in Household Management._ Application of scientific and economic principles to the problems of the modern housewife--with discussion of them from both the ideal and the practical point of view, taking up such problems as: income as determining the type of household, the budget and its apportionment; the choice of a dwelling, moving, and settling; house furniture, utensils, appliances, decoration, supplies, the menu, clothing, maintenance, cleaning, repairs, household service, apportionment of time, household accounts, home life.

Home Economics Department, Connecticut College of Agriculture, Storrs, Connecticut.

_A Course in Laundry Work._ The principles and processes of laundry work; equipment and materials required to do good work in the home laundry, and the use and economy of labor-saving appliances; practical work in the processes of laundering, sorting, soaking, removal of stains, etc.; special methods of washing different fabrics; starching, ironing, and folding; experiments with hard and soft water, soap making, and composition of bluing.

Simmons College, Boston, Ma.s.sachusetts.

_A Course in House-planning._ The designing and construction of the modern house; study of the plans and specifications in order to train the student to be able to read drawings, and understand the items of foundation, walls, plastering, heating, plumbing, roofing, and finishing; the history of furniture, color, and interior decoration; a consideration of fabrics, and wall coverings.

A four years' course of study may be arranged as follows:

_First Year:_ Hygiene, biology, chemistry, household administration, cookery, physical training, and some electives.

_Second Year:_ English, French or German, biology, nutrition, cookery, chemistry, physical training and electives.

_Third Year:_ History, economics, household administration, clothing, textiles, nursing, and electives.

_Fourth Year:_ English, administration, hygiene, social science.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Children in a country school scoring corn. Everywhere the country is responding to the call of Progress, and these members of a new generation are striving to reach the best.]

The elective studies in this general course may be taken from among such t.i.tles as these: Dietetics, household sanitation, eugenics, sewing and embroidery, textiles (woolens, silks, cottons), clothing, laundering, landscape art, plant breeding, poultry husbandry, bee culture, pomology, vegetable gardening, meteorology, rural economy, marketing, cooperation, organization, rural education, citizenship. Such courses as these are given at Cornell University, at Simmons College, Boston, at Connecticut Agricultural College, at the University of Chicago, and elsewhere.

Correspondence courses are offered in many colleges. The names of many such courses have already been given in the report of one of the girls who took such a course under the direction of the Pennsylvania State College, Center County, Pennsylvania.

The young woman in planning to go to the university for a course in domestic science must take into account the benefits that she herself will gain from the a.s.sociation with the other students in the cla.s.ses and in the various college exercises. The educational influence the student-body as a whole will have upon the development of the individual has been already mentioned. There are two things that no young person can gain without going away from home to some educational inst.i.tution.

They are these: contact with the great teacher, and contact with the great fellow-student. The first she can make up for to some slight extent in the reading of books; for the loss of the second, if absolutely deprived of it by the lack of companions in her own community, she cannot be reimbursed in any way. And there is nothing quite so inspiring as the personal contact with the revered instructor, nothing so entirely vivifying as the group of fellow-students. Deprived of all this, however, the girl in a lonely life must make up for it as best she may, by books, by personal experiments, by keeping a buoyant and cheerful spirit, by seeking excellence by all means that are attainable. In this endeavor she may approach heroism, and in doing this she may well attain the supreme ends of life without the help of schools, or of machinery, or of any human aids whatever.

CHAPTER XXI

A GREAT OPPORTUNITY

The mission of the ideal woman is to make the whole world home-like.

--_Frances E. Willard._

CHAPTER XXI

A GREAT OPPORTUNITY

It is possible that a good share of training for her profession will be brought right to the door of the Country Girl's future household laboratory. This she may look forward to as an a.s.sured hope.