Vocational Guidance for Girls Part 1

Vocational Guidance for Girls.

by Marguerite Stockman d.i.c.kson.

A FOREWORD

Fortunate are we to have from the pen of Mrs. d.i.c.kson a book on the vocational guidance of girls. Mrs. d.i.c.kson has the all-round life experiences which give her the kind of training needed for a broad and sympathetic approach to the delicate, intricate, and complex problems of woman's life in the swiftly changing social and industrial world.

Mrs. d.i.c.kson was a teacher for seven years in the grades in the city of New York. She then became the partner of a superintendent of schools in the business of making a home. In these early homemaking years there came from the pen of Mrs. d.i.c.kson a series of historical books for the grades which have placed her among the leading educational writers of the country. During the long sickness of her husband she filled for a while two administrative positions--homemaker and superintendent of schools.

Her three children are now in high school and are beginning to plan for their own life work. With the broad training of homemaker, wife, mother, teacher, writer, and administrator, Mrs. d.i.c.kson has the combination of experiences to enable her to introduce teachers and mothers to the very difficult problems of planning wisely big life careers for our girls.

The book is so plainly and guardedly written that it can also be used as a textbook for the girls themselves in connection with civic and vocational courses. The only difficulty with the book for a text is that it is so attractively written on such vital problems that the student will not stop reading at the end of the lesson.

J. ADAMS PUFFER

"Vocational guidance has for its ideal the granting to every individual of the chance to attain his highest efficiency under the best conditions it is humanly possible to provide."

PART I

PRESENT-DAY IDEALS OF WOMANHOOD

"How to preserve to the individual his right to aspire, to make of himself what he will, and at the same time find himself early, accurately, and with certainty, is the problem of vocational guidance."

VOCATIONAL GUIDANCE FOR GIRLS

CHAPTER I

WOMAN'S PLACE IN SOCIETY

Any scheme of education must be built upon answers to two basic questions: first, What do we desire those being educated to become?

second, How shall we proceed to make them into that which we desire them to be?

In our answers to these questions, plans for education fall naturally into two great divisions. One concerns itself with ideals; the other, with methods. No matter how complex plans and theories may become, we may always reach back to these fundamental ideas: What do we want to make? How shall we make it?

Applying this principle to the education of girls, we ask, first: What ought girls to be? And with this simple question we are plunged immediately into a vortex of differing opinions.

Girls ought to be--or ought to be in the way of becoming--whatever the women of the next generation should be. So far all are doubtless agreed. We therefore find ourselves under the necessity of restating the question, making it: What ought women to be?

Probably never in the world's history has this question occupied so large a place in thought as it does to-day. In familiar discussion, in the press, in the library, on the platform, the "woman question" is an all-absorbing topic. Even the most cursory review of the literature of the subject leads to a realization of its importance. It leads also into the very heart of controversy.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Photograph by Brown Bros.

Suffrage parade in Washington. Women will parade or even fight for their rights]

It is safe to say that no woman, in our own country at least, escapes entirely the unrest which this controversy has brought. Even the most conservative and "old-fashioned" of women know that their daughters are living in a world already changed from the days of their own young womanhood; and few indeed fail to see that these changes are but forerunners of others yet to come. They know little, perhaps, of the right or wrong of woman's industrial position, but "woman in industry"

is all about them. They perhaps have never heard of Ellen Key's arraignment of existing marriage and s.e.x relations, but they cannot fail to see unhappy marriages in their own circle. They may care little about the suffrage question, but they can hardly avoid hearing echoes of strife over the subject of "votes for women." And however much or little women are personally conscious of the significance of these questions, the questions are nevertheless of vital import to them all.

The "uneasy woman" is undeniably with us. We may account for her presence in various ways. We may prophesy the outcome of her uneasiness as the signs seem to us to point. But in the meantime--she is here!

Naturally both radical and conservative have panaceas to suggest. The radicals would have us believe that the question of woman's status in the world requires an upheaval of society for its settlement. Says one, the "man's world" must be transformed into a human world, with no baleful insistence on the femininity of women. It is the human qualities, shared by both man and woman, which must be emphasized. The work of the world--with the single exception of childbearing--is not man's work nor woman's work, but the work of the race. Woman must be liberated from the overemphasized feminine. Let women live and work as men live and work, with as little attention as may be to the accident of s.e.x.

Says another, it is the ancient and dishonored inst.i.tution of marriage which must feel the blow of the iconoclast. Reform marriage, and the whole woman question will adjust itself.

Says still another, do away with marriage. "Celibacy is the aristocracy of the future." Let the woman be free forever from the drudgery of family life, free from the slavery of the marriage relation, free to "live," to "work," to have a "career." Men and women were intended to be in all things the same, except for the slight difference of s.e.x. Let us throw away the cramping folly of the ages and let woman take her place beside man.

Not so, replies the conservative. In just so far as masculine and feminine types approach each other, we shall see degeneracy. Men and women were never intended to be alike.

Thus we might go on. Without the radicals there would of course be no progress. Without the conservatives our social fabric would scarcely hold. Between the two extremes, however, in this as in all things, stands the great middle cla.s.s, believing and urging that not social upheaval, but better understanding of existing conditions, is the world remedy for unrest; that not new careers, but better adjustment of old ones, will bring peace; that not formal political power, even though that be their just due, but the better use of powers that women have long possessed, is most needed for the betterment of mankind.

It is not the province of this book to enter into controversy with either radical or reactionary, but rather to search for truth which may be used for adjusting to fuller advantage the relation of woman to society. First of all must be recognized the fact that the "woman movement" deserves the thoughtful attention of every teacher or other social worker, and indeed of every thoughtful man or woman. The movement can no longer be considered in the light of isolated surface outbreaks. It is rather the result of deep industrial and social undercurrents which are stirring the whole world.

In our study of the modern woman movement, which as teachers in any department of educational work we are bound to make, the fact is immediately impressed upon us that home life has undergone marked changes. Conditions once favorable to the existence of the home as a sustaining economic unit are no longer to be found. New conditions have arisen, compelling the home, like other permanent inst.i.tutions, to alter its mode of existence in order to meet them.

Briefly reviewing the causes which have brought about these changes in home life, we find, first, the industrial revolution. A large number of the activities once carried on in the home have removed to other quarters. In earlier times the mother of a family served as cook, housemaid, laundress, spinner, weaver, seamstress, dairymaid, nurse, and general caretaker. The father was about the house, at work in the field, or in his workshop close at hand. The children grew up naturally in the midst of the industries which provided for the maintenance of the home, and for which, in part, the home existed. The home, in those days, was the place where work was done.

With the invention of labor-saving machinery came an entire revolution in the place and manner of work. The father of the family has been forced by this industrial change to follow his trade from the home workshop to the mechanically equipped factory. One by one, many of the housewife's tasks also have been taken from the home. To-day the processes of cloth making are practically unknown outside the factory.

Knitting has become largely a machine industry. Ready-made clothing has largely reduced the sewing done in the home. In the matter of food, the housekeeper may, if she chooses, have a large part of her work performed by the baker, the canner, and the delicatessen shopkeeper. Even the care of her children, after the years of infancy, has been partly a.s.sumed by the state.

The home, as a place where work is done, has lost a large part of its excuse for being. Among the poorer cla.s.ses, women, like their husbands, being obliged to earn, and no longer able to do so in their homes, have followed the work to the factory. As a result we have many thousands of them away from their homes through long days of toil. Among persons of larger income, removal of the home industries to the factory has resulted in increased leisure for the woman--with what results we shall later consider. Practically the only constructive work left which the woman may not shift if she will to other shoulders, or shirk entirely, is the bearing of children and, to at least some degree, their care in early years. The interests once centered in the home are now scattered--the father goes to shop or office, the children to school, the mother either to work outside the home or in quest of other occupation and amus.e.m.e.nt to which leisure drives her.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Photograph by Brown Bros.

Glove making. Women, like their husbands, have followed work to the factories]

A second change in the conditions affecting home life is found in the increased educational aspirations of women. Once the accepted and frankly antic.i.p.ated career for a woman was marriage and the making of a home. Her education was centered upon this end. To-day all this is changed. A girl claims, and is quite free to obtain, an education in all points like her brother's, and the career she plans and prepares for may be almost anything he contemplates. She may, or may not, enter upon the career for which she prepares. Marriage may--often does--interfere with the career, although nearly as often the career seems to interfere with marriage. Under the new alignment of ideals, there is less interest shown in homemaking and more in "the world's work," with a decided feeling that the two are entirely incompatible.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Keystone View Co.

Employees leaving the Elgin Watch Company factory. Thousands of women are away from their homes through long days of toil]

The girl, educated to earn her living in the market of the world, no longer marries simply because no other career is open to her; when she does marry, she is less likely than formerly, statistics tell us, to have children--the only remaining work which, in these days, definitely requires a home. Marriage and homemaking, therefore, are no longer inseparably connected in the woman's mind. Girls are willing to undertake matrimony, but often with the distinct understanding that their "careers" are not to be interfered with. To them, then, marriage becomes more and more an incident in life rather than a life work.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Photograph by Brown Bros.

A typical tenement house. Congestion means discomfort within the home and decreasing possibility for satisfying there either material or social needs]

A third disintegrating influence as affecting home life is the great increase of city homes. Urban conditions are almost without exception detrimental to home life. Congestion means discomfort within the home and decreasing possibility for satisfying there either material or social needs; while on every hand are increasing possibilities for satisfying these needs outside the home. Family life under such conditions often lacks, to an alarming degree, the quality of solidarity which makes the dwelling place a home. No longer the place where work is done, no longer the place where common interests are shared, the home becomes only "the place where I eat and sleep," or perhaps merely "where I sleep." The great increase of urban life during the last half century is thus a very real menace, and, since the agricultural communities constantly feed the towns, the menace concerns the country-as well as the city-dweller.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Photograph by Brown Bros.

In the cities there are increasing opportunities for satisfying material and social needs outside the home]

Believing that for the good of coming generations the true home spirit must be saved, we shall do well to admit at once that the old-time home was an inst.i.tution suited to its own day, but that we cannot now call it back to being. Nor would we wish to do so. There is no possible reason for wishing our women to spin, weave, knit, bake, brew, preserve, clean, _if_ the products she formerly made can be produced more cheaply and more efficiently outside the home.