Vocational Guidance for Girls Part 7

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

Helping in the home tasks. Wisely directed activity will teach the child both unselfishness and industry]

The working outfit of a child under school age may or may not include kindergarten or Montessori material. b.a.l.l.s, 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 a.s.sume 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 a.s.sistance 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The little girl adapts and imitates home activities in play]

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 cla.s.s 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Making furniture for a doll's house affords educational advantages in emphasizing the details of housekeeping]

The finest sort of cooperation 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 s.p.a.ce for a larger scheme of housekeeping, in the attic or elsewhere.

Cooperation 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 pa.s.s 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 quant.i.ty 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 cooperative 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 Ma.s.sachusetts 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 cooperative 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 cooperation 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 pa.s.s 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.

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

A school garden. The possibilities for good through school-garden work are numberless]

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 cooperative home life.

Extracts from many of Miss Alcott's stories, the Cratchits' Christmas dinner from d.i.c.kens' _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 cla.s.ses 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 subst.i.tution 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.

"Inst.i.tutional 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.