Woman's work in municipalities. Mary Ritter Beard
these and kindred administration matters. Women members of school boards do not always stand as a unit in their attitude toward equal pay for equal work or toward the question of mother-teachers. Women are not like-minded any more than men are like-minded, but they are acquiring positive views very rapidly on all these matters. They are not only holding decided opinions on questions of school administration, but they are seeking more and more a voice in that administration on the inside.
Without going further into the many phased history of the contest of women for a voice in educational administration as well as mute service under it, we may now consider the various lines of women’s interest in school improvement and try to illustrate, by example at least, a portion of the plans which they are supporting in various parts of the country, and their methods of approach to the educational problem.
Educational Experiments
The kindergarten idea appealed from the beginning to women and private experimentation along that line was one of their most successful endeavors. Boards of education have in instance after instance been persuaded to incorporate into the public school system the plan of kindergartens demonstrated to be practical and of social utility by women in their private capacities. Annie Laws, in the Kindergarten Review, states that she “can trace the social spirit of the kindergartner as an important factor in stimulating, and in some cases, even initiating, many of the social movements of today, among them playgrounds, social centers, vacation schools, public libraries, mothers’ clubs and school and home gardens.” The New York Kindergarten Association of today, like many others, is composed of men and women but largely supported by the latter, financially, as well as by active service.
Household Arts—cooking and sewing—were first made subjects of instruction in the public schools about 1876, in Massachusetts, through the work of Miss Emily Huntington.
From cooking and sewing have developed the whole domestic science education of today. Women have been supporters of this movement from the beginning and the Federation of Clubs early took an aggressive position in favor of such addition to the school curricula.
“What you would have appear in the life of the people, that you must put into the schools,” is the idea they had in mind. At first, in many cases, women furnished the equipment and paid for its operation until school boards municipalized this work.
Model housekeeping flats have been instituted by women in many cities to supplement the more limited school equipment. Sometimes, as in New York, the Board of Education itself helps to finance this practical educational work. Mabel Kittredge, who started the housekeeping centers in New York, thus explains their purpose: “It is agreed by all that our immigrants must have better homes. This has been the splendid passionate appeal of men and women for years, and fight after fight has been won at Albany: fights for open plumbing, running water in each apartment, decent sinks, more space; all these measures have been worked for and many adopted, but while we rejoice that the Italian and the Russian and the Pole are to realize better home equipment, we forget that these dazed people have no knowledge as to the way to use the improvements.”
The School of Domestic Arts and Sciences in Chicago was established and is managed by club women. In 1905 it had 1,100 students. A special effort is made to bring out labor-saving devices, the underlying idea being that the common-sense of the American homemaker will in time lift this work to a professional basis through scientific investigation and the contact of the theoretical worker and the practical housekeeper. Young women are trained in the care of children and extension work is done in homes of the people.
Women everywhere are largely instrumental in establishing courses and departments of domestic science in educational institutions, from vocational schools to the university. The Illinois legislature placed household economics in the five normal schools of the state while all the high schools of Ohio have it. Correspondence schools have also been developed.
A School of Mothercraft has been established in New York for exact and scientific knowledge about everything mothers need to know.
“Domestic Education,” too, is a new profession which has been developed by women to carry into the homes, for immediate use, that training which schools alone can give to the next generation.
Music, art, and dramatic taste as elements in school study and training, too, have been created and fostered by women, and each has an interesting history which lack of space forbids recounting here.
“A thorough textbook study of scientific temperance in public schools as a preventative against intemperance” was the aim of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union as early as 1879. Forty-three states incorporated this instruction into the school system and twenty-four textbooks on the subject circulate. If the development of scientific knowledge and psychology leads to an appreciation of the inadequacy or failure of these textbooks and former methods of teaching temperance, the fact remains that temperance needs to be taught and improved textbooks and methods will doubtless appear soon.
Today when the major interest in school instruction centers about vocational training, it is interesting to go back over the history of manual training in the schools. “Manual training as a new feature of education was partly the result of an educational philosophy and partly a protest against mere bookishness. The first appearance of constructive work for clearly definite cultural purposes appears to have been in connection with the classes of the workingmen’s school founded in 1878 by the Ethical Culture Society of New York. In 1880, the St. Louis Manual Training School was founded in connection with the Washington University, and in 1882, Mrs. Quincy Shaw of Boston privately supported experimental classes in carpentry at the Dwight School. Two years later the city of Boston also experimented, but it was four years more before manual training was given a place in the curriculum. New York City began instruction in drawing, sewing, cooking and woodwork that same year.”
In Massachusetts, during this decade, eighteen women’s clubs took the promotion of vocational training for their special task and the Federations of Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Connecticut urged this upon their members. In some instances this conflict has to be renewed every year in order to maintain that which has been secured with so much labor and expense, owing to new and ignorant or penurious school boards. Sometimes impatient women have raised the money themselves. The Chicago Woman’s Club raised $40,000 for the Glenwood Industrial School for Boys.
Although the charge of lack of virility is so often brought against women school teachers, it is interesting to record that women have been among the pioneers in the advocacy of the introduction of physical training. About 1888, through the efforts of Mrs. Hemenway in Boston, who had experimented with physical training among teachers, the School Board arranged for her to try her system in the schools. Finding it a useful addition to the curriculum, physical training was definitely adopted the following year.
The Girls’ Branch of the Public Schools Athletic League in New York was formed by women to insure sufficient and wholesome recreation for school girls who need outlet for their energies quite as much as boys. While the coöperation of the Board of Education, the Park Department, the Bath Department and the Health Department has been obtained, far better provision is made for athletics for girls by reason of the activity of these women than would otherwise be secured. The closest coöperation exists between the Board of Education and the Girls’ Branch. The President of the Girls’ Branch is a member of the Board of Education, as are several of its Board of Directors, and the Executive Secretary (Elizabeth Burchenal) is Inspector of Athletics for the Board of Education.
The idea behind athletics for girls and boys is not solely the prevention of mischief and of worse things, important as that is. Those interested in physical training desire that “life shall be lived in its beauty, romance and splendor.” They thus approach the problem with positive ideals.
Women have not blindly said: “Physical training shall be an important element in instruction;” but they have stayed by the task of discovering what kind of physical training is best suited to young children and growing boys and girls and whether different training is necessary for the sexes