Part 15 (1/2)

CHAPTER XIII

THE GIRL'S WORK (Continued)--VOCATIONS DETERMINED BY TRAINING

The question of vocation choosing begins to make itself felt far down in the grammar school, first among the r.e.t.a.r.ded and backward children who are old for their grades and are merely waiting and marking time until the law will allow them to leave school and go to work. These children are usually either mentally subnormal or handicapped by foreign birth and so unable to grasp the education which is being offered them.

As soon as they are released the girls go to the factory, to the store, or to help with some one's baby or with the housework. No other places are open to them, and their possibilities in any place are few.

They cannot rise because they are mentally untrained.

The upper grades of the grammar school lose annually many children who would be able to profit by the help the school offers to those who can remain. Some drop out because they see no need of remaining when the factory will employ them without further knowledge. Others chafe at spending time on what seems to them, and what sometimes is, quite unrelated to the life they will lead and the work they will do. Some leave reluctantly, because their help is needed in financing a large family. Many go gladly, because they will begin to earn and to have some of the things they ardently desire. And until yesterday the school paid little attention to their going, regarding it as one of the necessary evils. Still less attention did it pay to what these pupils became after they left. The school's responsibility ended at its outer door.

Now that these conditions are being changed, the school is finding responsibilities and opportunities on every hand. The foreign-born are taken out of the regular grades where they cannot fit, and are taught English by themselves first of all. The subnormal children are studied for latent vocational possibilities, and where minds are deficient, hands are the more carefully trained for suitable work. Courses are being revised with a view to holding in school the boy or girl who wants practical training for practical work. Secondary schools have taken their eyes off college requirements long enough to consider fitting the majority of their pupils to face life without the college.

Studies of vocations are being made; vocational training is being offered; vocational guidance is at last coming to be considered the concern of the school.

Vocational work is sometimes concentrated in the high school, but this is reaching back scarcely far enough, since those who do not reach high school need help quite as much as the older ones, while those who expect to continue their training can do so better if they have some idea of the goal to be reached.

What are the options that the grammar-school teacher may present to the girls under her care?

First of all, as we have already said, the school records must be kept with care and discrimination, so that the teacher may know the girl to whom she speaks. With the records in hand, she will ask herself the following questions:

1. Is further training at the expense of the girl's family possible? Do the girl's abilities warrant effort on her parents' part to give her further opportunity?

2. Could the girl's parents continue to pay her living expenses during further training if the training were furnished at the expense of the state?

3. Could the girl obtain training in return for her personal service, either with or without pay?

4. Would the girl be able to repay in skill acquired the expense of her training, whether borne by herself, her parents, or the state?

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

A flower-making cla.s.s for girls of various ages. There is no reason why vocational work should not begin in the grammar school]

Lines between obtainable work for the trained and the untrained girl are fairly sharply drawn, and the possibilities for each type must be clearly understood by the guide. If it is evident that training cannot be obtained before the girl must begin to earn, the choice is necessarily a narrow one. The factories in the neighborhood should be thoroughly studied, and, under the guidance of the teacher, girls should prepare detailed reports with respect to their working conditions. The ”blind-alley” job should be plainly labeled, that it may not catch the girl unaware. Girls who must take up factory work should at least be enabled to choose among factories intelligently, and if possible should be fortified with an avocation that will supply them with the interest their daily task fails to inspire and that will provide an anchor against the instability toward which the factory girl tends.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Millinery cla.s.s in a trade school. Where trade schools do not offer such training, there are opportunities for apprentice work for girls]

The possibilities for apprentice work with dressmakers or milliners or in other handwork should also be made known. Girls begin here, as in the factory, at simple and monotonous tasks, but the possibilities of advancement are far greater and mental development is unquestionably more likely. The ability acquired by such workers, as they progress, to undertake and carry through a complete piece of work is not only satisfying to the workers themselves, but of value in later years.

They learn to a.n.a.lyze their constructive problems and to work out the various steps of the work to its ultimate conclusion--a knowledge which the factory girl never attains.

Some few girls will need to be shown the possibilities which lie in independent productive work. For the girl who has talent or even merely deftness in manual work, coupled with initiative and some degree of originality, such work may bring a better return than working for others. Most girls, however, lack courage to start upon independent work, especially if they are in immediate need of earning and are untrained. It often happens, however, that they do not appraise at its true value the training they have received. The grammar-school girl, under present methods of teaching, is often fully qualified to do either plain cooking or plain sewing, but since she does not desire to enter domestic service, she considers these accomplishments very little or not at all in counting her a.s.sets for earning. Some girls have found ready employment and good returns in home baking, in canning fruit and vegetables, or in mending, making simple clothes for little children, or in making b.u.t.tonholes and doing other ”finis.h.i.+ng work” for busy housewives. Work of these sorts, undertaken in a small way, has often a.s.sumed the proportions of a business, requiring all of a young woman's time and paying her quite as well as and often better than less interesting work in shop or factory. A girl of my acquaintance earns a comfortable living at home with her crochet needle. Another has paid her way through high school and college by raising sweet peas.

The untrained girl who loves an outdoor life has fewer opportunities than other girls unless she is capable of independent work. If she is capable of this and has sufficient ability to study her work, gardening and poultry or bee culture may open the way for her to work and be happy. School gardens, poultry clubs, and canning clubs have shown many a girl what she may do in these ways.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Courtesy of U.S. Department of Agriculture Some girls have built up a good business canning fruits and vegetables at home]

Many times too little is realized of the possibilities of these grammar-school girls who are crowded by necessity into the working ranks. We cannot s.h.i.+rk our responsibilities in regard to them, however, although they escape from our school systems and bravely take up the burden of their own lives. Quite as many of these girls as of more favored ones will marry and be among the mothers of the next generation. The work they do in the interval between school and home will leave its impress even more strongly than upon the girl whose school life lasts longer and who is therefore older as well as better equipped when she enters upon her work. Few of these younger girls in times past can be said to have done anything other than drift into work which would make or spoil their lives and perhaps those of their children after them. It is well that the responsibility of the school toward them is being recognized and met.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A prosperous poultry farm. Poultry farming opens the way for the girl who loves an outdoor life to work in the open and be happy]

A distinct duty of the grammar-school teacher is to make known the facts concerning short cuts for grammar-school girls to office work.

Unscrupulous business ”colleges” sometimes mislead these immature girls into believing that a short course taken in their school will enable the girls to fill office positions. Facts are at hand which show the futility of attempting office work under such conditions, and teachers should be very careful to see that all the facts are in the possession of their pupils.