THREE THOUSAND SENSIBLE GIRLS.
About two dozen of the smaller girls’ schools throughout the West and South last month graduated almost three thousand girls from their new domestic science courses. All these girls have had not less than eight months’ instruction, while many of them have had two years’ study. And one of the most remarkable facts in connection with these schools is that invariably their domestic science classes could have been as large again this year had the proper facilities been at their disposal at the beginning of last autumn’s term. In nearly every instance the statement is made that the classes will be extended next term. The most creditable thing to the girls in these schools is that of their own volition they invariably chose the domestic science course. In three of these girls’ schools, for example, the principals had given no thought to establishing such a course until, surprised at the general demand, it was instituted at the last moment. At once the classes were filled, and in each of these three instances many applications had to be refused. This trend of the sensible American girl is the more significant when one considers how very recent is the growing change in the belief, which so long has been deep-rooted, that to know anything of the mysteries of the cooking-stove and of the plain practical things of life was beneath a girl’s dignity. When over three thousand girls voluntarily come to their senses, and deliberately elect to know something of browning as well as Browning, it is a very fair indication that all American girls are not quite so silly and heedless of the true elements that constitute a woman’s life as some would have us believe. Our girls fluctuate, just as we all do in America. They have had a period of living on the heights of Parnassus, and held soulful commune with esoterics and æsthetics. They steeped themselves with ologies and osophies until their pretty heads fairly reeled. They were told that these things were “it,” as the boys say, in a woman’s education, and, girl-like, desiring to be of the period, they went in and had great times with a maze of studies which are never heard of outside the walls of colleges, and which are practically of little use. But suddenly they awoke to the fact that a woman’s life is made up of other things besides the mental; and, holding on to the best of what a good college affords, they demanded that the practical part of their future life should enter somewhat into their curriculum. And, as usual, when the American girl sets out to get a thing, she got it. And in getting it she unconsciously showed the woman’s college of America its way toward its wisest and only possible future development as a factor in feminine life. In any outcry for a reform the actual facts are in almost all cases distorted and magnified; and undoubtedly the woman’s college has been made to bear more than it deserved in the criticism hurled against it. That it has failed in its wisest curriculum is not at all surprising when one considers the recent origin of the woman’s college. It had to feel its way: first against absolute opposition, and later against simple tolerance. Only recently has it risen to a place where it has received the recognition to which, as an institution, it was entitled from the very first. Naturally, its promoters erred, and are still erring. But the errors made in women’s colleges are not a whit more flagrant than those made in men’s colleges. There are just as many men’s colleges the training of which is quite as useless to a man for a practical life as there are women’s colleges which utterly fail to grasp the most needful knowledge in a woman’s life. The difference is that men have their useless collegiate knowledge knocked out of them in the business world, and the knocking-out process inflicts the principal pain upon themselves. Women carry their collegiate theoretical knowledge directly into homes of their own, and thus the evil results are not individual. Perhaps, therefore, the curriculum of the woman’s college is really the more important, because it bears more directly upon the lives of others. There is no doubt that the average girls’ college would be more useful to girls themselves and to American domestic life in general if the practical components of a woman’s life entered a little more into its curriculum. It is not an unusual thing to see a girl sent out by a college as proficient in geometry, who, for the life of her, can not keep a simple account of her own expenses correctly, and to whom the correct keeping of the expense account of a household would be an impossible feat. Girls are turned out by our colleges with diplomas telling us how efficient they were in the physiology class, and yet they have absolutely no practical knowledge of their own healthful dressing or hygienic eating. We see Latin scholars who are failures in their own language. I must confess that in my editorial experience I have come across more atrocious chirography in letters from college girls than I would have believed possible. Some day our girls’ colleges will wake up to the fact that for a girl to be able to write an intelligent letter, properly punctuated, and in a handwriting which does not drive a man to profanity, is likely to be of more value to her than the gift to glibly decline a Latin verb. It is a better mixture of the practical with the less useful that is needed in the management of girls’ colleges. That is all. There is no sense in going to the extreme, and sneering, as do some of the radical reformers, at the girls’ college in its entirety. It is just as important that a girl should have good mental discipline as a man, and that mental discipline it is only possible to get at college. But there should be something besides that. As it is now, the college gives a girl only mental resources. It should go further, and give her also a fund of practical knowledge from which to draw when she becomes a wife, a mother, and a home-keeper. That is the field for the women’s colleges—not, by any means, becoming more practical outfitters, but adding the practical to the mental. The day of the purely “elegant” education for a girl is over, and the girls’ college can not afford to overlook and fail to recognize the new tendency. On the contrary, it has an opportunity to step in and become one of the greatest and most potential factors in the life of this nation. It must teach girls more clearly the things which every normal-minded woman must learn at some period in her life, and which thousands of young wives have learned at the cost of many tears and many heart-pangs. Too many girls nowadays marry and “set up” a home, and learn then for the first time what they should have learned before. If the college would become more of a practical institution, thousands of young wives of the future could be spared the awful mess of mistakes that the untrained young housewife makes. It is a cruel experience for a girl to awaken after marriage from her dream that her part in the partnership of love and life was to be only that of an ornamental, and not a practical, worker. Yet we all know girls who go into the marriage state with just such an idea. It is a pitiable spectacle to see a girl whose only means of helping in the income or life of a household is by making a little dab at trimming a bonnet, or bending over some eye-blinding embroidery, or spattering around a little with water-colors, or thrumming mechanically on the piano. One practical idea of housekeeping would outclass all these. This is why the three thousand girls are so eminently sensible who were graduated this spring with some idea of what mean the elements which enter into a home. Granted that a domestic science course can not make a housekeeper any more than a business college course can make a business man, still, the rudimentary knowledge is there. The girl, when she becomes a wife, does not enter a home helpless. She has some knowledge to go on: something to stand on. If after leaving college, she can have some practical experience in her mother’s home and kitchen, she is a wise girl if she avails herself of the opportunity. Then when she goes into a home of her own, her womanly instincts will do the rest. She will, of course, make mistakes. We all do. A wife’s first year at housekeeping is precisely like a man’s first year in business. Young husbands should not forget this. The thousand and one little details that enter into the easy running of a home are just as difficult of acquirement to a woman as are the details of a business to a man. As he makes mistakes upon his initiation into the business world, so a woman inevitably makes mistakes upon her initiation into her world. A young housewife’s mistakes are always most humiliating to herself. They are a keen sorrow to her. It is only through patience and loving sympathy that she can endure them. But she can save herself much, and the college can be a tremendous factor in her future happiness, if the ground of a practical knowledge is laid in girlhood days. The value of what we learn comes when we put to a practical test what we have learned. Then we are glad for everything we have ever learned. This truth each one of the three thousand domestic science graduates will find out.