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 The Girl of To-morrow-What the School Will Do 
 
 For Her^ 
 
 BY 
 BENJAMIN R. ANDREWS, Ph.D. 
 
 The girl of yesterday we grown folks all know. We went to 
 school with her, we played games with her, we went off to college 
 with her — the same college if our lot was cast in a co-educational 
 democracy. 
 
 The education of the girl of yesterday — we all know that too ! 
 It was the education of the boy of yesterday. It lay first of all in 
 the public school or, in favored communities, in the kindergarten 
 where "gifts" were expected to create in the child mind a certain 
 worldview dreamed by a German philosopher, but where in reality 
 social activities and games first brought little barbarians to the 
 yoke. And through this kindergarten porch the girl of yesterday 
 went into a graded place called a school — a sort of temple of 
 knowledge with many great terraces, on each of which she lin- 
 gered a year; and there she mastered numerals and letters and 
 numbers and words, and learned how these odd dead things made 
 books, readers and spellers, and more spellers and readers, and 
 geographies and histories and grammars. Yet all this was for 
 her only a confusion of memorized symbols and words, a veritable 
 desert relieved by occasional vivid teaching. Outside the school 
 it was that the girl of yesterday had her real education — on the 
 playground, in the yard and garden at home, in the house with the 
 family group — wherever, in fact, real interests and activities took 
 hold on life itself and shaped mind and purpose. 
 
 From the graded school, the girl of yesterday went on to the 
 classical high school. How wistfully and fearfully she had look- 
 ed across the green to the x\cademy ! And when the Irish janitor 
 — rest to his soul — brought across one day the Academy skeleton 
 "that the eighth grade children might see how they were made," 
 the girl of yesterday had wondered whether she must learn the 
 208 bones — or was it 206? — when she too reached the high 
 
 IThls article, awarded first prize In the World's Work Educational Con- 
 test, (World's Work, June, 1911. Vol. XXII, pp. 14526-30), Is here republished 
 by special permission of Doubleday. Page & Co. Reprinted in "The School 
 of To-morrow". Garden City. N. Y., 1911 pp. 59-75. Copyrighted 1911, by 
 Doubleday, Page & Co. 
 
2 TECHNICAL, EDUCATIONAL BULLETIN. 
 
 school yonder. In due time she came there, and found it all, alas, 
 a place of bones, not only in physiology, but bones in history — 
 "name the presidents in order," or "who were the nine muses?" 
 and bones in Latin — "do, dare, dedi, datum" ; and often only 
 bones in literature — "give names and dates of Scott's novels." 
 Lucky that life went on in social groups, in school and out, and in 
 the home ! 
 
 Occasionally, the high school girl of yesterday wondered 
 what she would do when school days were over, and of all profes- 
 sions teaching alone seemed open to her. All the world is a sea 
 to the sailor, and to girls just finishing the old-time school, teach- 
 ing seemed the only profession. 
 
 The old high school course — with its algebra never applied 
 in life, its analytical study of literature, its stilted compositions, 
 its endless translations and paradigms — employed the mind in 
 innocent exercises. That this had somewhat of useful discipline, 
 we will not deny, but it gave no practical training for life. As the 
 student grew to maturity, her knowledge of the world as it is, 
 came through outside experiences, and widened — if it did widen 
 — more despite the high school than by virtue of it. 
 
 Of the girls of yesterday who started in the elementary 
 school, one in ten received a high school education, and less than 
 one in a hundred of those who finished high school went on into 
 college. To those who went to college, education was offering 
 at best only a continuation of the literary curriculum of the high 
 school. Brave women in the last generation had demanded wo- 
 men's departments in universities, but what courses they gained 
 were largely serving to perpetuate literary culture and to prepare 
 for teaching. Men's colleges for a generation have been differ- 
 entiating into groups of scientific and professional schools — engi- 
 neering with its varied phases, law, medicine, agriculture, com- 
 merce, journalism and what not, each offering a diversified pre- 
 paration for a distinct vocation. All this time the woman's col- 
 lege has stood by its general literary and scientific courses and 
 against vocational specialization, until finally some one remarks 
 in passing that "in women's colleges alone is the education of the 
 gentleman held in its proper esteem." 
 
 The college girl of yesterday, the one in a hundred who 
 could go on to college, found herself in a blind alley — literary 
 
THE GIRL OF TO-MORROW 
 
 culture with its two outlooks, the life of the idle gentlewoman, or 
 the life of the teacher, and then more literary culture. The wo- 
 man of to-day — the girl of yesterday — if she is broad-minded and 
 generous and serviceable, owes her high qualities to the formative 
 social inrtuences which have shaped her life, rather than to her 
 formal education. 
 
 But the girl of to-morrow — what of her education? You will 
 not find it embodied today in any one school, but here and there 
 you can get partial glimpses of the world to be. Come into a 
 certain elementary school in Manhattan where the aim is prepar- 
 ation for serviceable, happy living, not for pedantry. Note the 
 equipment: a large gymnasium with apparatus suited to fixed 
 exercises, with plenty of baths, with ample space for folk dances, 
 pageants, drama — in short, with opportunity for all kinds of ac- 
 tivity except swimming ; there is a library and reading room where 
 little children work during school hours, learning that books are 
 tools to be used by all people in every practical undertaking. Each 
 class room is equipped, not with fixed desks for parrot recitations 
 to a parrot teacher, but with ordinary work tables and chairs 
 suitable for working operations, for conversation, discussion and 
 cooperation ; and there are special rooms besides — a cooking room 
 and dining room where little girls learn the wonders of bread 
 doughs and soups, a shop room where the rougher, heavier con- 
 structive work is carried on, a sewing room for clothing projects, 
 a club room giving place for social activities, a garden space on 
 the roof in lieu of nature's space on the ground. Such is the 
 building, and within it one finds life, not barren schooling. Can I 
 say better than that each subject is lived through, not learned — 
 that one acquires letters to read a loved story, and numbers to 
 count and control some matter already of real concern; that one 
 studies history to understand the puzzle of the Stars and Stripes 
 and the devotion of the veterans on Memorial day ; and geography 
 to know why there is a valley here where the school house stands, 
 and to know where these ships are bound that pass on the river. 
 
 The way of real education is the setting of the child's mind 
 to solve the problems that life fixes; and this way my ideal ele- 
 mentary school has found. Not only in method but in content 
 of study does it reach out into life's realities. The weakness of 
 the old school was that it worked in a vacuum ; the strength of 
 
4 TECHNICAL. EDUCATIONAIi BTJLUSTIN. 
 
 the new school is that its subject matter of instruction is not only 
 literary material and scientific results (as in history and geog- 
 raphy), but that all this and everything in its curriculum is taught 
 as an interpretation of the work-a-day dynamic world in which we 
 live. The new school will give to pupils at fourteen years of age 
 intelligence regarding the various fields of work — professional 
 practice, trade, commerce, or housekeeping — which are opening up 
 before them and will thus aid in that most fundamental decision — 
 the choice of a vocation. Industrial and vocational intelligence 
 (not specific vocational training however) describes this new aim 
 of the elementary school. Through this period, the training of 
 both sexes will stand substantially alike, liberalizing, cultural, 
 problem-solving, informational as regards the world just ahead. 
 
 What now of the higher schools, where the girl of to-morrow 
 fits herself for the woman's work of the day after? Come into 
 a certain great new technical high school in an Ohio metropolis. 
 It has for its principal the graduate of an engineering college, and 
 it offers courses especially for boys and courses especially for 
 girls. Here the girl who must soon make a livelihood may pre- 
 pare to be a designer in special fields, an illustrator, a house man- 
 ager, a private secretary, a dressmaker, a milliner, an infant's 
 nurse, or perhaps a skilled cook — and she is trained in such a way 
 that she keeps a more liberal outlook on life than the specialized 
 worker of to-day dreams of. Or go to Chicago with its promising 
 two-year vocational high school for those who can tarry but two 
 years after grammar school before going to work. Take notice 
 of its system of cooperation between school and shop and factory, 
 which successfully combines instruction and practice. And this 
 is but an indication of a mighty revolution in education — the girl 
 shall be taught a definite vocation (outside of home work) as 
 well as the boy. The school shall prepare young people for prac- 
 tical life. The elementary school, although it will not teach vo- 
 cations, shall fit children to make an intelligent choice. The high 
 school shall give them the training they need for their elected 
 careers ; it shall offer courses of varied length and purpose — two 
 years for those who stay only so long, four years for those who 
 remain longer. With vocational training shall go some liberal 
 culture, so that, ultimately, every man shall have a vocation and 
 a free choice of avocations at his command. 
 
THE GIRL OF TO-MORROW 
 
 The girl of to-morrow who can postpone her vocational choice 
 shall find an opportunity in the high school to continue her lib- 
 eral education ; but for her benefit there shall be highly special- 
 ized schools which, when she has finished her preliminary training, 
 will give her scientific preparation for useful work. A number 
 of such schools are already in existence. 
 
 Go to the splendid institutes in Brooklyn, Philadelphia, Roch- 
 ester, and Chicago, established by far-seeing men of wealth to 
 train high school graduates for practical service, and canvass the 
 training offered there to the girl of to-morrow. Preparation for 
 household management, woman's traditional field, is provided as 
 a matter of course — but note with what new implications and ap- 
 plications. First, we find hundreds of teachers of domestic 
 science who may increase the efficiency of private housekeeping 
 through that socializing instrument, the public school, to the end 
 that housework may pass over into a science, as the poor decrepit 
 farming of the last generation has become the agriculture of to- 
 day. What of the household when methods of dry farming, irri- 
 gation, Burbanking, modem chemistry, bacteriology, and me- 
 chanics shall be turned loose within doors as well as out on the 
 land? But new opportunities in household arts are also opening 
 in every direction. In the Rochester institution there is a course 
 of training in lunch-room management, in which the young wo- 
 men are instructed in related science, but especially in the practise 
 of their profession by daily responsibility in conducting a lunch 
 room for 200 students. The graduates have been quickly ab- 
 sorbed in Rochester by wise managers of banks, department 
 stores, and factories; one, salaried at $1,200, directs her French 
 chefs and feeds the 300 employees of a department store; another 
 manages a lunch room in a huge clothing factory, and, since her 
 advent, saloons across the street have gone out of business. A 
 similarly trained young woman took hold of a lunch room in St. 
 Louis last fall, improved the service, and turned a deficit into a 
 $290 surplus the first month. Schools, banks, mercantile and 
 commercial houses need the trained lunch-room manager and are 
 discovering their need and how to fill it. It is only a step from 
 this to the commercial lunch room. The best lunch rooms in 
 Boston, and they are among the largest too, are today conducted 
 by a trained woman, and they are cleaner than your own kitchen. 
 
6 TECHNICAL, EDUCATIONAL BULLETIN. 
 
 Even the despised delicatessen shop and the commercial bakery 
 may yet come into the hands of the trained woman, who will give 
 us there, on a grand social scale, the safeguards to health which 
 in the past she provided for the private home. Again, these in- 
 stitutes are fitting women to conduct dressmaking shops and 
 millinery shops as skilled business enterprises. Who knows but 
 that escape from the robber-barons of fashion will come through 
 the more intelligent professional standards of those who clothe us ? 
 All kinds of artistic achievement, in design, in illustration, and 
 creative work in all the special fields for which deft fingers and the 
 sensitive eye are essential, as well as enterprise along commercial 
 and industrial lines, are other ventures which these practical in- 
 stitutes are providing for the young woman of tomorrow. 
 
 What the young man of to-morrow does, the young woman 
 of to-morrow may also freely do if she will — and so we shall then 
 find her occasionally, as we find her now, in the advanced pro- 
 fessional fields of engineering, law, medicine, and the ministry. 
 It is well so, for absolute freedom of action is the only possible 
 basis for a wise choice of vocations. The young women who go 
 into higher professional training will, however, fit themselves, as 
 a general thing, for the fields of service that belong distinctively 
 to women. 
 
 But what about a professional, specialized education for wo- 
 men, on a university level — an education that corresponds to the 
 training young men receive at schools of technology? For ans- 
 wer, go to a certain pent-up Manhattan street and enter the 
 business-like looking structure that stands there. In this building 
 seven hundred young women are hard at work studying the 
 household arts. Make inquiries about them. One is the director 
 of a college dormitory, come for special instruction in dietetics, 
 that the 300 girls in her charge may enjoy nutritious food while 
 her expenditures still keep within her budget allowance. Another 
 wishes to be a visiting dietitian, instructing in tenement homes as 
 to the best food for the infant, the working man, and the aged. 
 There is a group of graduate nurses, already skilled in their pro- 
 fession, fitting themselves for the administration of hospitals, or 
 for teaching positions in nurses' training schools. There is a 
 nurse who is matriculated in "laundry management" and will be- 
 come the director of a hospital laundry. Here are young women 
 
THE GIRL OF TO-MORROW 7 
 
 preparing in house decoration or interior decoration, others as 
 costume designers and illustrators or as designers in special in- 
 dustrial fields of unending variety. Others of these young women 
 of to-morrow have entered for diplomas in household administra- 
 tion and in dietetics; preparing, some for general institutional 
 ■management, and others for the direction of the commissary 
 department of institutions, such as the school and college dormi- 
 tor}% the asylum, the hospital, and the orphanage — undertakings 
 that involve money, materials, and labor in factory-like quantities 
 and for which compensation will be given according to the re- 
 sponsibility involved. There are curricula which prepare for the 
 less ambitious but no less important management of the private 
 home ; and for a new field of special study, that of nursery man- 
 agement, which promises aid in the infant mortality campaign. 
 Other courses prepare for sanitary inspection of markets, tene- 
 ments, and food supplies, and for various kinds of service in the 
 municipal housekeeping which now guards the private home. 
 Graduates of these institutes will teach to all people the new 
 science of right living, and will make it the law of the land. 
 
 Here, then, is a technical school of collegiate rank for women, 
 devoted to the development upon a social scale of those household 
 activities which have long been women's particular domain, and 
 to the professional training of women not only in the conduct of 
 the private house but also of the institution and of related indus- 
 trial undertakings. What is being done in this building in Man- 
 hattan is also under way in other university centres, at Boston, 
 Toronto, Chicago, and elsewhere. In these collegiate schools of 
 household science and arts, which promise to be a feature of 
 American universities as common as schools of engineering, the 
 young woman of to-morrow will find one of her most fascinating 
 fields of possible study. 
 
 And personal life and the private home will not suflFer in the 
 education of the girl of to-morrow. Some things seem fairly cer- 
 tain. Every young woman (social parasites disregarded) will be 
 taught some useful livelihood which she will pursue at least until 
 marriage, in some cases after, and which will be insurance if, after 
 marriage, she is again thrown upon her own resources ; every 
 young woman will learn the elements of household management 
 in her public school education, so that she may intelligently direct 
 
LIBRftRY OF CONGRESS 
 
 019 646 430 ft i 
 
 8 TECHNICAL. EDUCATIONAL. BULJL.BTIN. 
 
 a home, if it comes to her. The industries of the household will 
 be increasingly organized outside the home, and she will bring to 
 their direction her time-proved standards of devotion, rendered 
 more effective by scientific training and professional preparation. 
 With readjustment will come opportunity for life as well as living, 
 and regard for liberal culture will accompany industrial efifi- 
 ciency ; this element will be fostered in woman's education as well 
 as in man's and to the girl of the future will be given an education 
 not only for efficient service but for vigorous health and for lib- 
 eral living. 
 
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