With regard to home visiting it appears that there has not yet been time
to work out a program for the teaching of improved standards of
housekeeping, personal hygiene, and proper diet. The institutes,
however, lend their foreign-speaking visitors as interpreters to other
agencies organized for particular phases of work in the home, such as
Visiting Nurse associations, Infant Welfare societies, Anti-Tuberculosis
societies, and Charity Organization societies.
A very real effort is often made to reconcile foreign-born mothers and
Americanized daughters. Those responsible for some of the institutes
realize very keenly the significance of the problem, and impress upon
the children they meet their great interest in the Old-World
background of the parents, their appreciation of the mother's being
able to speak another language besides English, their pleasure in
old-country dances, costumes, and songs. They try in every way
possible to maintain the respect of the daughter for her foreign-born
mother. In home visits they try also to explain to the mother the
freedom granted to American girls, the purpose of the clubs for
girls, and the need for learning English themselves to lessen their
dependence upon the children.
TRAINING FOR SERVICE
It is obvious that the efficiency of the work of these various
organizations can rise no higher than the level of efficiency and
training of the workers available for such service. It is, therefore,
most important that the materials necessary for the rendering of these
services be made available at the earliest possible moment. Such
materials include compilations of data with reference to the different
groups, courses of study developed so as to meet the needs and
educational possibilities of the women, devices such as pictures,
slides, charts, films, for getting and holding attention of persons
unused to study, often weary and overstrained and lacking confidence
in their own power to learn.
It is also clear from the experiences of these various agencies that,
while giving this instruction is essentially an educational problem,
it is for the time so intimately connected with the whole question of
understanding the needs of the housewife in the different foreign-born
groups, of developing a method of approach and of organization, and of
trying out methods of instruction as well as experimenting with
different bodies of material, that for some time to come
experimentation and research should be fostered at many points.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account