Samuel Reynolds House of Siam, pioneer medical missionary, 1847-1876Feltus, George Haws
History
Samuel Reynolds House of Siam, pioneer medical missionary, 1847-1876
Feltus, George Haws
House, Samuel Reynolds, 1817-1899
Mrs. House was so modest in the estimate of her own work for women
that she failed to appraise fully what she had done. No doubt
the meagerness of results up to the time of her resignation and
the smallness of the achievement in comparison with her hopes
caused the whole to appear insignificant. None of her letters give
expression to the feeling of accomplishment but dwell largely upon
the great need and the unappropriated opportunity. However, a
careful review of the development of education for women in Siam
gives to Mrs. House a very high place among all the consecrated
women who contributed the labours of hand and head and heart to
that object. Without detracting one iota from the praise that
belongs to others, but rather reflecting light upon their measure
of honour, it may be said that to Mrs. House belongs the credit
for certain important steps which marked the development and
contributed to the permanent establishment of female education in
Siam.
In the early attempts at educating girls in the homes of the
missionaries the aim in view was the conversion of the girls,
to which the education in reading was incidental. Without
minimising the value of education as an agency for religion Mrs.
House viewed education as an object greatly to be desired in
itself with manifold advantages issuing from it, but especially
having an influence upon the whole social status of womankind. A
second factor utilised by her for the development of her object
was domestic and manual training as a part of the broad policy
of education. Previously the few girls in the homes of the
missionaries had been trained in ways of work to make them more
efficient servants for the earning of their keep, but there was no
attempt to give instruction of this character to others. Mrs. House
included domestic training in the scope of education. Moreover,
she showed herself ready to appropriate valuable ideas wherever she
found them, and when she saw that Mrs. McFarland later utilised
this economic factor to draw girls into her school at Petchaburi,
she readily adopted the same method.
But if the efforts of several missionary women to teach small
groups of girls may be likened to the foundations of female
education in Siam, then the boarding school which Mrs. House
established must be likened to the corner-stone of the structure
which has since grown into a beautiful and impressive temple of
learning. Hitherto classes had been the voluntary undertaking
of individuals in their eagerness to help their sisters out of
darkness; but in each case the undertaking was not a permanent
project but subject to termination with the removal of the
particular teacher. Mrs. House’s achievement at Wang Lang was the
establishment of an institution with a support and a directorate
that insured permanency.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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