Farm life -- United States; Girls -- United States
The work of caring for and building up a home is so complex, there
is so much to it, that it is difficult to pin it down into a
curriculum. It really fits into every department of education. It is
science--chemistry, physics, mechanics; it is art--pictures, sculptures,
architecture, costume, color, form, proportion; it is pageantry, drama,
music; it is history--the family, law, records, relationships, eugenics;
it is literature--poetry, story, myth, folk lore, epic, expression,
drama; it is philosophy--conduct, the ends of effort, the individual; it
is religion--the mission of love, the ultimate things in life, the use
of training, the ministry of discipline; it is mathematics--accounts,
percentages, adding up, and also (save the mark!) dividing and
subtracting; it is economics--averages, outgo and income, the wage, the
unearned increment, the community; what, in fact, is it not?
Such a calling of the roll gives us some hint of the scope and range of
the work that makes the dignity of the woman's duty and privilege--of
her "sphere." It is truly a "sphere," for it rounds out in every
direction. There is not a single part of education that may not be
useful to the homemaker. There is no least strand that will come amiss
in her day's work when she is mother and overseer of the destinies of
the family in her household.
A review like this makes it clear how little the education attained so
far by the world reflects the whole of life when the needs of the woman
in her so important role as nearest helper to the next generation of
human beings finds in none of these mentioned subjects the aid she needs
for her part--her half, shall it be said?--in the work of bringing
forward those who are to lift the race into a larger life in the ever
receding, ever growing future.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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