The mental activity of the girl of to-day reveals itself in the later
teens by a keen and deep interest in social questions, in the great
problems that concern women. But a few weeks since I looked into the
faces of scores of earnest college girls, many in their later teens,
who were discussing at a week-end conference, “The Individual and the
Social Crisis.” It was not a mere discussion. These girls had plans,
they had facts, they were looking at the question on all sides. Within
the month I met another group in conference. They were a “Welfare
Committee” for an organization of working girls. They knew what they
were talking about, they had plans, and were seeking solutions for
problems that needed to be solved.
The girl in her teens is a dreamer at thirteen, seeking to realize her
dreams in real life at nineteen.
During those six wonderful years of repeated crises, the mental life
of the girl is being shaped and determined by environment. To some
extent the teacher may influence that environment, and become a real
part of it. It is her privilege to furnish the imagination, through
prose and poetry, with fields in which to wander afar, broaden the
vision through books of travel and information which she may put in
the girl’s way, increase her love of music and pictures through
occasional concerts and visits to the art galleries, and in scores of
little ways open new doors to the greater realms of knowledge which,
if unaided, she would have passed by.
It is a great thing to be able to help another mind to think for
itself. That, the wise teacher is always striving to do. She
challenges her girls to think. This is the reason why she wants the
girl in her teens to know something of the history of the church; to
be acquainted with the young men and women on the mission field, and
know what they are doing; to know what the cities are trying or
refusing to do for the housing of the poor, and for the protection of
women and girls; to know the laws of home hygiene, and to use her
mental faculties to help answer the question of the relation of the
church and the individual under existing conditions in her own
community and in the world. The girl in her teens is interested most
in the very thing in which the Great Teacher was himself
interested—life, the life of his own day, and he so instructed his
disciples that the eyes of their understanding were opened and they
began to think for themselves and of their fellow-men.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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