Poor -- New York (State) -- New York; Social settlements
The inspiring fact remains that the standard of home life in ethics, as in
necessities, is raising. Without doubt much of this is due to the
improvement in the class of readers used in our public schools. They are
not perfect in the matter of selection, but they carry messages to the
hearts, as well as the heads, of the children, few of whom would pass an
examination on their contents. Even the primary grades introduce the
children to the best thoughts of all time, and the crumbs, at least, are
carried to the homes.
The girls who belong to the working-girls' club carry with them everywhere
the influence that is molding their characters to a brighter type of
American womanhood. The Settlements soon become centers of education
through the social activities they make possible to the people. They
surpass the clubs in this, that boys and girls, young men and women, each
have in them the center that makes possible social occasions that are
within their means and under rightful guides; together men and women are
trained socially. The Settlements have been in existence long enough to
have the children that were the first friends of the Residents now the
fathers and mothers of children. The years of contact show results in the
homes established, in the kind of care and the ambitions held for the
children still babies. Wages have not greatly changed from those earned by
the fathers of these new home-makers; but money represents different
values. The kindergarten is the first thing demanded for their children,
and the seeds sown in the minds of these young mothers bear fruit one
hundred-fold because it is prepared.
The kindergarten mother clubs have also borne fruit in the homes where even
the youngest child has gone beyond the kindergarten's age. These mothers
learn for the first time the need of sympathy; of living with the children
through every period of growth; of sharing and of making together a home.
The result is, the homes gain in moral fiber and moral purpose. The schools
and the homes are brought into close relation through these beginnings, and
the child finds its interests a unit, and home the place where its whole
good is of vital importance. The mother establishes the home often on the
basis of contrast. "It shall not be what mine was; their lives shall not be
what mine was when I was a child."
The churches, many of them, provide for the social life of their people;
these social activities must be of a character that wins those who have the
least to contend with in themselves, who find a pleasure and inspiration in
religious life, which often is far more a matter of temperament than of
spiritual development.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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