The Renaissance of Girls' Education in England: A Record of Fifty Years' ProgressZimmern, Alice
History
The Renaissance of Girls' Education in England: A Record of Fifty Years' Progress
Zimmern, Alice
Women -- Education -- Great Britain
Even more widespread than these day-schools are the evening classes in
the same subjects. These are found throughout the country, in towns at
technical institutes, in villages in little classes taught by
peripatetic teachers, who are sent from place to place by the county
councils. In fact, ‘county council dressmaking’ has become such a
feature, that it might be taken for a special system of cutting and
fitting. The persons for whose benefit this instruction is given are
young women who have left school, wives, and mothers of families. If
experience has taught them their own deficiencies, they have now the
opportunity of making up lost ground. Cookery, dressmaking, and nursing
often attract large numbers. The teaching has no professional purpose.
It is simply ‘for home use,’ as the Germans say, and has its place in a
wide scheme of general education, which includes training the hand as
well as the mind.
This village work must, to some extent, be desultory, while, in the
large town institutes, it can be made more systematic. Its value is
considerably affected by the construction of the board which controls
it. A council which places experts on its technical education committee
generally does better than one that simply adds education to its other
manifold functions. Women are able to sit on these committees, and it is
of great importance, for the more feminine side of the work, that they
should be appointed in larger numbers than has hitherto been the case.
The female element is represented at some of the institutes by the
appointment of a lady-superintendent of the women’s department. This is
the case in the London Polytechnics, where the women’s work is very
fully equipped. At Battersea, which may be taken as typical, the
subjects taught in this department are: cookery, needlework, dress
cutting and making, millinery, fancy needlework and embroidery, laundry
work. In most of these subjects pupils can be prepared for the
examinations of the City and Guilds of London Institute. The fees are
low, and the courses carefully graduated. There is an interesting class
in ‘homekeeping,’ intended for students whose occupation prevents them
from getting the necessary knowledge of housekeeping during the day.
This includes such items as spring cleaning, ordinary household duties
and daily routine, and is probably of special use to that large class of
housekeepers who, having learnt their own deficiencies from bitter
experience, can value this opportunity of remedying them. Another useful
course is elementary political economy, which includes value and
distribution of wealth, rent, wages, and other similar problems. This
instruction, to which both mistress and maid might listen with profit,
can be had by Polytechnic members for 1s., and for 1s. 6d. by outsiders.
Members may also join a reading circle and a first-aid class; they can
use the beautiful gymnasium, and refresh their cramped limbs with
musical drill.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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