Women Workers in Seven Professions: A Survey of Their Economic Conditions and Prospects
General
Women Workers in Seven Professions: A Survey of Their Economic Conditions and Prospects
Vocational guidance; Women -- Employment -- Great Britain
regard to their education.
We must now return to give a few particulars which have been passed
over. Any information on this subject is, however, liable to be very
soon out of date. A secondary school that elects to teach cooking and
laundry work will want a specially fitted room, which will cost about
as much as a simple science laboratory, and will be arranged in as
close connection with the science laboratory as is convenient. This
means serious expense, and the headmistress is naturally anxious
to have considerable use made of the room. Thus she will be led to
introduce the subject into a large proportion of the classes, instead
of limiting it to one or two middle-school forms, or to a selected
part of the upper-school. She may, however, try to solve the economic
problem by making it a post-school course for which special fees are
charged. Certain schools, notably Clapham and Croydon High Schools and
Cheltenham Ladies' College are able to make a very important feature
of this type of course. To make it a success, the prestige of the
school, its influence over girls and their parents, must be great and
commanding. Otherwise, unless the girls are aiming definitely at some
professional work after the course, there is a tendency to laxness in
attendance, or to the relinquishment of the work in the middle, which
tendency is engendered by the nature of the subject. The mother's
excuse for getting her grown-up girl's company and help will naturally
be, "Gladys can boil the potatoes at home instead of at school." A
valid answer will be that Gladys is being taught to free her mind
from the eternal English boiled potato by learning many other ways of
treating it, and at the same time learning its proper place in a diet.
Failing the post-school course, the admittance of domestic subjects to
a notable place in the general school curriculum leads to great stress
being laid on the teaching of the elements of Physical Science. The
eminently "feminine" subject, Botany, gives place to Physics and
Chemistry in the middle-school, followed by Physiology and Hygiene
in the upper-school. The subjects are to be illustrated whenever
convenient, by reference to home life. A student choosing her science
subjects at College should bear these in mind as likely to be at
present of the best market value. Though it is very true that a
practical woman who is a good teacher will nowadays connect any
science subject with home life, still a parallel course of domestic
arts will draw chiefly on the lessons given in these four.
Another fact worthy of notice is that a married woman who is anxious
to continue her former profession of science teaching will not as a
rule have to suffer the usual unfavourable handicap. That a married
woman should teach the domestic subjects is quite a reasonable
proposition to many who would exclude her from most professions:
if she be also a mother it may even count as an asset instead of a
disadvantage.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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