c. Housing.—The properties of building materials, the position of the house, heating, lighting, ventilation and disinfection, hygienic rules in the household, and furnishing.
II. The continuation school helps those girls who are forced by poverty to go to work without sufficient education by giving them opportunity for further training in the evening, on Sunday or on weekday afternoons. Such schools are well developed in Germany. Compulsory day continuation schools (Fortbildungsschulen) are found in Bavaria, with Baden, Württemberg and Prussia inclined to follow closely. They aim not only to continue the intellectual and moral culture of the students, but to prepare them for definite trades and occupations. The work for girls is less developed along commercial and industrial lines than that for boys, but in domestic features is very comprehensive. There are usually three divisions of work for girls—commercial, for clerks and secretaries; domestic, for training in home occupations; and industrial, for arts such as dressmaking, millinery, lingerie, art needlework, machine embroidery, designing, bookbinding and photography. Germany considers that such schools prevent the waste of life which occurs when workers are uneducated and unprepared. As these schools have employers of labor on their boards of management the work is practical and is kept up to the requirements of industry.
In Bavaria, as has been said before, when a girl legally finishes her compulsory education she can go to work, but she is not therefore released from school. She is offered her choice of the following courses:
a. The eighth-grade class for one year, 30 hours weekly, and the Sunday school or weekly continuation class for a year following.
b. A school which meets on Sunday for three years, 3¹⁄₂ hours a week.
c. A commercial or domestic continuation school for three years, 5 to 10 hours weekly.
d. A division of the three years of required education between these various kinds of schools.
Thus the Bavarian girl has a fine opportunity to prepare for her future and to be ready for her lifework no matter what it is. The eighth-grade work is duplicated in the continuation class, so that if the family finances are so straitened that the daughter cannot attend the eighth-grade class for a year, she can still obtain this valuable training in afternoon and Sunday classes. The government requirement that employers must allow their young employes to attend day school during each week is a wise one, for these girls are too young to profit by night instruction. The training has been found to give a good economic return, for the workrooms gradually obtain skilled help and the worker is enabled to obtain a good position and become a valuable citizen.
An excellent Fortbildungsschule is the Frauenarbeitsschule, carried on at Oberangerstrasse 17, Munich. The building, once a palace, is large, simple and adequate; the work is excellent and well organized. The handwork is carried to a high pitch of technical skill and the domestic instruction offers opportunities for specialists.
One of the earliest continuation schools for girls was the Victoria Fortbildungsschule in Berlin, opened in 1878. The majority of the pupils are from the families of artisans and small tradesmen, and not from those of day laborers and factory hands. Opportunities for training on all sides of woman’s life are offered, the work is excellently done and a beautiful spirit of service pervades the school. Each girl’s characteristics are carefully studied and she is given the training best adapted to her. From such teaching it is not wonderful that there is an appearance of thrift and happiness among the German people.