AN ESTIMATE OF HER WORK
Mrs. House was so modest in the estimate of her own work for women that she failed to appraise fully what she had done. No doubt the meagerness of results up to the time of her resignation and the smallness of the achievement in comparison with her hopes caused the whole to appear insignificant. None of her letters give expression to the feeling of accomplishment but dwell largely upon the great need and the unappropriated opportunity. However, a careful review of the development of education for women in Siam gives to Mrs. House a very high place among all the consecrated women who contributed the labours of hand and head and heart to that object. Without detracting one iota from the praise that belongs to others, but rather reflecting light upon their measure of honour, it may be said that to Mrs. House belongs the credit for certain important steps which marked the development and contributed to the permanent establishment of female education in Siam.
In the early attempts at educating girls in the homes of the missionaries the aim in view was the conversion of the girls, to which the education in reading was incidental. Without minimising the value of education as an agency for religion Mrs. House viewed education as an object greatly to be desired in itself with manifold advantages issuing from it, but especially having an influence upon the whole social status of womankind. A second factor utilised by her for the development of her object was domestic and manual training as a part of the broad policy of education. Previously the few girls in the homes of the missionaries had been trained in ways of work to make them more efficient servants for the earning of their keep, but there was no attempt to give instruction of this character to others. Mrs. House included domestic training in the scope of education. Moreover, she showed herself ready to appropriate valuable ideas wherever she found them, and when she saw that Mrs. McFarland later utilised this economic factor to draw girls into her school at Petchaburi, she readily adopted the same method.
But if the efforts of several missionary women to teach small groups of girls may be likened to the foundations of female education in Siam, then the boarding school which Mrs. House established must be likened to the corner-stone of the structure which has since grown into a beautiful and impressive temple of learning. Hitherto classes had been the voluntary undertaking of individuals in their eagerness to help their sisters out of darkness; but in each case the undertaking was not a permanent project but subject to termination with the removal of the particular teacher. Mrs. House’s achievement at Wang Lang was the establishment of an institution with a support and a directorate that insured permanency.
In the voluntary classes the girls were in contact with the teachers for a few hours at the most and then returned to native environment to which they were subject for the greater part of the time. It was like taking one step forward and then stepping back. The influence of the home and of the city largely obstructed the good impulses received by the girls while with their teachers. The advance feature of the Wang Lang school was that the girls were to remain under constant Christian influence, in frequent contact with the teachers and subject to the daily discipline of an ideal Christian home. While the girls were devoting their full mental energy to study, the Christian religion had the fairest chance to bear its fruit in ennobled character, free from the blighting influence of pagan customs and morals.
As indicative of what this school meant for the future educational program in Siam it is worthy of note that twenty-five years after the establishment of the Wang Lang school, the entire female teaching force in the government public schools in Bangkok were graduates of this school, thirteen in number, all but one of whom were professing Christians. It is no wonder, then, that the Minister of Education in Siam, at a commencement of the school, said:
“The Siamese formerly had a proverb which was in every man’s mouth: ‘Woman is a buffalo; only man is human.’ Through the influence of your school and the teaching of the American Missionary women, we have thrown that old proverb away, and our own government is founding schools for the education of girls.”
As a mark of honour to the founder this school was named “The Harriet House School for Girls,” a name which it retained until successful growth made it necessary to divide the school and seek new quarters; the higher grades of which are now known as “Wattana Wittaya Academy,” while the older name still clings to the old school in its old location.