"While I sympathize profoundly with the claim of woman for every opportunity which she can fill," says G. Stanley Hall in Adolescence, "and yield to none in appreciation of her ability, I insist that the cardinal defect in the woman's college is that it is based upon the assumption, implied and often expressed, if not almost universally acknowledged, that girls should primarily be trained to independence and self-support; and matrimony and motherhood, if it come, will take care of itself, or, as some even urge, is thus best provided for." This criticism, of existing educational conditions is quite as applicable to schools for younger girls as to those which Dr. Hall has in mind. There is no reason why both school and college may not fit girls for a broad and general usefulness, for "independence and self-support," and at the same time give them the training for that which, with the majority already mentioned, comes to be the great work of their lives.
Through all the lower grades of school life, and to a certain extent through the whole course, the methods of instruction used will be largely indirect. The child will-seldom be told, "This is to teach you how to keep house." I can think of no field in which this indirect method will produce greater results than the one we are considering.
Montavilla School garden, Portland, Oregon, where boys and girls raise vegetables for serving in the lunchroom. Here the science of growing things is taught as part of the "training for citizenship"
Lunchroom where vegetables grown in the Montavilla School garden are prepared and eaten
Photograph by Brown Bros.