Bringing exhibits to a school fair in Tacoma, Washington. Skillful teachers who recognize the home as a valuable adjunct to the school equipment encourage the children to make gardens at home
The greatest service that the home can render in the cause of training girls for homemaking is probably close, painstaking study of its own individual girl—her likes, dislikes, aptitudes, and limitations. Home-mindedness shows itself nowhere so much as in the home; lack of home-mindedness shows there quite as much. The results of such study should throw great light upon the problem of the girl's future. Combined with the observations recorded by her teacher during year after year of the girl's school life, this study offers the strongest arguments for or against this or that career. Frequent and sympathetic conferences between parent and teacher become a necessity. There is then less likelihood of opposing counsel when the girl seeks guidance toward her life work.
It is quite probable that, while the school undertakes to lay a general foundation for homemaking efficiency, the home, when it reaches the full measure of its power and responsibility, will be best fitted to help the girl to specialize in the direction most suited to her individual power. It can, if it will, give the girl individual opportunities such as the mere fact of numbers forbids the school to give.
The special work of the church in training the girl is necessarily that which has to do with her spiritual concept of life, the strengthening of her moral fiber. Here school, home, and church must each contribute its share. None of them can undertake alone so important and delicate a task. Any attempt to make arbitrary divisions in the work of these three agencies is bound to be at least a partial failure. Conditions differ so widely that we can only say of much of the work, "at school or church or in the home," or, better, "at school and church and home in coöperation." Each must supplement the efforts of the other, and where one fails, the other must take up the task. It really matters little where the work is done, provided that it is done. The ensuing chapters of this book are written in the hope that they may bring the vital problems of girl training and girl guidance home to both teacher and parent; and especially that they may convince both of the value of coöperation in the inspiring work of helping our daughters to make the most of their lives.
FOOTNOTES:
[4] Ida M. Tarbell, The Business of Being a Woman.