Ella Flagg graduated from a Chicago high school and also from the Chicago Normal School. This ambitious girl began to teach when she was seventeen years of age. She first taught in a primary grade for six weeks and then in a higher grade where some of the pupils were larger and older than she. In a year she was made head assistant of the school and in two years principal of the practice school, where she helped to train the normal-school students.
Ella Flagg married William Young in 1868. However, she did not give up her work. She climbed steadily up the ladder of the teaching profession. Even though she had become very successful she felt that she needed more education. Consequently she studied at the University of Chicago from which she received the degree of Ph. D.
Mrs. Young became assistant superintendent of the Chicago schools, then professor of education in the University of Chicago. Later she was made principal of the Chicago Normal School, and finally superintendent of schools in Chicago.
As soon as Mrs. Young became superintendent of the Chicago schools she began to work for the children. She ordered the windows to be opened, top and bottom, in the schoolrooms to do away with the foul air produced by a poor system of ventilation. She organized fresh-air classes for pupils who needed an extra amount of oxygen.
She asked the teachers to help her improve the course of study. Handwork, in which the hours at her father’s shop had given her an interest, she introduced into every grade. A new study, which she called “Chicago” brought the children into closer relation with their own city, teaching them its geography, history, and government.
The fame of Mrs. Young’s work in education spread beyond her own city. The National Education Association, which had never had a woman in office, made her its president. Mrs. Young wrote many books about education.
When Mrs. Young was asked how she managed to accomplish so much, she always said that it was through systematic work. The first year that she began to teach, she planned to devote three evenings a week to study, three to seeing her friends, and Sunday evening to church.
For a long lifetime Ella Flagg Young worked to solve the problem of educating the girls and boys of Chicago and the nation. The clear and independent thinking that she had cultivated as a girl helped to give her a place as one of the great educators of our day.
[The end of When They Were Girls, by Mabel Betsy Hill.]