In such an age of transition as ours, any plan of vocational training intended to include girls must be a compromise with warring facts, and will therefore have to face objections from both sides, from those forward looking ones who feel that the domestic side of woman’s activities is over emphasized, and from those who still look back, who will fain refuse to believe that the majority of women have to be wage-earners for at least a part of their lives. These latter argue that by affording to girls all the advantages of industrial training, granted, or which may be granted to boys, we are “taking them out of the home.” As if they were not out of the home already!
[15] Copyright by Henry Holt Publishing Co.
Traditions Upset
By Emily J. Hutchins
(American contemporary. Instructor in Economics, Barnard College, New York. From “The Annals of the American Academy.”)
The reaction that women show today to their educational freedom upsets a lot of the notions we have inherited about the atmosphere of seclusion in which womanly natures have been supposed to thrive.... Whatever fault may be found with our educational system, it has at least provided a belated opportunity for women to share in the social stimulus that men have found and prized in academic institutions.
The History of Women’s Education
By Mary Ritter Beard
(Quoted from “Woman’s Work in Municipalities.”)
The history of the education of women from the early days, when to educate “shes” was viewed with horror as an immoral proposition, to the present time when more “shes” graduate from the high schools than “hes”, is an interesting record in itself. Even more significant, however, is the fact that both “hes” and “shes” are educated largely by women in the secondary schools which are the schools of “the people.”