Woman's work in America

by Unknown

In all such plans education is involved, and there are many inspiring instances of really great changes wrought by women in the system of education in our large cities, whose influence for good will never cease. The introduction of kindergarten teaching for little children, which many of those who study the dark problems of pauperism and crime believe will do more to destroy the misery of mankind than any other one educational agency, was due to Miss Elizabeth Peabody, herself a teacher in her youth, who in her middle age was filled with enthusiasm by the beautiful new teaching, and has lived to see it, in her old age, incorporated, mainly by the exertions of women, into the public school system of many of our large cities, where the need of the reform was greatest.

In St. Louis, the first city to adopt the kindergarten, it was a woman who proposed it. In Boston, one woman herself established and maintained for nearly ten years thirty-one kindergartens, and finally, having by this long experience proved their value, persuaded the Board of Education to accept them as part of the public school system.

In Philadelphia, another woman, inspired by the good she saw accomplished in Boston by the kindergartens established by her friend, in 1879 opened one in that city, and gradually, following her example and under her leadership, others were opened; and in 1881 the Sub-Primary School Society was incorporated for the purpose of establishing and maintaining kindergartens in Philadelphia, and continued its work until in December, 1886, this was consummated, when it presented to the Board of Education thirty-two kindergartens, to be in future carried on as part of the school system.

In California, the Golden Gate Association has founded, by the help of a few rich people who have given money, and of many devoted women who have watched over the enterprise and given time and thought to its success, a large number of free kindergartens, and the same is true of many other cities in the country.

In other ways, also, the public schools have been benefited by the volunteer work of women, not only as members of School Boards, which position they have accepted in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, but especially in leading the way in demonstrating the possibilities and value of industrial education.

In New York, the Industrial Education Association was founded by men and women for the purpose of bringing this most important subject before the public, and of training teachers for all branches of manual education.

Industrial schools have been established and carried on by women in many different localities,[^[192]] and all over the country church societies conduct sewing classes, and classes in domestic training for girls. In many of our cities, women have established vacation schools to save the children from the demoralization of the long summer idleness, and have, in some places, obtained the use of the public school buildings for this purpose. In Boston “The Emergency and Hygiene Association” (composed of men and women) has a “Committee on Playgrounds,” which, in the summer vacation of 1888, opened seven of the public school yards as play grounds for children, and three more as “sand-gardens.” In each a matron was present to oversee the games of the children, and in the playgrounds they were supplied with “sand-heaps and shovels, balls, tops, skipping ropes, sand bags, building blocks, flags to march under, and transparent slates to draw on,” while in the “sand-gardens” there was only the pleasure of digging in sand heaps. Thus for three hours a day, on four fair days of each week during the vacation, hundreds of children spent happy and healthful hours.

The “fresh air work,” the “country week,” the excursions of every kind, are chiefly carried on by the devotion of women, and all will undoubtedly accomplish a greater good than the temporary benefit to the health and spirits of city children, by implanting a love for country life in many of the little visitors, which may prove in the future an influence to counteract the strange taste which now leads so many people to prefer a crowded tenement to a farm-house and makes them “feel lonesome” within a stone’s throw of a dozen neighbors.

Nor have women, although devoting so much of their time to the training of children, neglected those past the age of schooling, those who have grown up without privilege or advantage, especially the young girls who have to work for their living and struggle with untrained hands and brains to support themselves and perhaps many others dependent on them. In almost all our cities women have formed associations especially to help self-supporting young women and girls, and the aim of all is to give happiness and added pleasure, besides the opportunity of development in every direction. The Women’s Christian Associations,[^[193]] of which there are more than fifty in the country, open rooms for evening entertainment and study, give instruction in intellectual and manual branches, find situations for those who need them, help working girls in every way, and many are the women who have leisure and education who devote both to efforts to help and succor women who have neither. Most of these associations have Homes for working women, where the inmates are guarded and watched over with kindly care. In other cities the Young Women’s Christian Association have no Homes of their own, but select safe boarding places for young women, and direct them to them, and keep boarding registers.

One of the women who knows most of the condition of working women in our cities, says of the “Homes:” “The few hundreds sheltered are in most cases really friendless and deserving women to whom the chief boon is not the cheap board, but the respectable surroundings, which could not be had at all in ordinary lodgings.... The safeguards thrown about women in these Homes are most desirable.... My objections to them are that they are not radical enough in their reforms, and really bar the truly needy factory girl of the slums; and that by furnishing so many comforts and privileges at low rates they create false expectations and standards. Were the advantages made dependent on co-operative management, were the inmates themselves responsible for the adornment and conduct of the Homes, suffering for extravagance and bad judgment, profiting by foresight and experience, valuable educational training would be secured, and a far more home-like interest.”