REFERENCES
My Escape from Household Drudgery. Mary Patterson. Success Magazine, August, 1911.
Proceedings of Child Conference of Research and Welfare. Beulah Kennard. Page 47, “The Play Life of Girls.” G. E. Stechert & Co., New York.
Women’s School of Agriculture. I. H. Harper. Independent, June 29, 1911.
The Girl of To-morrow—Her Education. E. H. Baylor. World’s Work, July, 1911. Prize essay.
Education of Women for Home Making. Mrs. W. N. Hutt. Annual Volume N.E.A., 1910, p. 122.
Give the Girls a Chance. Canfield. Collier’s, March 12, 1910.
The Durable Satisfactions of Life. Charles W. Eliot. Pages 11-57, “The Happy Life.” Crowell.
The Kind of Education Best Suited for Girls. Anna J. Hamilton. Annual Volume N.E.A., 1907. p. 65.
Parasitic Culture. Dr. George E. Dawson. Popular Science Monthly, September, 1910.
Training the Girl to help in the Home. William A. McKeever. Pamphlet. 2 cents. Published by the author. Manhattan, Kan.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE FARM BOY’S CHOICE OF A VOCATION
Turn which way you will upon the great broad highway of life and there you will always be able to find the wrecks and broken forms of humankind—men and women who have failed in their life purposes. Strange to say, that particular aspect of the science of character-building which has to do with the substantial preparation for vocational life has been very much neglected. By what rule do men succeed in their callings and by what different rule do other men fail? Are some foreordained to success and others to failure? Is there an inherent strength in some and a native weakness in others? Is there a type of education and training which specifically fits and prepares for each of the native callings? None of these questions has been thoroughly gone into with a view to finding out what were best to be done and what best to leave undone. So, we blunder away, hit or miss, in the vocational training of our boys and girls.
Should the farmer’s son farm?
In attempting to give helpful suggestions to farm parents relative to their boy’s vocation, perhaps this question will first demand an answer. The tentative reply to it is this: The farmer’s son, or any other man’s son, should follow that calling for which he is best suited by nature and in which he will thereby have the greatest amount of native interest; provided it be practicable to prepare him for such calling. Some farm boys are destined by nature for mechanical pursuits, others for social or clerical work, others for captains of industry, and so on. Likewise, the city boys may reveal in their natures a great variety of instinctive tendencies and interests which will be found of great worth in guiding them into a successful life occupation.
Yes, the farmer’s son should by all means take up his father’s business; provided that at maturity he may have both native and acquired interest in the same and that to a degree predominating any other native or acquired interest.