HOME TOPICS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LI, Issue 15520, 30 January 1914, Page 4

HOME TOPICS.

EDUCATING A GIRL,

THE NEfiD FOR FRESH METHODS.

In on interesting article in one of the English reviews on the prospects of women as brain workers, Mrs. W. L. Courtney tells how she would equip the modern girl for the work of life.

" Considering the great need women | have of establishing themselves in fresh! occupations,. I often think that so far from training them to be like men I would train them to be as unlike as possible, 1 Mot that I want them to be less efficient, | hut I want them to be efficient on different lines. "Here I shall naturally be asked: What kind of education would you provide for them, then, whether at home or at school? " Bearing in mind that their natural instinctiveness is their greatest asset, and that originality and freshness will serve ithem in better stead than adherence to tradition, I think I would begin from the i outset to train them to see things for them- j selves, and to make their own comments. j I should never allow any note-taking. What they are taught orally, or what they i read, they should be made to reproduce in 1 their own words. I would cultivate in I them especially the gift of self-expression, 1 which was one of the great virtues of that' old-fashioned 'subject' known as English; composition. The Bookish Child. £" This might be reintroduced in another form as part of the teaching of history and literature. It might even come into the teaching of languages if these were taught, i as they should be taught, colloquially. " Where the love of literature was plainly already there, in the really bookisu child, I would give the scholarly grounding ,needed for the future classical training, j but for -very many girls this will never be necessary. French and German, history, literature, and, for the sake of a training jn accuracy, mathematics, I doubt if it would be wise to go beyond these, except in the matter of art training, where there was any embryonic gift either for music or drawing Where there was not I would omit such subjects altogether; they are. absolute waste of time. | „ I . would make school hours short and libraries easily accessible, and would 1 encourage the girls to talk about what i they read out of school hours as readily as about their history and literature lessons. ■ In short, so far from approximating girls schools to boys,' I would as far a! possible approximate them to the best . kinds of home education. And I would encourage the pursuit of handicrafts, needlework, embroidery, and every sort of technical skill, and give prizes for ingenuity in turning these to domestic use or adornment. "When the girls had finished their school course I would send them to the university only if they could afford the luxury of prolonged education, or if they were suited to, or intended for, the learned professions or the higher walks of the public service.'' Where There Is a Great Future. Mrs. Courtney believes that in the openings afforded by modern business "there is a considerable future for women If women with brains will frankly enter shops and business houses and turn those brains to good account in adding to the comfort and well-being of the consumer, and increasing the amenities of life, I really think they will, be as well employed as they could be anywhere. . "Of course there are educated women in shops already, but there might well be more, and they will find the occupation in itself an education. " For one thing it will give them endless opportunities of studying, life at an entirely n»w angle and learning really to know the world they live in as it is never known by the academic. Such employment has, moreover, the advantage, invaluable to a woman, of being human, of bringing the worker in touch with people rather than with things. | " That ii s why it seems to me, who have tried both, so infinitely superior in attracj tiveness to the purely clerical and office I work so often, described as "business' I would far rather advise a customer, even an impatient customer, about her books or her bonnets than add up figures or conduct correspondence. . . . ," Of course they are afraid of taking risks, and that is why they cling so closely to the unenterprising and nnremnnerative clerkships and secretaryships which never mean more than about £100 a year, and which should be left to the women of mediocre intelligence. A girl with brains should dare a little and look out for some field where inventiveness and adaptability and charm can have some scope. "And I maintain . . . that she could find it in the modern shop, if she would put her prejudices in her pocket, begin at the beginning, work her way up, be not above learning the business in all its details from the men and women, whatever their social standing, who have spent their lives in it, and at the same time be always alert to see how their methods might be improved. "If she comes of the upper middleclasses she has the added advantage of looking at it both as producer and consumer. She has experienced the wants which she, as a shopworn an, is there to supply. "She knows how irritating it is to have drawingroom tongs that won't pick anything up, and electric-light shades at the wrong angle, and bedside tables too narrow to hold a tray comfortably. And if she has had to dress upon limited means she will wonder why it has never occurred to any glover and Rosier to sell gloves in threes, two right-handed ones to each left, seeing that the right-hand one always wears out twice as quickly ! Feminine Ingenuity. "These are only 'a few of the infinite number of trifling points which feminine ingenuity might remedy ; but in any one of them might lie the germ of the fortune which the hero of a recent American play is supposed to derive from his improvisation of the 'covered carpet-tack to match any carpet.' . . . " Women have always been the homemakers, so to speak, wholesale stead of retail? Why should not the many necessities of daily life be provided in a form not only beautiful but eminently practical ?

" If this great reform ever comes to pass, not as a freak or as the aesthetic cult of a few, but on a really large scale as a practical, paying, business proposition, and through the instrumentality of educated women, they will indeed have discovered a way of satisfying the sub-con-scious mind of a grateful public. And incidentally they will make their fortunes. In what other profession are they going to do £hat?"