EMPLOYMENT FOR LADIES.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 3249, 5 July 1872, Page 3

EMPLOYMENT FOR LADIES.

(Liverpool Weekly Albion.)

If only the large number of ladies in this country who have been moderately well educated, and are now dragging on in different decrees of poveity, owing to family reverses and the non-appearance of eligible husbands, have a trifle of common sense, as well as the usual more common accomplishments, there is a fresh chance of a decent proportion of them bettering their lot. The Cambridge Board of Eduction on Monday held a meeting in that city, favouring a movement for fitting such persons for becoming mistresses of elementary schools. Is thia a help such as these ladies can accept I With the aid of a popular move- J ment sanctioning it—even giving to it, if j need be, a slight flourish of patriotism— surely it would be possible for them to i make common teaching a not undignified profession. Wo venture to think that this present opportunity is a perfect windfall for them. The sudden extension of elementary education has caused a demand for mistresses altogether beyond the existing supply from pupil teachers. For just a few passing moments it is an advantage to have the start of a few years in life—to have themselves gone to school rather early instead of rather late in this generation. It takes, we believe, four or five years to develope a pupil teacher into a certificated mistress in the regular way, whereas in the training school Miss L. M. Hubbard is proposing j to open, some ef those already more-or- j less educated ladies could be sufficiently fitted, say, in the best instances, in six months, in other cases in a year, and so on. This is just the extent of their chance, and if, from a silly social fastidiousness, they dally over it, the chance will be gone. The upper grades of the working and the lower grades of the middle classes will eagerly fill the gap with their daughters, give them the time for it. The only reasons why our sympathies at this instant are with these other candidates are that they are now the most painfully situated women among us; that their holding the situations woxild give a higher social tone to the profession of teaching, and that a mitigation would be brought about in the present cruel competition for the place of governess in 'private' families.