EDUCATING OUR DAUGHTERS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 8, Issue 187, 22 January 1943, Page 12

EDUCATING OUR DAUGHTERS

Home Or Career?

(Written for

The Listener

6eé HAT TI say is that girls’ 5 education is all wrong," said Mrs. Perkins, the notorious rambler. "What do they learn? A little inaccurate and surface history that will at its best breed in them a profound distrust of any history presented to them at any future date, a little geography of no practical value whatsoever should they be lucky enough at any stage to have the opportunity, as I have had, to make further explorations of the globe for themselves. They don’t learn enough of any language to be able to read and enjoy a book in it, or to make themselves intelligible and intelligent travellers. They learn a little arithmetic, a little mathematics, a little Latin-none of which is likely to be

any further use to them, and what Home Science they do is quite divorced from practical housekeeping. Only those who are useless at academic subjects are encouraged to take either music or art, and the chances are that they are no good at it, anyway. None of this will fit them to face Life." "What is Life anyway that we have to struggle with it?" asked Mrs. Mannager. "Rearing babies," said Mrs. Cluck, as she deflected one small child from the tea-waggon, and brushed another toddler off the couch on to which he had crawled. "Washing dishes and making’ cakes," said Mrs. Brown, with her eye on the over-loaded tea-waggon. "Knitting and mending," said Mrs. Cluck, as she unrolled a sock. "But that’s awful, terrible!" said Mrs. Perkins. "Life should be mystery and adventure. We should travel to the far places of the earth, We should roll in the dew, and smell the fresh grass, We are all so dull, so bound. We should

get up at sunrise and see the world wrapped in fresh early morning colours." "If that’s your idea of life," said Mrs, Brown, "a roll in the damp grass and a twice-a-day expedition up the nearest hill to make observations resulting from the earth’s revolutions round the sunwell, then, any sort of schooling is superfluous." "Of course that is absurd," said Mrs. Cluck, "but I agree that most of the things that girls learn are a waste of their time. They should all want» to marry and have their own houses and children, and school should fit them to be better wives. As things are, they get the idea into their heads that they are too good and clever for housework and that they must go to college, or at any rate, get earning jobs, and then when they marry, they feel dissatisfied with a life that ties them to babies and dishes." "Why concentrate on the dirty-dishes side of domestic life?" asked Mrs. Brown, "Isn’t the arranging and ordering of a household a highly skilled job? It isn’t easy to build a happy home atmosphere. Girls need to be shown at school all those things that will help them to be good homemakers. This is an art in itself." "Yes, but it’s a much more complicated art than you imply," said Mrs. Perkins. "To be good homemakers, girls need much more’ than mere housecraft. They need art so that the house may be aesthetically satisfying They need courses on’ child psychology and sex knowledge so that they may be good wives and mothers. It is the spiritual and aesthetic atmosphere of the home that counts. This is what our schools should teach." "No amount of psychology and sex knowledge and aesthetics will help you to turn on a nourishing meal, or to wash the clothes or keep the house clean," said Mrs. Brown. "You must feed and clothe your family before you turn aesthetics and child psychology loose on them. A dirty house and a badly-cooked meal are as unaesthetic as a wall overdecorated with bad prints. School should develop taste in all its aspects." Family Allowances "So we're back to qooking and cleaning again," said Mrs. Mannager, who so far had been listening in silence. "Well, I think any woman with good sense and brought up in a normal householdand by normal I mean a household that isn’t full of servants, but is also clean and comfortable-can pick up cooking and cleaning and the management of babies. If she hasn’t any sense, I doubt if school teaching would help her, anyway." (Continued on next page)

(Continued from previous page) "Do you want vocational training for specific jobs?" "No, no, no, nothing of the sort. I want girls to have enough idea of the world and what goés on in the world to be able to choose what they will do when they leave. I would like every girl to grow up with the wish to work and keep her work, whether it is the very necessary job of housework or the very necessary job of government. But I would like to see every woman with a standing of her own and financial independence of her own all her life. While she is rearing small children, she should get a family allowance from the State as an acknowledgment that she is doing a service to the State." "Tt doesn’t sound like sense to me," Mrs. Brown said. "Why on earth should women go out and work in other people’s homes and earn money when they have got husbands to ‘support them?" "You are forgetting that it is woman’s oldest privilege to rear children," said Mrs. Cluck. "And how can she develop herself if she is trying to do two jobs?" said Mrs, Perkins. "She would do them both badly, so what?"

UTSIDE on the tennis-court four young girls were resting after their game. "What are you going to do when you grow up, Eve?" said one. "Me?" said Mrs. Brown’s little girl. "Oh, I want to be a doctor if Mum will let me. She wants me to stay home and learn to housekeep." "TI want to explore," said Mrs. Cluck’s Jane. "Mum thinks I’d better be a Karitane nurse so that I’ll know how to bring up children; but I know. We’ve had plenty to practise on, and anyhow, I don’t want to marry and settle down. I’d like to travel about and paint and write books like your mother, Dorothy." "My mother? It’s all right for her. I don’t know that I want to do anything at all, but I suppose something will turn up. Perhaps I'll marry a really wealthy man, and then I'll never have to do anything. What about you, Mary? Are you going to be a lawyer like your mum?" Mary Mannager turned round slowly. "No," she said, "I just want to marry and have lots of children and stay home and look after them."

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