Training for Women

Training for Women

The Opening Vista of Greatest Opportunity

J!Y DR. E. G. PETERSON, DIRECTOR EXTENSION DIVISION, UTAH AGRI-

CULTURAL COTJ.FfW.

As our educational system has developed under the influence

of enlightened public opinion, more and more pressure has been

exerted to make our education prepare young men and women

for the responsibilities of life. This has now been quite generally

—

accepted as a desirable function of our colleges to prepare for

life. Yet they have come to this realization only after decades

and decades of severe struggle. An actual snobbery of intellect

has been built up in many of our schools which resents the intru-

sion of practical things into the course of study. Pride has fre-

quently been taken in the fact that courses of study did not

tend to enable the students to make a living. College and uni-

versity professors and high school teachers often have, and do,

become very smug and self satisfied. It has been hard to suc-

cessfully combat this spirit, but it has been done. A pride in

usefulness is the commendable result which now dominates in

many of our colleges. The issue here is not as it may appear.

Most men concede that education should be related to the welfare

of the race it is the immediately practical which many resent.

;

They would hold the world's knowledge pure and undefiled from

the crowd. They resent the boisterous in education and a prac-

;

ticalization of our courses often destroys that quiet academic

atmosphere which all who have felt it love so much. So do we

all deprecate the boisterous. But there are greater evils. Force,

power and purpose often go with bad manners.

As education has concerned itself more and more with prac-

tical things, it has naturally concerned itself with the two most

—

fundamental things in society farm and home. These two units

(sociologically they probably should be considered one") are

very closely united. The need's of man from the beginning of time

—

have been simple food and shelter, which imply farm and home.

A few acres upon which to raise food and fabric for wear and

a home in which to expend the energy created by this food in the

—

highest form the maintenance and development of a family this —

in large measure tells the story of man.

How best to perform this simple life cycle is a big concern

of education how agriculture has been found by study to be a

;

850 IMPROVEMENT ERA

very complex thing involving in its best practice the keenest in-

telligence, the loftiest motives, and the most steadfast morality.

Vet home life, on the part of the mother, demands greater intelli-

gence, a higher devotion, a more steadfast morality.

The mother is the highest embodiment of our civilization and

is our most intimate concern. Her well being means very much

to the race —

more than all else combined. Her education is the

most immediate necessity of the state, because the child or children

whom she rears through the most impressionable period of their

lives are influenced very decidedly by her intelligence or lack of

intelligence.

A state's money given to education should, therefore, be spent

in very liberal measure to aid in building a strong home. What

absolute inanity was this we heard a few years ago that there was

no opportunity for the exercise of intelligence in the ordinary

activities of the home? Cooking, a civilization-old art; sewing,

equally old sanitation, involving the most complex application

;

of the modern sciences of bacteriology and physiology child na-

;

ture, involving practically all of physiology and of psychology;

home beautifying, involving not academic considerations but art

applied to life; child education, the most potential force in so-

ciety home management, involving economic expenditure of the

;

family income, —

all this and much more is implied in a study of

borne economics.

And all this in the home is worked out under very different

conditions from the conditions which obtain in any other business

or profession. In the home, human life and welfare are at stake.

In any other business a failure may be followed by another at-

tempt in the home a failure means a permanent injury to so-

;

ciety.

More money should be spent upon the education of women in

a state than upon the education of men. And the woman's edu-

cation should be preponderantly a preparation for home life.

What a great need there is for someone to organize and systema-

tize this growing sentiment of mankind. What an opportunity

for real leadership. How little we need the harping, shrill

voiced,

combative female; how much we need the great woman leaden

Practical considerations for the time will hold this

great work

below its proper level, but it is not far in the future when it will

be recognized as is its due. In the meantime, boards of

education,

in both elementary and higher institutions,

are being more and

more impressed with the wonderful potentiality of training for

women. The long fight which has been made by President Widt-

^oe. of the_ Agricultural College, and others

associated with him,

for recognition of home economics as a

part of both our higher

md our elementary education is just now coming to fruition after

fifteen years of opposition.

—

TRAINING FOR WOMEN 851

A law of vital concern to Utah has recently passed the na-

tional congress. waits only for agreement on an amendment

It

and the signature of the president. It may be law before this

reaches print. It provides among other things for the further

carrying, by the Extension Division of the Agricultural College,

of the fruits of our knowledge of household science and art to

the women of the state, much enlarging our present powers in the

work* a strong effort will be made to extend the application of

;

this law to home economics. In no other place is the money of a

nation more wisely expended than in training the mothers of the

nations.

Utah should develop its home economics education to a very

—

high plane it has done and is doing well, much better than

many states, in fact most states. If the spirit of the pioneer wo-

men prevails in their daughters in Utah, there should be a flower-

ing of womanhood here which will be the admiration of the

world, because our earlv history is a chronicle of noble women

men. Many of them had broad culture and all

as well as noble

were endowed with a wonderful character of fortitude and lofty

ambition.

LOGAN, UTAH

*The bill passed the Senate February 7, 1914, and provides five mil-

lion dollars a year to be spent in carrying the message of household

economics direct to the farmers. The bill was referred to in the April

Era, p. 607. Editors.

Field Secretary Oscar A. Kirkham telling the stQry of "Courage," by Anthony W.

Ivins (See Era, Vol. 17, Nov., 1913, p. 44), to a company of M. I. A. Scouts, on the

romantic Maple Flats, near Provo, Utah.