Vocational Guidance for Girls | Page 2

VOCATIONAL GUIDANCE FOR GIRLS

CHAPTER I
WOMAN'S PLACE IN SOCIETY
Any scheme of education must be built upon answers to two basic
questions: first, What do we desire those being educated to become?
second, How shall we proceed to make them into that which we desire
them to be?
In our answers to these questions, plans for education fall naturally into
two great divisions. One concerns itself with ideals; the other, with
methods. No matter how complex plans and theories may become, we
may always reach back to these fundamental ideas: What do we want to
make? How shall we make it?
Applying this principle to the education of girls, we ask, first: What
ought girls to be? And with this simple question we are plunged
immediately into a vortex of differing opinions.
Girls ought to be--or ought to be in the way of becoming--whatever the
women of the next generation should be. So far all are doubtless agreed.
We therefore find ourselves under the necessity of restating the
question, making it: What ought women to be?
Probably never in the world's history has this question occupied so
large a place in thought as it does to-day. In familiar discussion, in the
press, in the library, on the platform, the "woman question" is an
all-absorbing topic. Even the most cursory review of the literature of
the subject leads to a realization of its importance. It leads also into the
very heart of controversy.

[Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros. Suffrage parade in
Washington. Women will parade or even fight for their rights]
It is safe to say that no woman, in our own country at least, escapes
entirely the unrest which this controversy has brought. Even the most
conservative and "old-fashioned" of women know that their daughters
are living in a world already changed from the days of their own young
womanhood; and few indeed fail to see that these changes are but
forerunners of others yet to come. They know little, perhaps, of the
right or wrong of woman's industrial position, but "woman in industry"
is all about them. They perhaps have never heard of Ellen Key's
arraignment of existing marriage and sex relations, but they cannot fail
to see unhappy marriages in their own circle. They may care little about
the suffrage question, but they can hardly avoid hearing echoes of strife
over the subject of "votes for women." And however much or little
women are personally conscious of the significance of these questions,
the questions are nevertheless of vital import to them all.
The "uneasy woman" is undeniably with us. We may account for her
presence in various ways. We may prophesy the outcome of her
uneasiness as the signs seem to us to point. But in the meantime--she is
here!
Naturally both radical and conservative have panaceas to suggest. The
radicals would have us believe that the question of woman's status in
the world requires an upheaval of society for its settlement. Says one,
the "man's world" must be transformed into a human world, with no
baleful insistence on the femininity of women. It is the human qualities,
shared by both man and woman, which must be emphasized. The work
of the world--with the single exception of childbearing--is not man's
work nor woman's work, but the work of the race. Woman must be
liberated from the overemphasized feminine. Let women live and work
as men live and work, with as little attention as may be to the accident
of sex.
Says another, it is the ancient and dishonored institution of marriage
which must feel the blow of the iconoclast. Reform marriage, and the
whole woman question will adjust itself.

Says still another, do away with marriage. "Celibacy is the aristocracy
of the future." Let the woman be free forever from the drudgery of
family life, free from the slavery of the marriage relation, free to "live,"
to "work," to have a "career." Men and women were intended to be in
all things the same, except for the slight difference of sex. Let us throw
away the cramping folly of the ages and let woman take her place
beside man.
Not so, replies the conservative. In just so far as masculine and
feminine types approach each other, we shall see degeneracy. Men and
women were never intended to be alike.
Thus we might go on. Without the radicals there would of course be no
progress. Without the conservatives our social fabric would scarcely
hold. Between the two extremes, however, in this as in all things,
stands the great middle class, believing and urging that not social
upheaval, but better understanding of existing conditions, is the world
remedy for unrest; that not new careers, but better adjustment of old
ones, will bring peace; that not formal political power, even