Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1921-09-05
AS ONE WOMAN SEES lT
Difficulties Of Teaching Are Many,
and When Teachers Become Dis
couraqed a Vicious Circle 10
Started, Hard to Overcome
BY SARAH ID. LOWRIE
T WAS talking to a woman who is

fessor in one of the New England col
leges about what she called the Bryn Mawr
Experiment" She said that she wished II
could be duplicated in her college, but that
1t took too much money for most women's
colleges TO undertake summer school for
working women above and over all the ordi
nary running expenses.
Of course, the students. who are mostly
the business or factory girls. had to have
scholarships to cover the cost Of their board,
tuition and travelling expenses. This had to
be guaranteed by an initial sum raised by
committee Of responsible persons, and
wherever girl or her friends or her trades
union body or her firm could not meet her
expenses wholly or in part this guarantee
covered the deficits.
Besides this suppementing I understand
that, as in all colleges, the fees for tuition,
etc, are placed lower than the actual cost
that the general guarantee fund covered
that deficit also.
OF course. no Harvard or Princeton or
University of Pennsylvania student begins
to pay for the actual cost Of his education
at any of these places of learning and the
students at the Bryn Mawr summer school.
Mawr College for their tuition than are
most college men and women.
TNHE New England college professor went
l. on TO say that she would have enjoyed
the work OF teaching those classes. and was
at the same time rather dubious as to her
ability to simplify sufficiently to reach her
class without bewildering some of the mem
bers. She had heard some confessions Of
failure from one or two Of the teachers who
had tackled the job, and they we're feeling
n very healthy chagrin, she said They had
not been up against stupidity or indiffer-
ence, but against their own inadaptability
to group of pupils who we're unaccus-
toned to thinking along. certain lines and
w yya tal rtlp hn-
cause some of them were actually foreign
born and partly because the subjects under
discussion were perfectly unfamiliar.
Even the teachers that were old hands at
lecturing to general classes, such ps one finds
at Chautauquas and University Extension
lectures. were baf1ed at first to find their
afternoon sessions difficult because Of the
drowsness of the pupils. That drowsiness
was diagnosed finally as not due to the stu
pidity of either teachers or scholars. but to
the unwOntod heaviness' Of the midday meal
What saved the situation for both teachers
and pupils. however, was the work of the
go betweenS. the senior class members who
had volunteered to act as tutors during the
summer. Each senior had a group of girls
assigned TO her for whom she was made
responsible both as to what they prepared
for their classes and as to their general
well being and t-homeness in the college.
The relationship established by this means
was exceedingly pleasant.
ONE girl on submitting a paper to the
~ professor spoke doubtfuly of it's merits
rs she handed it in. remarking that she had
not had time to let her LADY friend look
over it.
In matters of discipline there seems to
have been student regulating body to which
the dean submitted all vexed questions One
instance Of mistaken activity was told to me
ms sample of how successfully this body
of monitors coped with novel situations
II appears that at the beginning of the
college term there was a group of girls who
were fired with the spirit Of organization to
such a degree that they set about organizing
the domestic force of the college with a view
to. demanding an eight hour day. time and
overtime and fixed scale of wages with n
minimum clause. The impracticability Of
this was brought home to the would be or
gunizers, not by the college authorities but
by committee of their own fellow class
men. and the matter dropped by their own
volitiOn.
MY FRIEND, the New England profes-
4'1 sor. in summing up the experience as
she had CLEANED it from some of the par
ticipating faculty. said that what the
teachers valued most in the whole experience
was their contact with girls who hungered
and thrsted after knowledge.
So much Of their life effort went to press
ing knowledge upon indifferent and even
unwilling pupils that this experience gave
them n new sense of the value of their pro-
fession. 1Ehe pity Of it was to them that
there were such thousands of eager girls who
wanted an education that they could not
spare the money 70 stop and seek and, on
the other hand. such thousands Of girls who
could have it and did not want it.
CIIE said that it was their daily contact
- with the Indifferent and unwilling |pupls
that made teaching n heartbrpnking profes.
sion. and the teachers themselves so often
seem uninspired after they had been at the
work for ten years or more. II created n
sort Of vicious circle. she thought.
The teachers lost heart and their pupils
lost any desire to be teachers because OF the
tagged. dispirited aspect Of some Of even the
presumably successful educators With
fewer and fewer girls Of promise entering
the ranks Of teachers the fewer inspiring
tenChprs there were. and so on.
| thought that had never heard any one
so discouraged. ! wondered if perhaps we
as public in America were not rather
hard and unceremonious with the men and
women to whom We hand over the coming
generation for preparation for life.
Theirs Is n very honorable position, in
way the most honorable and trusted in the
community. I sometimes wonder IL we
honor ourselves by honoring them enough
publicly as we'll as privately.