From that time to this most college women have taught school
before getting married. The higher education of women has been,
in economic effect, a trade school for training women for the
trade of teacher.
But isn't it the purpose of the colleges to avoid training their
pupils for specific occupations? Isn't it their purpose to give
their pupils discipline and culture, pure and broad, unaffected
by commercial intention? Isn't that what colleges are, and ought
to be, for?
On the shore of this vast and violent controversy we discreetly
pause and stealthily sidle off, taking note of just three reefs
of solid fact which unsubmergably jut out above the surface of
the raging waters.
First. The colleges instruct their pupils in the subjects which
those pupils subsequently teach.
Second. The pupils specialize in the subjects which they are
going to teach.
Third. The colleges, besides providing the future teachers with
subjects, almost always offer to provide them with instruction in
the principles of education, and frequently offer to provide them
with instruction in the very technique of classroom work.
Our verdict, therefore, which we hope will be satisfactory to
counsel on both sides, is that the college is by no means a trade
school, but that if the woman who is going to earn her living
will choose the one trade of teaching, she can almost always get
a pretty fair trade training by going to college.
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