The Nonpartisan Leader Newspaper, September 20, 1917, Page 11

Edlted by e Mrs. Alberta B. Toner Women’s Influence in the Schools =T ES e ES S eSS e e i e S e They Make for Sound Development and Permanence OME queer people still insist that women ought not to be school teachers, and think it makes “sissies” out of the boy pupils, just as they insist it makes “tomboys” or men out of women to become boiler menders and street car conductors. But what are you go- ing to do about it when women have gone past all the barriers and are now drilling in regiments for soldiers, as they are in Russia? It looks as though the place of woomen in the rural schools is about secure, and whether they get the right to vote for president and governor. this year or next year, or waxt a while yet, women are getting to the front and staying right on the outer edge of things, The spirit of the woman school teachers (many of them mere slips of girls starting out now for their first terms) is carrying American civiliza- tion into the pioneed spaces as it did during the “sixties.” Then it used to tax the wits of these girl teachers to discipline the big boys who stood up a head taller than themselves; now it taxes their resources to act the part of community leader in social and educa- tional matters, that is expected of them. WOMEN ARE MORE ADAPTAEBLE THAN MEN But on the other hand there is no crop of beginners who enter upon their duties with a more keen sense of hav- ing a big job before them. Their hard work is greatly lessened, and their in- fluence extended where the women of the neighborhood begin co-operation with them at the first. And they adapt themselves to surroundings even bet- ter than the men. A woman teacher will learn to ride a wild horse to school if necessary much more quickly than a young man competitor will win favor by drying the dishes; and will take the leadership of her small flock in fighting a fire that threatens the school house, with more courage than the callow youth will turn to and help the woman of his boarding house prepare a Sunday dinner. The fact is the women are adaptable. They get onto their job quickly. And most of them make a go of it. That is why, in spite of some strongly held educational theories, women are forg- ing ahead in the management of schools. That is why schools that do not have women teachers are growing progressive enough to hire men teach- ers who will bring their wives with them, and settle down in the neigh- borhood. A woman presiding in a “teacherage,” gives the last touch of permanence to the otherwise lonely and detatched school house, and con- verts the once desolate premises into something like home. TEACHERAGE GIVES TOUCH OF HOME ‘What pupil of 20 years ago has not at some time gone into a small rural school house and been struck with the lonesome smell of the chalky atmos- phere, the hollow sound of the room, and the dusty desolation? If there had been a teacherage close by with™ a cheerful looking little garden, a front door step that showed it was trod reg- ularly, a few chickens, a cow, or some other evidence of permanent occupan- cy, that desolatness would not have existed. No matter if the school house for the time being were unoccupied. The teacher's home close by—and it wouldn't be a home unless presided over by a woman—would make the whole locality look different—and be different. Hurrah for the new idea that pro- poses to make a citizen out of the school teacher, and adopt his whole family into the school system with a purpose. That is what the teacherage, - the teacher’s cottage, means—adopt- ing the school teachers’ family by the district. And the district that wakes up to this and gives'a job to a family instead of to a bachelor—or even a - bachelor girl—is going to get more good for the pupils it is educating at public expense, than the one that holds off and does not realize the value of having a woman made a permanent ‘part of the district’s resources. One of the reasons for the half-law- less spirit that lurks in the breasts of boys when they go to an isolated dis- trict school, is due to the fact that they feel they are away from home. Boys always have a feeling that they want to do something when they get away from home, and if the school house is three miles from a farm house, the spell of the primitive falls over them to a cer- tain extent and they feel and act dif- ferently from what they would if there were near at hand the home of the teacher, with unmistakable evidence that a woman was there all the time, and fully organized society was at hand. But even if the district has not yet attained to a cottage where its teacher can live all the year round and grow into the life of the community like the township clerk and the chairman of the board, there is some approach Where the rural teacher is made part of the community, and a woman, though not a teacher, is an influential factor in the school. This is the teacherage at Scovill school, Ransom County, N. D., with the potato patch in the foreground. WHY NOT CUT OUT LAP DOGS? To the Woman'’s Page Editor: Lansford, N. D. Why all this advice to the farmers’ wives only? Why not advise some of-‘these swell society ladies? Why don’t they stay at home and cut out the expense of hiring a nurse for their chil- dren while they carry around a lap dog? We farmers’ wives are not able to hire a nurse so we take care of our own children, cut- ting out the expense of a nurse. Why don’t these society women look after their own kitchens where they keep hired helpers who know nothing about saving? These dear fashion plate ladies know nothing about what is going into the garbage can, while they are out advising some good sav- ing farmer’s wife how to economize in the very kind of stuff that is likely being dumped in their own garbage cans. papers give a person a pain. Let us farmers’ wives alone. Some of these God knows if we were not saving, some of us would fare pretty slim. I don’t want any of these brainless creatures telling me what to save. I make over clothes and economize in every possible way and don’t know of a neighbor but does the same. MRS. F. E. E. Easy to Pack Eggs Kuna, Idaho, Aug. 3, 1917, Editor Nonpartisan Leader: Some weeks ago you published di- rections for putting eggs up in water ‘glass. Would you please send me the directions. (Mrs.) B. MATHEWS. Putting eggs up in water glass is a simple matter, and the best method for the average home in town or coun- try. “Water glass” is the name for a solution of silicate of soda. It can be ‘had at most drug stores in recent years - since people have taken to putting down ‘their own eggs. It comes in regular cans with full directions, and the par- ticular directions on each package ought to he followed, for no doubt there is a difference in the “strength” of dif- ferent makes. In general, however, the silicate should be thinned with water, eight to 16 parts of water to one part of the water glass. This gives a slimy transparent liquid which completely seals the pores in the egg shells, keep- ing out air, and preserving the eggs in their fresh state for a long time. Complete * sealing of the pores is all that it does, for it has no chemical affect on shell or contents. The prepared solution is put in a wooden or earthen ware jar and the eggs, fresh from the nest without washing, are put into it carefully. See that there is enough water glass to cover the eggs an inch or two at all times. As the jar is filled with eggs, more water glass can be added until it is full, It should be covered to prevent undue evaporation, but tight sealing is unnec- essary—the solution itself is the seal. In taking the eggs out for use, take out only enough for immediate use, and rinse off the solution. Eggs put down in a properly compounded solu- tion ot water glass will keep through- out the winter, six, seven, sometimes eight or nine months, and often are so fresh that it is almost impossible to distinguish between them and fresh laid eggs in appearance of the yolk, or in the flavor. The water glass im- parts no flavor to the eggs. It is far better never to wash eggs that are to be kept or to be sold for possible storage. All washed eggs de- cay rapidly except ih cool weather, Eggs when laid have a thin coating not unlike water glass, and this par- tially seals them from air and odors. ‘Washing removes this. If eggs are too dirty to be put down, better use them up at once than to wash them and put them in storage or even in water glass. PAGE TWELVE to this condition if the teacher be a woman. Presiding over the cocoa cups of a hot lunch at noon, or directing the girls in preparing some hot dish, which has become an institution in so many schools, a woman fits into the scheme of things far better than a man. WOMAN TEACHER KEEPS HOUSE BETTER In some schools provision is made for the teachers to live right in the same building, an extra room or two being prepared, and thus the school house itself becomes a home. The difference can be readilly realized by any who have ever wandered onto bachelor quarters where the feminine touch and presence are wholly wanting. Curtains at the windows, frequently paid for out of the inadequate earnings of the girl teacher and flowers in pots, are some of the obvious marks of her presence. The most logical objection to the woman teacher is that she so often makes an equally satisfactory wife, and thus the district is deprived of her services . about the' time she becomes thoroughly acquainted, but even this has its offset, for it ‘provides room for another woman teacher, and every community knows there is nothing that stimulates greater interest in.the school than the arrival of-the new teacher if she is a woman or a girl. Young men who had lost all interest in school, be- come again attentive and the teacher and her activities inevitably become far more the center of community at- tention than would possibly be the case if the teacher were a mere uninterest- ing man. They will go to meet her when she first arrives, the whole neighborhood will turn out to school entertainments more heartily, and she has a freer rein in taking up her lead- ership if she is of the kind that leads. WHERE THE WOMAN SPIRIT CAN DOMINATE Or does she? Maybe she has to run the gauntlet of criticism. Maybe she” does not get the co-operation of the women of the neighborhood as she should have it to make the neighbor- hood’s school a success. Maybe she is not taken so seriously. That has hap- pened, and because it has happened there is another job for women, the women of the district. A parent-teachers’ association would help to increase understandings. Visit= ing of school by mothers and partici< pation in its affairs would do more to make an efficient community instru- ment out of the school than the more threatening presence of the trustees, who sometimes are compelled to at- tend to lend an air of authority, when the attendance of the neighborhood women would have developed an air of community building. The district school, whether a one« room affair or consolidated, should be an educational center for all who live within its radius, and not only for the pupils who take their daily lessons there. It should be a sort of rallying place for them all, where they would find the most direct opportunities of co-operating for their welfare, It can be this, even though the teacher be a first-year girl if the women of the neighborhood grasp their opportunity to forge ahead in development by unit« ing to make: woman influence the dominating note. There’s a woman in congress, and she’s becoming a new kind of power. There are women soldiers, there are 7,000,000 women voters in the United States, there are women mayors and official executives. There will always be women school teachers, and the stronger their influence is made, the better will be the schools. WHEAT AND MACHINERY We note that the senate at Washe ington has voted to set the price of wheat at a mii.‘mum of $2.00 but ree fuses to allow government control of the price of farm machinery :..d steel products. If the congress set the minimum price of $10 a bushel and still allowed any price on farm mach= inery and the necessities of life, there wouldn’t be any money in raising wheat at that—DUNN COUNTY SETTLER.