“The school system may be made a forceful agency for building up the family, and the integrity of the home is without doubt the vital question of the age.

“Edward Everett Hale, with his far spiritual sight, has discerned the necessity for restoring home training, and advocates, to this end, short school terms of a few weeks annually.  It is probable that in the future many school departments will be relegated to the home, but the homes are not now prepared to assume these duties.

“When it was discovered that citizens must be prepared for their political duties the schools were opened; but the means so far became an end that even women were educated only in the directions which bear upon public and not upon household economy.  The words of Stein, that ’what we put into the schools will come out in the manhood of the nation afterward,’ cannot be too often quoted.  Let branches in household economy be connected with all the general as distinguished from normal-school grades, and we not only relieve the girl immediately of the strain of working with insufficient food, and of acquiring skill in household duties in addition to the school curriculum, we not only simplify and harmonize her work, but we send out in every case a woman prepared to carry this new influence into all her future life, even if a large number of these women should eventually pursue special or higher technical branches; for we are women before we are teachers, lawyers, physicians, etc., and if we are to add anything of distinctive value to the world by entering upon the fields of work hitherto pre-empted by men, it will be by the essential quality of this new feminine element.

“The strain in all work comes chiefly from lack of qualification by training or nature for the work in hand,—­tear in place of wear.  The schools can restore the ideal of quiet work.  They have an immense advantage in regularity, discipline, time.  This vast system gives an opportunity, such as no private schools offer, for ascertaining the average work which is healthful for growing girls.  It is quite possible to ascertain, whether by women medical officers appointed to this end, or by the teachers themselves, the physical capacity of each girl, and to place her where this will not be exceeded.  Girls trained in school under such wise supervision would go out into life qualified to guard the children of the future.  The chief cause of overwork of children at present is the ignorance of parents as to the injurious effects of overwork, and of the signs of its influence.

“The first step toward the relief of over-pressure and false stimulus is to discard the pernicious idea that it is the function of the normal school to offer to every girl in the community the opportunity for becoming a teacher.  This unwholesome feature is the one distinctive strain which must be removed from the system.  It can be done provided public and political sentiment approve.  The normal school should be only a device for securing the best possible body of teachers.  It should be technical.