Her three children are now in high school and are beginning to plan for their own life work.  With the broad training of homemaker, wife, mother, teacher, writer, and administrator, Mrs. Dickson has the combination of experiences to enable her to introduce teachers and mothers to the very difficult problems of planning wisely big life careers for our girls.

The book is so plainly and guardedly written that it can also be used as a textbook for the girls themselves in connection with civic and vocational courses.  The only difficulty with the book for a text is that it is so attractively written on such vital problems that the student will not stop reading at the end of the lesson.

J. ADAMS PUFFER

“Vocational guidance has for its ideal the granting to every individual of the chance to attain his highest efficiency under the best conditions it is humanly possible to provide.”

PART I

PRESENT-DAY IDEALS OF WOMANHOOD

“How to preserve to the individual his right to aspire, to make of himself what he will, and at the same time find himself early, accurately, and with certainty, is the problem of vocational guidance.”

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]