Read: Mothercraft 
superintendents, investigators or teach- 
ers. These have special opportunity 
for observing all phases of social work 
in New York City and for acquiring 
practical experience in connection with 
some of the local institutions or societies. 
Other students are preparing for the 
vocation of mothers’ assistants or nur- 
sery governesses. This 1s a new voca- 
tional opening for educated young 
women in this country. Many parents 
now realize that a crude or immature 
girl, untrained and without either ex- 
perience or judgment, is not a fit person 
to place in charge of a baby, or a little 
child at its most impressionable period 
in life. There is a large demand for 
trained mothers’ assistants who are 
women of personality and education, 
but for lack of a training school few 
women have been prepared to fill these 
positions. The students preparing for 
this vocation have experience as part- 
time assistants, going by the day or the 
week to private families until they have 
had a wide range of such experience. 
Before a student receives her cer- 
tificate she must have demonstrated 
by actual work in the school that she 
can manage the household with effi- 
ciency, patience and economy; do any 
phase of the household work and put 
system and economy into that work; 
take the care of the baby or any of the 
children; make a personal study of a 
child and outline the program for its 
personal care and mental development; 
conduct the play and daily natural 
discipline of ‘little children under home 
conditions; she must have accumulated 
a fund of child lore—rhymes and songs, 
plays, handwork, and stories that have 
been carefully selected for their fitness 
and educational value as well as their 
interest to little children. 
To an outsider the curriculum of a 
mothercraft school suggests a selecting 
from the courses given in a number of 
different professional schools—kinder- 
garten, home economics, physical edu- 
cation, nursing—brought together and 
taught in a home, from the home point 
of view. 
Although there are still very few 
places in the United States where a 
young woman can get practical instruc- 
341 
tion in Mothercraft, yet parts of the 
work are being taken up by various 
agencies. Some of the State univer- 
sities and some of the expensive and 
fashionable boarding schools are devot- 
ing special attention to home-making. 
Most girls’ schools now offer some do- 
mestic science, but in most cases it is 
very brief, chiefly of a laboratory type, 
concerned with household mechan- 
ics, not concerned with practical or 
eugenic aspects. The hundred or more 
Little Mothers’ Leagues in the 
New York City public schools are 
doing something in infant care for 
younger girls. There are a number of 
hospitals over the country where 
nursery maids are trained. Mother- 
craft is opposed to the training of 
crude nursery maids. Even the idea 
of training intelligent mothers’ assis- 
tants is quite secondary to that of the 
training of future mothers. Such voca- 
tional training of educated young women 
is being done more widely in England 
and Germany than in the United 
States, many of the day nurseries 
abroad having educational departments. 
Education in Mothercraft, however, 
is not a subject that should be left to 
private schools; it is an essential part of 
public education, and many prominent 
educational authorities have recognized 
this fact in principle, though school 
boards and trustees with the tradi- 
tional ultra-conservatism of educational 
systems, are slow to put the idea into 
practice. 
With a view to furthering the wider 
acceptance and adoption of this prin- 
ciple the National Association for Moth- 
ercraft Education is being. formed, with 
headquarters in New York City. Its 
objects specifically are: 
(a) To maintain a School of Mothercraft 
in or near New York City, providing for 
resident and non-resident students, extension 
classes, visiting instruction; having a kinder- 
garten, resident nursery, public reference 
library. 
(b) To develop branch schools of Mother- 
craft throughout the United States; and to 
conduct extension classes and institutes. 
(c) To encourage similar education in homes, 
societies, schools and colleges. 
(d) To hold conferences of its members and 
others interested. 
(e) To educate public opinion by circulating 
literature, by meetings, by exhibits. 
