CHAPTER VI

From Bryn Mawr to the Hudson Shore

 

ees schools are more than a valuable coordinating device; they
are significant in and of themselves. A description of the Bryn Mawr Sum-
mer School for Women Workers in Industry may serve to illustrate how one
extra-community program has contributed to workers’ education. Also it may
help evaluate the importance of resident institutions as a whole.

THE PURPOSE OF THE SCHOOL

The founders of the Bryn Mawr Summer School believed that social change
was imminent; that workers of the future were to see international and indus-
trial peace and the reign of reason in the economic world. They maintained
that through workers’ schools, women workers might be prepared to con-
tribute to these forces in democratic ways. The first statement of the School’s
purpose reveals the goal to be as follows:

. to offer young women of character and ability a fuller education in order
that they may widen their influence in the industrial world, help in the coming
social reconstruction, and increase the happiness and usefulness of their own
lives. The Summer School shall not be committed to any dogma or theory,
but shall conduct its teaching in a broad spirit of impartial inquiry with
absolute freedom of discussion and academic freedom of teaching.*

As this dream shaped itself into a functioning organization, certain funda-
mentals were resolved. “Fuller” education was planned as a study of liberal
subjects, designed to train industrial women to think clearly; to stimulate
an active and continued interest in economic problems; and to develop a desire
for study as a means of understanding and enjoying life. Through teachers

* As quoted from original statement of purpose, 1921, in Hilda W. Smith, Women
Workers at the Bryn Mawr Summer School, p. 7.

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