SUMMER PROGRAM OF STUDIES AND ACTIVITIES

 

  

communities, and what issues to study before voting in the coming election.”
In 1936 a large meeting considered the variety of organizations and points
_of view represented in the School. Several smaller gatherings which fol-
lowed analyzed more specifically the difference between workers’ groups
throughout the country. A realistic approach to workers’ problems also has
been encouraged through studies which the School has conducted or for
which material to be used by other groups has been gathered. The job-
analysis survey undertaken in 1925 had the following aims:

. to assist the teachers of the summer schools in understanding the back-
ground experience of the students with whom they are working and thus to
adapt their program and teaching methods to the problems at hand, and
second to build up a body of information concerning the trade experience of
a selected group of women workers from the important women’s trades and
from all parts of the country.”

Another study was initiated three years later by the economics faculty so
that both instructors and students might obtain “more systematic knowledge
of the experience of industrial women composing the Summer School
group.” In 1933 a third project was undertaken because the wornen were
“convinced that it was their obligation, both as students and as workers, to
arrive at a better understanding of the predicament into which they had been
forced by the economic organization in which they live and work.” *

Informal discussions and research are favored by the students. They have
suggested several times that fewer formal class hours be scheduled and that
more time be devoted to spontaneous study evolving from individual interests.
The faculty has recognized that the idea has merits, like those embodied in
“training for leadership” and classes in community organization. Thereby
workers may learn persistence and how to be intelligent, active members of
varied groups.

The School has realized that workers will benefit greatly if while studying
they remain interested in events off the campus and maintain contact

 

” Hilda W. Smith, “Bryn Mawr Summer School,” Journal of Adult Education, Vol. 4
(October, 1932), p. 451. ; ;

“Quoted in Amy Hewes, Women Workers in the Third Year of the Depression,
Study by Students in the Bryn Mawr Summer School, (U. S. Department of Labor,
Women’s Bureau Publication, No. 103), 1933.

"Gladys Palmer, The Industrial Experience of Women Workers at the Summer
School, 1928-1930, (U. S. Department of Labor, Women’s Bureau, Publication No. 89),
1931.

* Hewes, op. cit.

97