Page:The Girl Who Earns Her Own Living (1909).djvu/239

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

master the new ideas presented in the training-school for kindergartners. You may enter a shop as a clerk and tread the pathway to financial success by way of experience and your early mistakes, but you cannot correct mistakes in the kindergarten.

A business college may grant you a diploma and send you out to plague future employers because you learned to form the pot-hooks of stenography before you had thoroughly mastered your spelling-book, but you cannot enter a training-school for kindergartners without passing preliminary examinations which will test severely your qualifications in high-school branches.

This introductory preachment is offered because I want to play fair at the beginning. The high-school girl who must make money immediately on graduation is wasting her time in building kindergarten plans and air-castles. The woman who has been a home maker and out of the school atmosphere for years cannot read a few books on kindergartening, buy a few games and open a kindergarten in a few weeks. But to the girl who is considering the matter seriously, who has time and money to take a thorough course in the work, kindergartening opens a field of self-support worth cultivating. The ambitious, business-like kindergartner does