Many girls have written to me that they understand that a college degree is necessary to secure a position in a first-class school. This depends entirely upon your interpretation of the term "first class." If you mean the public kindergartens (and there are no better fields of effort, no schools that pay better salaries in the long run), then the statement is incorrect. Principals of fashionable private schools demand a college degree from every applicant for a position, and in the public schools, if you desire to rise to the rank of supervisor or teacher in a training-school for teachers, the degree is essential. On the other hand, a girl is entirely safe in taking merely her two years of work at a representative training-school for kindergartners; and then, after she has established herself successfully as a teacher and has saved funds from her salary, she may take the special college course which will fit her for the post of training-school teacher or supervisor.
Now for the girl in a large city who is ambitious to become a kindergartner.
Investigate first the possibilities of the public-school system in your own town. There may be attached to your own normal school a kindergarten course. At the training-schgol for teachers in New York City, and in connection with the Girls' Normal School in Philadelphia, for instance there are kindergarten classes.
