People's Pilot, Volume 6, Number 25, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 December 1896 — WHAT A CHILD WANTS TO BE [ARTICLE]

WHAT A CHILD WANTS TO BE

Girts Desire to Teach, Boys to Handle Tools, When Grown Up. Children in their early. teens have strange ambitione. Prom 8,600 replies to the question, "What would you like to do or be when yon grow npT’ it la recorded in Che annual report of the deportment of instruction in New York that among the girls 88 percent wanted to be teachers, 84 per oent milliners, H per oent clerks and stenographers, 8 per oent housekeepers; storekeepers, nurses and servants, each 8 per cent; artists, 1 per oent ; then follow missionaries, musicians, factory hands and those who hope to be wives and mothers, each about three-fourths of 1 per oent. It is indeed a poor showing for the desire fox motherhood. What is wrong with our schooling system that most-young girls make up their minds that they would like to be teachers, and that only threefourths of 1 per cent of them express any interest iq being a wife and mother} Among the boys who were .questioned the most popular occupations related to the trades. Fourteen per oent bad this preference. Next in frequency came the desire to be merchants, 18 per oent; then olerka, ? per cent; then farmers, 6 per oent; doctors, about 6 per oent; lawyers, about 6 per oent; engineers, nearly 4 per oent; teachers and Boldiers, each 8 per oent; railroad men and sailors, each per oent; business, 8 per oent The rest named 86 different occupations. It was notioed that the boys thought that an oooupatiou that dealt with tools, plants or animajs meant something that conferred power over one’s fellows. Only in boys about 7 years old was there a large preference for such occupations as that of polioeman, fireman or railroad man. As be grows older the average boy modifies bis desire for the perilous, until at 14 he wants to be a bank clerk. There is one interesting exception to this. The ambition to be a Bailor appears at 7 and increases slowly, oulminating at 14. Here is the composition of a boy of 14; parents American, bis father a laborer : * ‘ When I am a man, I will go to sea and be a sailor on tbe stormy ooean. Then I oan see strange and foreign lands and plaoea, where no man but the sailor oan go. * * * I oan go among the ioefibrgs of the antarotio region, and I oan Bpend a nightly winter in some arotio oountry. The dark oon tinent holds many Jojb for the sailor. He can hunt and have adventures without other oost than walking into them. Because I speak in suoh glowing terms of the sailor does not say that I think he has no discomforts, for what kind of life does not have its full share of the dangers and discomforts? The millionaire frets about the fact that some bank will go under. * * * Even the poorest laborer frets, fearing he and his family will starve to death when he has no work. And now, hurrah for the sal lor I” And here is a little end of the century old maid of 9, of English and American parentage, whose father is a staid minister of the gospel s “I want to marry a naan that doesn’t smoke, because I don’t like tbe smell of smoke. I want to teach school where they will let me spank the children. For children knead disciplin. I want to bloomers all the tima I want to wear a cutaway suit. Because it looks nice with bloomers. I will wear russet shoes and brown stockings. I want to have my hair cut short. Because it will be ooler.”—New York Prosa.