Whose Slogan Was “Better Schools for Girls and Boys”

“What does that mean, Ella?” The boy lifted his eyes from his weeding as he put the question to his sister. Ella, seated on a chair between the garden rows, rested her open book on her knees a moment and sat thinking. Then, choosing her words carefully, she explained what she had just read aloud.

“Oh, I see now,” the boy exclaimed. “Go on.”

Ella resumed the reading.

Ella Flagg was in poor health as a little girl, so her mother chose gardening as the best means of keeping her outdoors. Ella found that while her fingers were busy pulling weeds, down one long row and up another, her active little mind was eager to be busy too.

She and her brother decided to combine reading and gardening. The plan worked well for these two children, as it relieved the weeding hours of monotony. Ella then made the discovery that whatever she tried to explain she must first understand very clearly herself. It was in this way that Ella Flagg Young, who became a famous educator, did her first teaching.

For the first thirteen years of her life Ella Flagg lived in Buffalo, New York, where she was born January 15, 1845. On account of ill health she was not allowed to go to school with her sister and brother. Her mother and father believed that there would be plenty of time for regular lessons when her body had grown stronger.

She was eight or nine years of age before she learned to read and then she taught herself. One morning Ella’s mother was reading in a newspaper an account of a fire. Ella was so much interested that she took the paper and tried to read the article. She remembered the exact beginning, but she did not know any of the other words. With some help, however, she was finally able to read the entire article.

Even though this little girl did not have regular lessons, there was much to be learned in a home such as hers. Mrs. Flagg was an energetic, capable woman. She was skillful in managing household affairs and much in demand among her friends and neighbors, when there was sickness or trouble in their homes.

From her mother, Ella learned how to settle household problems for herself. Because of this training she was able always to look squarely in the face the big problems that confronted her, when she was at the head of the Chicago school system.

Little Ella could learn a great deal, too, merely from hearing her mother and father talk, for they were thoughtful, intelligent people. Mr. Flagg had had to leave school when he was only ten years old to be apprenticed to the sheet-metal trade. However, by reading and study he had educated himself.

Sometimes Ella used to go to her father’s shop and sit for hours watching him at work at his forge. She asked questions about all the processes that he followed so that she really understood what he was doing. From these pleasant hours in the shop came her love of handwork and her interest in having it taught in the public schools.

When Ella began to go to school her father took a great interest in the way in which she studied. He had always done his own thinking and he did not want his daughter to depend on other people for hers.

Once Ella discussed with her father a drawing in her textbook of an hydraulic press that she was studying. She realized that he was displeased with what she said so she immediately decided to study the drawing more thoroughly. Soon she discovered that an important part had been left out. In the examination on the press the next day the papers of all the other students, who had blindly followed the book, were marked zero, while Ella’s received a perfect mark.

Ella Flagg graduated from a Chicago high school and also from the Chicago Normal School. This ambitious girl began to teach when she was seventeen years of age. She first taught in a primary grade for six weeks and then in a higher grade where some of the pupils were larger and older than she. In a year she was made head assistant of the school and in two years principal of the practice school, where she helped to train the normal-school students.

Ella Flagg married William Young in 1868. However, she did not give up her work. She climbed steadily up the ladder of the teaching profession. Even though she had become very successful she felt that she needed more education. Consequently she studied at the University of Chicago from which she received the degree of Ph. D.

Mrs. Young became assistant superintendent of the Chicago schools, then professor of education in the University of Chicago. Later she was made principal of the Chicago Normal School, and finally superintendent of schools in Chicago.

As soon as Mrs. Young became superintendent of the Chicago schools she began to work for the children. She ordered the windows to be opened, top and bottom, in the schoolrooms to do away with the foul air produced by a poor system of ventilation. She organized fresh-air classes for pupils who needed an extra amount of oxygen.

She asked the teachers to help her improve the course of study. Handwork, in which the hours at her father’s shop had given her an interest, she introduced into every grade. A new study, which she called “Chicago” brought the children into closer relation with their own city, teaching them its geography, history, and government.

The fame of Mrs. Young’s work in education spread beyond her own city. The National Education Association, which had never had a woman in office, made her its president. Mrs. Young wrote many books about education.

When Mrs. Young was asked how she managed to accomplish so much, she always said that it was through systematic work. The first year that she began to teach, she planned to devote three evenings a week to study, three to seeing her friends, and Sunday evening to church.

For a long lifetime Ella Flagg Young worked to solve the problem of educating the girls and boys of Chicago and the nation. The clear and independent thinking that she had cultivated as a girl helped to give her a place as one of the great educators of our day.

[The end of When They Were Girls, by Mabel Betsy Hill.]