The Book of Gutsy Women Read online

  “Above all, we need a more optimistic spirit, a more affirmative point of view in handling our exceptional children. There is too much of a tendency to pronounce difficult cases hopeless, and to pack them off to the custodial schools.”

  —MARGARET BANCROFT

  At a time when most children with disabilities were excluded from schools, hidden away by their families, and even institutionalized, Margaret’s approach was radical. And while she was encouraged by others who shared her vision, she also faced derision from people who shared the sentiments of her previous board members: that some kids simply weren’t worth the effort.

  Margaret was undaunted, even when only one student enrolled for the first semester at her new school. Anxious though she must have been, she persevered. Enrollment quickly grew, and by 1892, she had to move to a larger space. Though it was a boarding school, Margaret did not keep students confined to campus. Haddonfield students went on nature trips and visited museums and the circus. She wanted her students to see the world; she refused to believe any of them were “hopeless.” Margaret provided a loving home, as well as methods of treatment that were years ahead of their time. And she got results: Children and adults with severe disabilities were able to get the support they needed to thrive in school, stay in their communities, and eventually get jobs.

  In 1898, Margaret reincorporated her school as the Bancroft Training School. She didn’t only teach students, she also trained teachers. Some of those teachers stayed at Bancroft, while most eventually left, taking Margaret’s ethos and methodology to other schools across the country. Many of the subsequent leaders in the early twentieth century of special education trained under Margaret.

  Beyond Bancroft, Margaret urged the medical establishment to change their approaches to treating patients with disabilities. At a speech to the Women’s Medical College of Pennsylvania in 1907, she championed the idea that medical students had a responsibility to treat everyone regardless of ability. She advocated for schools for deaf and blind children to take a more individualized approach to education. In her writings, she also pushed for eliminating terms like “idiot” and “imbecile” completely, and for children and adults with disabilities to have a place in society. She hosted the first meeting of the Haddon Fortnightly, a women’s club, to help support women’s educational and social interests beyond their homes. Haddon Fortnightly still exists. So does Bancroft, which continues to focus on serving a diverse population, from young learners through senior citizens, at outpatient, day, and residential programs. It has an especially illustrious history of producing many Special Olympians. Margaret Bancroft dared to reinvent the possible for children with disabilities—and the impact of her work continues to this day.

  Juliette Gordon Low

  Hillary

  The Girl Scout motto is simple: Be prepared. According to a version of the handbook published the year I was born, “A Girl Scout is ready to help out wherever she is needed. Willingness to serve is not enough; you must know how to do the job well, even in an emergency.” I couldn’t have put it better myself. It’s no wonder I found my way to the Girl Scouts.

  Though it has been decades since I hung up my sash, I still remember all the songs. (“Make new friends, but keep the old. One is silver, and the other’s gold.”) Many of my most joyful moments on the campaign trail, as first lady, as senator, and as secretary of state have revolved around getting to spend a few minutes catching up with a gaggle of girls eager to show me their badges. Plenty of people who have never been a Girl Scout are familiar with the camping trips, the service projects, and, of course, the cookies. The Girl Scout cookie program is the biggest “girl-led business” in the world, with two hundred million boxes sold every season. (Thin Mints are the most popular variety, according to the organization’s official reports—no surprise there. My mother always loved Thin Mints, and kept them in the freezer as a special treat.)

  “The thing is, when there is danger before you, don’t stop and think about it. The more you look at it the less you will like it. But take the plunge and go boldly in at it, and it will not be half as bad as it looked, when you are once in it. This is the way to deal with any difficulty in life.”

  —HOW GIRLS CAN HELP THEIR COUNTRY: THE 1913 HANDBOOK FOR GIRL SCOUTS

  So just where, exactly, did it all start?

  Juliette Magill Kinzie Gordon, better known to friends and family as Daisy, was born on October 31, 1860, in Savannah, Georgia. As a little girl, Juliette was sensitive, curious, compassionate, and adventurous. She suffered from ear infections and injuries when she was young, which left her hard of hearing. On her wedding day, a grain of rice thrown by an overzealous guest got lodged in her “good” ear, leading to a painful infection. In the process of removing the rice, her eardrum was punctured, and she would spend the rest of her life almost completely deaf. (Later, she was known to exaggerate her deafness when friends tried to back out of their commitments to do work for the Girl Scouts.)

  On a trip to England, Juliette met Lord Robert Baden-Powell, the founder of the Boy Scouts. He told Juliette that when he first formed the organization, six thousand girls registered. He wasn’t about to have them traipsing across the country with his Boy Scouts, but he wanted to start a similar offering for girls. With Lord Robert and his sister, Agnes, Juliette helped set up some of the first troops of “Girl Guides” in Scotland and London. She showed characteristic foresight in a letter to her father, gushing: “I like girls, I like this organization and the rules and pastimes, so if you find that I get very deeply interested you must not be surprised!”

  When she came home to America, Juliette made a fateful call to her cousin, Nina Anderson Pape, a teacher who would become the local commissioner of the Girl Scouts. Juliette didn’t beat around the bush: “I’ve got something for the girls of Savannah, and all of America, and all the world, and we’re going to start it tonight!” Over the next few weeks, they convened a small troop of eighteen girls who met at Juliette’s house. As the girls mastered various skills (cooking, first aid, bicycling), they earned the coveted badges. Walter John Hoxie, a famous naturalist and a friend of Juliette’s, helped organize one of the organization’s first camping trips. A year later, the organization changed its name to the Girl Scouts and published a handbook, entitled How Girls Can Help Their Country. In the handbook were diagrams showing how to splint an arm, step-by-step instructions for how to extinguish a gasoline fire, lists of different knots, notes on civics, media literacy (“Wherever you go you will have the choice of good or bad reading, and as reading has such a lasting effect on the mind, you should try to read only good things”—that’s advice that stands the test of time.), athletics, cooking, and more.

  “ ‘Stick to it,’ the thrush sings. One of the worst weaknesses of many people is that they do not have the perseverance to stick to what they have to do. They are always wanting to change. Whatever you take up, do it with all your might, and stick to it.”

  —HOW GIRLS CAN HELP THEIR COUNTRY: THE 1913 HANDBOOK FOR GIRL SCOUTS

  Though she stopped short of getting involved in the budding suffrage movement, there is no doubt that Juliette believed in educating girls and giving them a sense of power. Years before women could vote, serve on juries, or open a line of credit in their own name, she wanted girls to learn career development, leadership, self-sufficiency, and financial literacy (described in an early handbook as “thrift”). She was an ardent supporter of sports for girls, believing that competition was not only healthy but necessary to development. She did a headstand and a cartwheel each year on her birthday just to prove she could still keep up with her Scouts.

  When World War I broke out, Juliette got involved, and so did the Girl Scouts. They volunteered as ambulance drivers, rolled bandages, sold war bonds, planted gardens, and even stepped in for overworked nurses during the Spanish flu epidemic. Through it all, they kept growing. It was during the war years that the first Girl Scout cookies were sold. In 1917, they published their own
magazine, called The Rally.

  In addition to being a firm believer in the potential of every girl, Juliette was a prodigious fund-raiser. When attending a fancy luncheon, she would trim her hat with leftover vegetables from her garden, forgoing the traditional flowers. When her fellow guests raised an eyebrow, she would exclaim: “Oh, is my trimming sad? I can’t afford to have this hat done over. I have to save all my money for my Girl Scouts. You know about the Scouts, don’t you?” Even after she was diagnosed with breast cancer, she kept fund-raising and promoting the Girl Scouts.

  Today, Juliette’s family home is a historic landmark. There are schools, camps, and scholarships named after her. Her face has appeared on a postage stamp, and there was even an opera about her life. She was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012, a century after the Girl Scouts were founded.

  CHELSEA

  I loved being a Brownie and was honored to take part in the Girl Scouts’ hundredth-anniversary celebration in 2012. There is no one better to lead the organization today than their current CEO, Sylvia Acevedo, who is a Brownie-turned-rocket scientist. She has used her background as an engineer to solve problems from disparities in education to lack of access to necessities like eyeglasses, toothbrushes, and books. Under her leadership, the Girl Scouts are creating new badges in the sciences, civics, and more. I’m excited to continue cheering on the Girl Scouts in their second century.

  According to the organization, fifty-nine million American women alive today were part of the Girl Scouts growing up. Venus and Serena Williams are Girl Scout alums. So are Katie Couric, Barbara Walters, and Robin Roberts. My friend and fellow secretary of state Madeleine Albright was a Girl Scout. Former Girl Scouts are governors and astronauts. Fifty-eight percent of women elected to the 116th Congress were Girl Scouts. Juliette couldn’t have known everything her Scouts would go on to achieve, but I like to think it’s exactly what she had in mind. At a time when it was a radical concept, Juliette believed that girls really could help their country—that is, as long as they were prepared.

  Maria Montessori and Joan Ganz Cooney

  MARIA MONTESSORI

  JOAN GANZ COONEY

  Hillary and Chelsea

  Chelsea

  Growing up in late nineteenth-century Italy, Maria Montessori was encouraged by her mother to pursue her studies, including in higher education—a rarity for Italian women at that time. Over the objections of her father, she studied medicine at the University of Rome. Although she confronted antagonism and harassment from her male colleagues and professors, in 1896 she graduated with the highest honors and became one of Italy’s first women doctors.

  A physician specializing in pediatrics, Maria was an early advocate for children’s rights, including the right to an education. Refusing to accept the prejudice and cynicism of those who believed that differently abled children could never learn, Maria wrote to the relevant authorities to advocate for special classes and schools. Her persistence was rewarded in 1899 when she was appointed as a counselor to the newly created national league dedicated to the protection of children with disabilities. The following year, the league opened its first school to train teachers, complete with a laboratory classroom. Students in that first year’s class passed the so-called normal school’s year-end exam, and the new schools’ efforts were deemed a success.

  “Now, what really makes a teacher is love for the human child; for it is love that transforms the social duty of the educator into the higher consciousness of a nation.”

  —MARIA MONTESSORI

  Over the next few years, Maria created a new system of education and, in 1907, opened her first preschool, Casa dei Bambini (Children’s House), in the low-income San Lorenzo neighborhood of Rome. The Casa’s teachers would demonstrate a task, then encourage the students to complete the same task on their own. Rather than requiring children to simply listen, as other Italian schools did in the early twentieth century—Maria was a vocal critic of schools where “children, like butterflies mounted on pins, are fastened each to his place”—Casa dei Bambini helped children direct their own learning through “free choice.” They were encouraged to explore using all their senses and to help clean up after they were finished, to leave the space clear for the next child’s discovery.

  “The world of education is like an island where people, cut off from the world, are prepared for life by exclusion from it,” she said of traditional Italian education. It seemed obvious to Maria that allowing children to learn from their surroundings was a much better approach. Maria’s pedagogy was not haphazard: She had researched and analyzed how brains acquire and store information. For Maria, her strategy, heralded as being more humane and child-centered, was the clear outcome of science. The success of students in that first school inspired her to open many more schools, and the Montessori Method became a standard approach in Italian education.

  In 1909, Maria published her first book, and it was quickly translated into many languages. (Its English title was succinct: The Montessori Method.) By 1911, there were Montessori schools across Western Europe and in the United States. At the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco, she showed her approach to early education in a “glass classroom” that allowed passersby to watch young students making their own choices and working with intense focus. The following year, Maria expanded to elementary schools and explored how best to extend her method to older children.

  In 1922, the Italian government appointed Maria the country’s inspector of schools, quite a few of which were by then Montessori schools. In 1934, after years of growing fascism and the Italian government’s alignment with Hitler’s Germany, Maria left her beloved home country to live in Sri Lanka, Spain, and eventually, the Netherlands, where she died in 1952.

  Today there are an estimated twenty thousand Montessori schools around the world, including thousands in the United States. I went to a Montessori preschool and adored it. (My favorite lessons were about the cicadas and our careful—and respectful—explorations of their shed skin.) It took guts to revolutionize what education could mean, particularly for the youngest learners and differently abled children. It’s not surprising that Maria won multiple recognitions in multiple countries and was thrice nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. She pioneered an approach that, for the first time, embraced the idea that children are creative, curious, and eager to learn, and deserve to be treated as individuals. As she reportedly said: “The greatest gifts we can give our children are the roots of responsibility and the wings of independence.”

  Hillary

  Born fifty-nine years after Maria and six thousand miles away in Phoenix, Arizona, Joan Ganz Cooney would also revolutionize children’s education—through a very different means.

  Joan started out in the early 1960s as a television producer, working on documentaries for educational station Channel 13 in New York. She later explained that she was influenced by Father James Keller’s Christopher Movement, which called on people of faith to apply their principles to the world around them. “Father Keller said that if idealists didn’t go into the media, nonidealists would,” she recalled.

  Joan’s first programs were dedicated to teaching the public about major issues. One day in 1967, she went with her boss to a meeting at the Carnegie Corporation to discuss whether television could not only inform adults, but help prepare young children for school. When the idea of a study on the subject came up, Joan’s boss answered for her: She wouldn’t be interested in that. But Joan exclaimed, “Oh yes I would!” She traveled across America for her study, talking to experts and observing children. “Children all over the country were singing beer commercials,” she said. “So it wasn’t a question of ‘could it teach,’ the question was ‘could it teach something of potential use to children.’ ” In her report, “The Potential Uses of Television in Preschool Education,” Joan proposed a show like Sesame Street.

  The report helped make a case for foundations and the U.S. Department of E
ducation to contribute $8 million to fund a new company, the Children’s Television Workshop. In the male-dominated fields of scholarship and television, people worried that the new project wouldn’t be taken seriously with a woman in charge. Though it had been her study and her idea, Joan had to sit down and write a list of names of men who could be considered for the job. “I was told that if they chose one of them that I would be number two,” she remembers. “And I said, ‘No, you don’t understand. I won’t be number two.’ It was absolutely what I was born to do, and I knew it.” She successfully overcame the skepticism to become the executive director when Sesame Street premiered on PBS on November 10, 1969.

  Sesame Street was a hit with kids and parents alike. The newspapers called her “Saint Joan” and said a miracle had occurred for children, who were learning their ABCs and 1-2-3s with the help of catchy songs and characters like Oscar the Grouch. Chelsea especially loved Big Bird as a little girl, and I loved watching her light up when she learned a new word thanks to Sesame Street.

  Of course, even a beloved show like Sesame Street had its detractors. Six months after it premiered, a state commission in Mississippi voted to ban the show from airing on public television. One of the commission members leaked the story to the New York Times, explaining that “some of the members of the commission were very much opposed to the series because ‘it uses a highly integrated cast of children’ ” and that those members felt that Mississippi was not yet ready for it. Joan called their decision “a tragedy for both the white and black children of Mississippi.” After public outcry, Mississippi was forced to reinstate the show after banning it for twenty-two days.