Farnham Favors Home As Foremost Role for Women

Claiming that the present educational philosophy toward women is "You had better be a man or take the consequences," Dr. Marynia Farnham, author of "Modern Woman: The Lost Sex," denounced educators during last night's Law Forum for their failure to teach women what their function is, and what will be demanded from them in 20th century society.

The topic of the Forum, held at the Rindge Tech Auditorium, was "Women's Education: Career or Kitchen." The two other speakers, playwright Lillian Hellman and President Harold Taylor of Sarah Lawrence, agreed that women's education was inadequate to meet the demands of a tremendously complex society, but claimed that this shortcoming carried over to men's education as well. Miss Hellman stated that "the inability to find a proper role in life cannot be confined to career women, but all modern women and men as well."

Three Divisions

President Taylor divided the educated woman into three categories: 1) the "co-ed type: gay, happy, extroverted, and judging success by the number of men who seek her company; 2) the Helen Hokinson type: intelligent, educated woman commenting on a world she does not fully understand--she would cure society with a lending library and Norman Cousins; 3) the ideal type: doing whatever she has to do with grace, whatever she wants to do with enjoyment; she is interested in her education and her life.

Dr. Farnham said women's comparatively new social, political, and educational equalities tended to obscure her original function as a bearer and rearer of children. Modern woman, she said, is educated by men's standards, she knows little about family life, and when she is thrust in the middle of it she finds it a limited, stunted role.