Teaching Gender in Social Work - MailChimp

the families? Who would visit regularly homes in rural areas and research the
family situation? Who was prepared to undertake such work in villages?
In 1927 the Child Protection Union in Bulgaria began a year’s course
for female teachers, preparing them to work as volunteers, especially in the
villages. Usually the participants in these courses were young female teachers
from local village schools. During the course the female teachers covered various
disciplines – school hygiene, the symptoms and treatment of tuberculosis, the
symptoms of malaria, infant mortality, eugenics, children’s rights, the anatomy
and physiology of the female body, child tooth care, sport and tourism. A textbook
especially for them was produced. 16
The courses were meant to pass on elementary medical knowledge. The
female teachers visited child hospitals and other child institutions in order to
become acquainted with existing practices and hygiene standards. More than a
thousand teachers were trained over the next ten years. 17
In the villages the female teachers’ advisors were supposed to visit homes
and collect data about the living conditions of families and children; to spread
hygiene and health knowledge among young girls, mothers and children; to
organise hygiene soup kitchens for school children; and to decrease the influence
of the old untrained midwifes who tended to defended traditional practices of
child rearing. Annual reports for all these activities were required by the central
body of the Child Protection Union, some of which were published in its
newspaper. The teachers visited families in order to observe living conditions,
hygiene and nutrition. They asked pupils about their breakfast habits and instructed
young mothers and girls. They had also to shave the hair of children
to prevent the spread of typhus. In many villages they cooked for the children
in soup kitchens.
The vice-president of the Bulgarian Child Protection Union, Konstanza
Ljapcheva, recommended that female teachers and advisors develop a strong will,
self-discipline, personal order and cleanliness, as well as a planned schedule of
work to be done in the poorest villages. Only in this way, would a female teacher
and advisor be able to gain the trust of villagers, to fulfil her tasks of teaching
children and mothers and of opening soup kitchens for poor children.
16
Penka Georgieva – Petkova and Todor Zubov, Rakovodstvo za uchitelki-savetnichki (Guidebook for female
teachers and advisors), (Sofia, 1933).
17
There were 5712 elementary schools in the villages of Bulgaria in the 1930s. See Konstantsa Ljapcheva, “Zakrila
na selskoto dete v Balgaria” (Protection of the peasant child in Bulgaria), Nasheto dete, (1942): 9-10.
136