Prince, Lucinda Wyman, 1862-1935 - Social Networks and Archival Context (original) (raw)

Lucinda Wyman Prince: The Educator

Prince was arguably the first female counselor, one of the three original "Associate Counsellors" listed for the Vocation Bureau. However, there was much more to Prince than her distinction of being involved with the Vocation Bureau. like Parsons, Prince was a visionary and a most talented educator.

Prince was born in 1862 in Waltham, Massachusetts. She was trained as a teacher at Framingham State Normal School, with further education at Wellesley College. She spent some time studying in Germany where she observed the continuation school model of education. Prior to her association with the Women's Educational and Industrial Union (WEIU), she worked as a school administrator. In 1893, she lived in residence at Denison Settlement House, which was located in the South End of Boston, serving immigrant families.

Highly aware of social issues affecting women, Prince became an active member of the WEIU in Boston, a beacon of social justice, providing a variety of services to working women with limited resources. The staff offered legal consultation and aid, vocational guidance and placement, and a number of educational programs, the most popular of which was the Union School of Salesmanship founded and directed by Prince.

While serving as a leader for a club of 50 young women at the WEIU, most of whom held low-paying jobs at department stores, Prince became interested in salesmanship. Lacking the appropriate training, the young women had little chance of advancing to better paying, more respectable positions. Prince decided to develop a training program on retail selling with the hope that it would rectify the situation. In 1905, she established a salesmanship training program through the WEIU, without fully realizing the challenges awaiting her. Many of the girls were school dropouts with no desire to participate in another school-like experience. In addition, the department store owners were reluctant to support a training program organized by a woman without retail sales experience. Prince soon won over the store superintendents after demonstrating she could outsell even their best salespeople. The superintendents agreed to allow stores to serve as "training labs" and to pay a minimum wage to students practicing in their stores. Her cooperative training approach, borrowed from German continuation schools, proved successful. Within 2 years, the Union School of Salesmanship went from a struggling operation to a successful venture attracting students from outside of Massachusetts. In 1911, she opened a teacher's training program under the auspices of the WEIU. The program's mission was to prepare educational directors for stores and salesmanship teachers for high schools.

After establishing her renowned salesmanship school and her involvement with the founding of the Vocation Bureau, Prince directed her attention to public schools. Similar to Parsons and other civic leaders, she was concerned with high dropout rates among children who, because of academic challenges and/or financial difficulties, were "forced out" of the educational system after the completion of mandatory grade school. Prince believed that vocational training would give the youth a better chance at successful transition from school to work.

Along with vocational education, Prince was an avid supporter of vocational guidance services in schools. She already had discovered that her students' success in salesmanship school depended, to a larger extent, on their aptitude for working in sales. In a speech, Prince had illustrated this observation by stating that "girls who make hats are not necessarily the ones who can sell them". When one of her students failed because of a lack of ability to acquire the necessary skills, Prince attempted, as one of her supporters noted, "to find for her some other occupation which will be better suited to her powers, and so make her work something more than drudgery".

Given her strong support of vocational education and guidance services, it is not surprising that Prince was recruited to work with the Vocation Bureau. Likewise, it might have been that Albertson, in his experience with Prince at Filene's Department Store, recognized her competence, her ability to translate ideas into action, and her talent at persuading others to support her efforts. In addition, Prince's own success with the sales school, her affiliation with the highly successful WEIU, and her earlier work as an educator in the schools could have proven most helpful for the Vocation Bureau as it attempted to build working relationships with community organizations and eventually the schools.

An initial discussion on inclusion of Prince's salesmanship training in high schools took place in June 1912. Within 3 months, the first course on salesmanship was taught in an all-girls high school, and by 1916,10 additional high schools introduced salesmanship classes into their curriculum. In 1913, Prince was appointed as the director of salesmanship in the Boston public schools.

Several years after the Vocation Bureau in Boston was founded, Prince was still at work promoting vocational guidance and education. She played an active role in the development of a vocation bureau in Cleveland, Ohio, and her name was listed among a team of consultants that composed a who's who of vocational guidance, including Meyer Bloomfield, Jesse B. Davis, and E. W. Weaver as well as others who visited, assisting the city with its plan. Although there is not much written about her direct involvement with vocational guidance after 1913, it is safe to assume she continued to actively support the movement.

In Who's Who in New England, Prince was listed as an educator. She was indeed a superb teacher, insightful counselor, and a brilliant leader who fearlessly, and with an unyielding will, faced any challenge before her. She wholeheartedly supported vocational training and guidance for youth who otherwise would have haphazardly entered the world of work immediately after grade school. She championed meaningful, effective vocational training for these students as a means of preparing them to be successful as adults.

Prince's contribution to the field of vocational guidance warrants recognition to distinguish it from the looming presence of her pioneer work in the vocational education movement, as well as in the field of marketing and sales. likewise, the field should finally recognize her as the first woman to serve as a counselor and as a role model for all who might follow. As for her school of salesmanship, Simmons College is still home to the Prince Program in Retail Management and WEIU, under the new name of Crittenton Women's Union, continues to provide services for the women of Massachusetts.

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