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• 1 2020-10-09T18:49:29+00:00 Science 8 plain 2021-02-05T21:12:41+00:00 Students of the Summer School held a special place in their hearts for the Science lessons taught to them over the course of the 8 week program. Many had never left the city before, and finding themselves in a lush suburban campus was akin to finding themselves in a fantastical forest filled with animals they had never seen or interacted with before. Smith recounts the reverence that students held for the nature they came across, remarking on how often serious committee meetings were interrupted by the scramble for shimmering jewel-toned junebugs, or the memorable time that a student, unaware of what it was, brought her professor “a dead hornet,” looking for all the world “as if she had just discovered an archangel”.¹ Curriculum changed from year to year due to differing subjects of interests, alongside figuring out what materials could be borrowed from both Bryn Mawr College and other institutions from which professors were traveling. Classroom lessons reflected the fervor of student discovery, with hands-on experiments taking center-stage. Students dutifully kept caterpillars, waiting for their transformations into butterflies or moths. Lessons on geology were taught with samples from the area surrounding Philadelphia, and botany lessons were taught with samples students picked from campus. Some even recount the presence of an ever-rotating exhibit of flowers, leaves, and bugs that the students took interest in. For many, this was their first chance to freely explore nature, and their excitement was what drove these classes. Smith remarked,

  It is a moving sight to see a city-born girl long-handicapped by factory and home conditions come into the laboratory with a joyous look in her eyes, and in her arms a great bunch of what she calls her “don’t forget-me-nots.” 

  However, the study of the Natural Sciences was not without pushback. Several students, particularly those from the south, found the School’s teaching of Evolution to be wholly incompatible with their religious views. Conflicts developed between professors and students, and even with the School’s hope to foster understanding of others’ viewpoints, some found it  impossible to reconcile their belief of intelligent design with the lessons they received in the classroom, and left the School. Several workers found their main form of community at home in their local church, organizing themselves among those they worshiped with, and some thought that the teaching of evolution was an affront not just to their understanding of the world, but to the institutions that they held great value in.
  
      While some biology lessons were divisive and caused strife among groups on campus, one thing all students could connect over were the astronomy lessons held in the evenings. Professors would bring a telescope out onto the greens of campus and allow students to take turns watching the stars and planets shift through the night sky. Workmen and housekeeping staff on campus were also invited to these stargazing nights alongside the students. For many, this was their first chance to look at the stars without the thick smog produced by factories; it was though the heavens were unlocked for them by learning what lay beyond the clouds and light pollution. A clear night sky is not simply reserved for those rich enough to live in the suburbs, they learned, it belonged to anyone who knew what greatness lay above, even after traveling back to the cities and factory towns. It was such a pivotal and memorable experience that students deemed it emblematic of their time at Bryn Mawr, often citing it as one of the most important lessons they learned. One of the publications of student writing offered to the public was named for this appreciation of the night sky—the 1927 pamphlet The Workers Look at the Stars.
  
  
  ¹ Smith, Women Workers at the Bryn Mawr Summer School, 131.
  ² Ibid, 131.