The Katharine Gibbs School
Fri., March 15, 12:03 AM
The Katharine Gibbs School was formed in the 1930’s during the Great Depression. Mrs. Gibbs’s idea was to train young women - the type who never had to work before - to take their places in the business world. She developed a program that produced quality secretaries, surveying prospective employers to find out just what they were seeking – even to the style of English, grammar, and letter writing.
Mrs. Gibbs’s school was eventually copied by others, but it remained the premier secretarial school for many years. Yes, it also became the target of gibes, particularly when a coed dropped out of college to “take a quick course at Katie Gibbs.” Even a Gibbs teacher might refer to getting one’s PHT degree (putting hubby through).
In fact, a “quick course” meant a full academic year, September to June, even for a college graduate. Furthermore, a girl couldn’t just decide she would like to attend; she had to apply for admission, providing her previous academic history, and submit to an interview as well.
Its official name was the Katharine Gibbs School; note that “secretarial” was not part of the name. It could have been a finishing school, and in many ways it was. In the 1960’s, when I attended, the business was still a family affair, run by Gordon Gibbs, son of the founder. Its prestige was such that an employer requiring someone with a year of experience would accept a brand new Gibbs graduate.
This was a business climate where women were nowhere near equal to men. We needed to be the best possible secretaries. Administrative assistant? That was a secretary who couldn’t type – usually a man. In the same way, junior accountants were men and women were bookkeepers – same job, but a definite pay differential. Gibbs put us up a step, providing lifetime placement and free brush-up courses to all women who completed the course.
At that time the school offered the original one-year course; a two-year course leading to an associate’s degree; and the Special Course for College Women. The one-year technical program, which was also half of the two-year program, was essentially the same course, whether it was for students straight out of high school or for those who had college background.
All of the teachers had worked in secretarial positions and were experienced in the business world. There were no ivory towers here, just a modern Manhattan skyscraper.
Drill was the name of the game. We studied typing and shorthand, and even those who had already taken those subjects began at the beginning. “Business Communication,” that is, basic English and grammar, was an important part of our work, as was spelling. It is a sad comment on our education system that graduates with a degree in English did not know parts of speech and how to punctuate a sentence. Fortunately for me, one high school English teacher had thoroughly instructed me in grammar, and I sailed through.
Letters were graded as "perfect"; "mailable" - with an allowable error; or "unmailable" - which meant you had to do it over. We learned to spell words in syllables, as they might be separated in print. (Thus, a one-letter syllable at the beginning of a word or two letters at the end was not allowed.) Each day’s spelling list also included five cities; on tests the question was the city name, and we had to supply the state. Sometimes we were given the state, in which case we had to know the capital. Once again, Gibbs did not assume we had learned geography in high school.
Once we had learned the keyboard, typing exercises were performed to music. After everyone had mastered typing twenty words a minute, the teacher would play the music at thirty, then forty, words a minute. Drill, drill, drill. Most of us eventually attained fifty-five words a minute or more, without errors. And keep in mind, this was with manual typewriters.
In addition to the technical material and the courses in secretarial procedure, we studied accounting and filing. Finally, the College Women's course included lectures from specialists in law, taxes, and advertising. That was the bulk of our academic training, but it wasn’t the end of our education.
Katharine Gibbs turned out executive secretaries, not pool typists or clerks. That meant we had to adhere to standards in dress and behavior. Outside the school we wore hats and gloves. (I heard a guy on the elevator ask, “What is Katie Gibbs, a hat shop?”) Grooming included keeping your hair off your shoulders, either cut short or pinned up. Appropriate dress might vary from one industry to another, but our skirts had to cover the knee. We were expected to use cosmetics, but makeup should be discreet – no raccoon eyes or white lipstick. Any teacher could mark you down in grooming, and the typing teacher warned us, if we made an error because of long fingernails, she would downgrade us both in typing and grooming.
We were expected to be at school every day, on time. Well, that’s what an employer would expect, wouldn’t he? We were reminded about honesty, discretion, and integrity. As a supervisor, I found those qualities sadly lacking in young workers. I didn’t even realize how much until I heard myself on the phone telling a young woman to “get your ass in here”! Not only would that not been necessary for us graduates, we never would have used that kind of language at work. (Incidentally, in case you think I was too harsh on her – committing yourself to do a job for someone means you don’t give in to a hangover.)
By the 1980’s the school had been sold to a large corporation, which was more interested in profits than the old standards. The first sign of change was a six-week course called “Entrée.” Entrée graduates had enough typing and shorthand to enter the business world, but they didn’t have much else.
In time, the Katharine Gibbs School would become Gibbs College, teaching computer skills and other technology that became necessary in the business world. “Secretary,” in the sense that we used it, seems to be an obsolete term. I suppose this indicates some sort of progress, in that graduates can say they attended a college. But I feel that much of what we gained has been lost.
The people running Gibbs College today have very little understanding of what the Katharine Gibbs School was. Brush-up courses? Lifetime placement? If you mention the “hat and gloves era,” you almost expect them to say, “I thought they were all dead.” Graduates of the Katharine Gibbs School can obtain a slight discount on courses at Gibbs College – if we aren’t too decrepit to get there.
A few years ago I applied for a job where the owner, a woman of about my own age, said “Wow, Katie Gibbs!” And her young assistant said “What’s Katie Gibbs?” Gibbs graduates offer qualities that are almost as obsolete as the typing pool, but no one even recognizes how much these qualities are still needed.
