. If the family is poor but a
boy is very bright, he may win a scholarship by getting high marks.
Because boys are more likely than girls to go to a university, they
study more science and mathematics in school than their sisters do. Of
course they all study reading, writing, history, arithmetic and good
manners.

When a Spanish boy grows up and has a university education, he may
become a doctor, lawyer, banker, newspaperman or government worker, just
as any of you may. If he is going to be a farmer, a fisherman, or
fashion things with his hands as a carpenter or wrought-iron maker does,
he probably won't go to school after he is fourteen. If he's going to do
the same thing his father does, his father will teach him. Otherwise, he
may become an apprentice, which means that he will work right along with
grownups who already do what he wants to learn. He learns by doing it
with them.

Little Spanish girls, who wear pinafores to school and do their hair in
pigtails, are more interested in learning how to be good mothers,
because every little Spanish girl dreams of marrying and having lots of
children. They learn how to read and write, and the history of their
country, but they also learn how to cook and sew and bring up children.

Recently some Spanish girls have started learning how to be lawyers,
doctors and teachers. These girls, like their brothers, go on to
universities. Some girls also learn shorthand and typing so that they
can work in offices. Before the Civil War there were no girls in
offices, but today they like being secretaries and typists just as girls
in America do. Still, even these modern Spanish girls don't have the
freedom to go to parties or on dates with boys, the way American girls
do, unless they are engaged to be married. When they go out at night for
the paseo or to attend the theater or a movie, they go with other girls
or with their whole family.

A strong family bond unites all Spanish people. Fathers and mothers and
children spend as much time together as they possibly can. If being
together means that children must go with parents into the fields at
harvest time, then they go, even if they only play around and don't
really help. In the evenings when the father and mother go to the paseo
or sit in a cafe to talk with their friends, their children go with
them.

Always the whole family goes to church together. One of the most
important days in a Spanish child's life is the day of confirmat