Our Schools in War Time—and After

by Arthur D. Dean

Progressive teachers of cooking are realizing that the idea of 20 cooking units in a schoolroom, where little batches of 20 model biscuits are made and where at the close of the lesson each girl has one of these small eatables, is far behind the practice of those manual-training teachers who are making drawing tables, benches, and looms, or laying concrete walks, building outdoor gymnasium apparatus, and so on. Some of the teachers have insisted on having a flat or tenement or entire house near the school, where girls taking domestic science can go to learn to make real beds that are really slept upon, to clean bathroom bowls that are really used, to cook meals that are really eaten by people who pay for what they eat, to shake real rugs that become really dirty, and to shop at stores where they come in contact with actual commercial conditions and at the end of a week discover that it really costs money to run a real home. A few teachers, and in time there will be many, desire to go still further. They believe that home-making cannot be taught without having some babies around, and so they have established day nurseries in connection with the home-making classes.

It is because of these things which have been mentioned in some detail that I was glad, as director of the Division of Agricultural and Industrial Education of the New York State Education Department, to send out a circular letter early in April, 1917, to our manual-training and household-arts teachers, in which I stated that every teacher of manual training, sewing, or cooking should be thinking in terms of mobilization service, and that any teacher of manual training who was conducting his course of models, instead of thinking and working in terms of food production or industrial war service, was absolutely out of touch with the needs of the day. I advised him to turn his shop work over to home and community gardens, to increase the time allowance given to manual work, and help fill the cellar and pantry. I advised him to give his Saturdays and afternoons after school and even his vacation period to supervising garden work in the community. I said, furthermore, that any teacher of sewing who was not thinking in terms of Red Cross, and of mending, darning, and repairing, was as far away from the service idea as she possibly could be. I told her that with the increase in price of materials and with the scarcity of dress goods there would be necessary repairing and making over which would give her an opportunity to do some real things. I even told her that she might drop some of her sewing and help the cooking teacher in organizing classes in preserving. I told the teachers of cooking that if they were running through their outlines with no reference to the food shortage of next winter and the year after, they showed a lack of comprehension of the meaning of their jobs. I stated that the early summer and fall suggested lessons in preserving, while the winter season conveyed the idea of conserving. I asked whether they were planning to stop their work in June, before the canning season really began, and leave everything idle until school should open, when the canning season would be nearly over. I wondered what provision had been made in the community for using the summer service which they either had offered or, I hoped, were about to offer.

A few weeks later word came from England of how the manual-training teachers had been urged by those in authority to do garden work. A portion of these directions follows:

Surely wood and metal work have not the monopoly of the educative value in manual operations. The harvesting of an orchard of fruit or a field of potatoes by a class of school children, accompanied by an enthusiastic teacher imbued with the right ideal of his work, can be made to serve other purposes than merely that of simple mechanical utility. A discussion started at first hand between child and teacher on such matters as variety and quality of produce, the destructive fruit pests and diseases encountered, the crating, packing, and distribution of produce, the weighing and measuring actually performed, the calculating of the value of produce and of labor, and a knowledge that the coöperative effort is in response to a call of England's need, would provide open-air lessons in nature study, geography, arithmetic, and civics quite as educative as any obtained in the elaborately equipped manual-training centers.

This is true, especially the phrase "a knowledge that the coöperative effort is in response to a call of England's need," which embraces the socializing value of the manual-arts principles,—a value which we often talk about and as often fail to attain.

Teachers of cooking, in this food crisis now upon us and the greater one which may come, ought to suspend temporarily some of their work in teaching children and turn their attention to teaching adults. To be sure the girl of to-day will be the mother of to-morrow, but the mother of the immediate to-morrow is also the mother of to-day, and the food crisis will be over, it is to be hoped, by the time the girls in our present cooking classes have grown into motherhood. These courses to adults should be intensive and in short units. The printing schools should print leaflets giving practical and helpful recipes to be distributed to the adults. If the women will not come to the school, then the schools should go to the women. By this it is meant that classes can be organized in churches, vacant stores, and settlements. In this connection it may be of interest to quote from the Leicester (England) education committee:

Arrangements have been made in connection with the local food campaign whereby the ordinary schemes of work at the domestic-science centers have been temporarily suspended and special short courses in cookery instruction provided instead. These courses have been designed primarily as a means of instructing as many women and older girls as possible in the method of preparing and cooking suitable substitutes for bread and potatoes. In addition to the rooms equipped for cookery instruction, those normally devoted to the teaching of laundering and housewifery are being used for this special work. The course is arranged to cover 4 lessons given on consecutive half days to each group of attendants, and at the conclusion of each course the women and girls attend one evening for a review lesson including a practical demonstration to which outsiders are invited. Leaflets have been prepared and sent to the schools for distribution. The children themselves write out the scale of rations as applied to individual families and take their copies home, thus becoming the active agents in the food campaign.

In Albany, New York, the regular work in cooking was discontinued early in June for the school year of 1917, and a special course of 10 lessons in food conservation was given at 4 domestic-science centers. The course consisted of 1 lesson in the preservation of eggs, 3 lessons on canning, 1 on making soap, 1 on butter substitutes, 2 on jellies and marmalades, and 1 on the drying of a number of agricultural products.

Not only may the domestic-science teacher go to adults by the way of churches or settlements, but she may go directly,—in the rural districts, at least,—with demonstration kitchens mounted on automobiles. In Lindsay County, England, for example, a domestic-science lecturer arranged an experimental course of lectures and demonstrations on economical cookery, and equipped with necessary utensils a traveling kitchen at a cost of $100. She covered each of the larger villages in the area selected, spending one day in each place, the morning being given over to traveling. In the afternoon, exhibitions of wheat-flour substitutes were arranged and demonstrations given that were based upon left-overs from her preceding evening's lesson. She also gave short talks on beekeeping, horticulture, fruit bottling, and so on. In the evening she gave a cooking demonstration.

The "van" used by the women of Long Island, New York State, consisted of a train of cars behind a steam locomotive, from which demonstrations were given in fruit and vegetable preserving. The County of Nottingham, England, gave similar demonstrations and in addition gave lectures to mothers on the necessity of taking unusual precautions with reference to the health of babies at this period. It was customary in much of the work in England to have an agriculturist go with the teacher and give talks on spraying, elimination of pests, and conservation of garden products.