Household Administration, Its Place in the Higher Education of Women

by Unknown

If man be the producer and distributer of wealth, woman is certainly the director of consumption. On her rests the responsibility of expending wisely and well the money entrusted to her for the nutrition and clothing of her family, and how can this be adequately fulfilled if she have no real knowledge of the subject beyond what she is able to pick up as she goes along, a method detrimental to all concerned? Little would be thought of any business house which entrusted its most delicate operations to inexperienced buyers, or of any municipality which allowed its affairs to be conducted by an amateur. Far less would be heard of misery, poverty, and ill-health if the art of buying and preparing food, for instance, were properly understood by those whom it most concerns.

Again, the chief racial responsibility falls on woman; it is just in the most precious years of childhood that her influence is so potent, and it is the mother, who besides helping to sow all the ethical and spiritual seeds, should safeguard the perfect physical condition of her children, in 27 order that an unimpaired vitality and constitution be handed on from generation to generation. No proverb is truer than “Mens sana in corpore sano”; the two go hand in hand together, and their accomplishment is the proud privilege of the woman.

From the family flows the life of the nation, and the power to guide it aright lies largely in the hands of women, whether they be married or single. With the married woman her own family comes first of all, and then through it her duty as a citizen; the unmarried woman’s duties as a citizen are manifold, and each year they increase and expand. Nearly all the activities of public life are open to her; for instance she may sit on County Councils, Municipal Councils, District Councils, urban and rural Parish Councils,[8] 28 Boards of Guardians, &c.; in fact in the growing field of social work, her services are being more and more recognised as indispensable, and it is impossible in a few words to enumerate all the possibilities of service which lie before her, both professional and philanthropic.

Consequently if a healthy nation is desired, the women of a country must be educated both academically and scientifically. “If women are to be fit wives and mothers they must have all, perhaps more, of the opportunities for personal development that men have. All the activities hitherto reserved to men must be open to them, and many of these activities, certain functions of citizenship, for example, must be expected of them. Moreover, whatever the lines may be along which the fitness of woman to labour will be experimentally determined, the underlying position must be established that, for the sake of the individual and race character, she must be a producer as well as a consumer of social values.”[9]

Now how is this most desirable end to be attained? The succeeding papers will deal with the subject in extenso; here can only be briefly indicated the scope and purpose of the majority.

An eminent authority tells us that “the objects of nature may be designated as the objective point of view. It is the standpoint of biology and affords the natural conditions for the successful 29 investigation of the laws of life, not only of the lower organisms but of the human race as well.”[10] This immediately demonstrates the vital necessity that women should know something of these fundamental laws of life, which biology alone can teach, in order that she may apply these to her ordinary daily life and recognise them as operating in all her surroundings.

The transition from this stage to the next is an easy one. Woman having learnt the laws of life, will immediately view her economic responsibilities with a clearer eye and fuller understanding. It is true that throughout the ages woman has striven to acquit herself as best she could, but until the present day it has mostly been a groping in the dark, without the aid of any exterior agency. Now light is beginning to be thrown on many points hitherto obscure.

Household economics has been well said “to rest on two chief cornerstones, the economy of wealth and the economy of health, and encloses the groundwork of human happiness and human aspirations ... even all departments of science must contribute to its development.”

But a mere knowledge of biology and economics is useless without bodily efficiency, and true bodily efficiency is only possible where the environment is favourable to growth and life. It cannot be expected that full physical development can ever take place in ill-lighted, badly ventilated, 30 defectively drained or otherwise objectionable houses. And it must never for a moment be forgotten that if the body be neglected, then, as an inevitable consequence, the mind and spirit must also become warped. It is not that we desire man to develop his physical nature at the expense of his spiritual, but rather that we would see him placed in such a condition that he is able to apply those great faculties, which distinguish him from the brute creation, to their highest and best use.

The ancients recognised in very early times the need of sanitary precautions to protect themselves from the onslaught of disease and the consequent decimation of their race.