To teach chemistry and physics in the usual academic manner and then tack on a course of cookery and laundry-work at the end of school life cannot possibly be of the same value as the co-ordinated courses; we want scientific method even more than “science” for these schools girls, who shall so soon be the housekeepers and home-makers. We may say with Stevenson, “A dogma learned is only a new error—the old was perhaps as good; but a spirit communicated is a perpetual possession.” For those girls who pass 323 on to a university or technical school we want an intelligence alert to all that may lie in further investigation of those problems suggested at school.
A certain jealousy may be pardoned that the possible evolution of housekeeping may be the work of women; the leaders of the “woman’s movement” have so often spoiled their work by following the lines of men’s activities and aiming at a goal essentially masculine. The things that go to housekeeping seem so intimately connected with motherhood and mothering that it must be hoped our most able women will bring their intelligence, their education, and their sense of national responsibility to the task of housekeeping—to the simplification of its problems, the reduction of the labour involved, and the organisation of the paid service. There is certainly scope for master-minds.
We touched on the organisation of the nursing service. If it is possible to duly care for the sick and at the same time train an efficient nurse, it is surely possible to provide proper service in the huge caravanseries of our modern life, and at the same time provide a suitable apprenticeship for the domestic worker. Good instruction at school, followed by one or two years of definite training in a hostel or boarding-house, should produce a class of skilled women workers who can be organised and employed on the same lines as those of the nursing service.
In many branches of labour the women are 324 ousting the men; unless we can make good the present breach in our home bulwark and train our army of defence, we may find men ousting women in their own particular sphere.
America and Canada, realising that their coveted nationality must be founded on homes, have brought into their universities the “science of home affairs.” England, in spite of the warning note sounded by inquiries into physical deterioration, infant mortality, and kindred evils, has been content with a tradition of good homes, and has so far done little more than provide a smattering of cookery lessons for elementary school girls.
There is, however, a promise of better things. One university college has made a venture into home science, and other universities would soon be at work if the necessary money could be secured. Oh, for some silver-tongued evangelist to cry in the ears of our philanthropic millionaires all that might be done for this country by bringing its best brains to consider the material things that go to the making of a good home!
THE END
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