The work in this division begins with a study of the primitive evolution of the home and comes on down to the present time, when “the passing of many of the former lines of woman’s work into the factory has brought to many women leisure time which should be spent in social service.”
Note that last fact carefully. Home economics is no attempt to drive women back into home seclusion. On the contrary, it is an attempt to bring the home and its occupants into the scientific 108 and sociological developments of the outside world.
For this reason, in traversing the division of home and social economics, the pupil encounters “an effort to determine problems in civic life which seem to be a part of the duties of women.”
Seventhly and lastly, there is a division dedicated to Literature, in which “a systematic course in reading is carried on through the two years.” Indispensable! No degree of proficiency at inserting calories in correct numbers into Little Sally’s stomach could atone for lack of skill in leading Little Sally herself through the “Child’s Garden of Verses” with trowel in hand to dig up the gayest plants and reset them in the memory.
So we come back to our old statement and vary it in phrase but not in effect by saying that home-economics courses, totaled, do not give a technique so much as an outlook.
The homemaker may happen to be a specialist in some one direction, but it is clear that she cannot simultaneously know as much about food values as the real dietitian, as much about 109 the physical care of her child as the real trained nurse, as much about the wholesomeness of her living arrangements as the real sanitarian, as much about music as the Thomas Orchestra, as much about social service as Mr. Devine, and as much about poems as Mr. Stevenson. Her peculiar equipment, if she is a good homemaker, is a round of experience and a bent of mind which make it possible for her to coöperate intelligently with the dietitian, the trained nurse, the sanitarian, the Thomas Orchestra, Mr. Devine, Mr. Stevenson, and the various other representatives of the various other specialized techniques of the outside world.
It follows that her school discipline cannot be too comprehensive. No other occupation demands such breadth of sense and sensibility. One could make a perfectly good cotton manufacturer on the basis of a very narrow training. One cannot make a good consumer without a really liberal education.
For this reason it becomes necessary to resist certain narrownesses in certain phases of home economics.
One of these narrownesses is the assumption 110 that because a thing happens to be close to us it is therefore important. We have heard lecturers insist that because a house contains drain pipes a woman should learn all about drain pipes. But why? In most communities drain pipes are installed and repaired and in every way controlled by gentlemen who are drainpipe specialists. The woman who lives in the house has no more need of a professional knowledge of the structural mysteries of drain pipes than a reporter has of a professional knowledge of the structural mysteries of his typewriting machine. The reporter is supplemented at that point by the office mechanic and, so far as his efficiency as a reporter is concerned, a technical inquiry into his faithful keyboard’s internal arrangements would be in most cases an amiable waste of time.
Another possible narrowness is the attempt to manufacture “cultural backgrounds” for various important but quite safe-and-sane household tasks.