Part 44

The first grand division of study is The House.

We here observe that the housewife is going to be something of a Sanitary Engineer, since she studies Chemistry, Physics, and Bacteriology in their "application to such subjects as the heating, lighting, ventilation, and plumbing of a house." It is thought that knowledge of this sort "will go a long way toward improving the health conditions of the country."

We also observe that the housewife is going to be something of an Interior Decorator, since she studies "design, color, house planning and furnishing."

She also acquires some skill as Purchasing Agent, Bookkeeper, and Employer of Labor when she takes the course on Household Management and studies "the proper apportioning of income among the different lines of home expenditures, the systematizing and keeping of household accounts, and the question of domestic service."

The second grand division is Food Study and Preparation.

Here the housewife becomes, to some extent, a Dietitian, studying "the chemical processes in the preparation and digestion of foods," and considering the question "how she shall secure for the family the foods best suited to the various activities of each individual."

Here, likewise, she makes a start toward being a Pure Food Expert, through a study of "physical and chemical changes induced in food products by the growth of molds, yeasts, and bacteria," and a start toward being a Health Officer, through a study of "bacteria in their relation to disease, sources of infection, personal and household disinfection."

Nor does she omit to acquire some of the technique of the Physical Director through a course in Physiology bearing on "digestion, storage of energy, rest, sleep, exercise, and regularity of habits."

Of course, in her work in cookery, she pays some attention to special cookery for invalids.

The third grand division, that of Clothing and Household Fabrics, produces a Dressmaker, a Milliner, and an Embroiderer, as well as a person trained to see to it that "the expenditure for clothing shall be correct in proportion to the expenditure for other purposes."

The fourth grand division, the Care of Children, is of course limitless. The rearing of the human young is, as we all know and as Mr. Eliot of Harvard has insisted, the most intellectual occupation in the world. Here the homemaker applies all the knowledge she has gained from her study of the hygiene of foods and of the hygiene of clothes, and also makes some progress toward becoming a Trained Nurse and a Kindergartner by means of researches into "infant diseases and emergencies," "the stages of the mental development of the child," "the child's imagination with regard to truth-telling and deceit," "the history of children's books," and "the art of story-telling."

Passing over the fifth grand division, Home Nursing and Emergencies (in which the pupil learns simply "the use of household remedies," "the care of the sick-room," etc.), we come to the wide expanse of the sixth grand division, Home and Social Economics.

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 and sociological developments of the outside world.

For this reason, in traversing the division of Home and Social Economics, the pupil encounters "an attempt 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 in to Little Sally's stomach could atone for lack of skill at leading Little Sally herself in morning strolls through the "Child's Garden of Verses," with trowel in hand to dig up the gayest plants and reset them in the memory.

Which brings us back to the observation that the Consumption of Wealth is a generality.

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 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 cooperate 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 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 drain-pipe specialists. The woman who lives in the house has no more real need of a knowledge of the structural mysteries of drain-pipes than a reporter has of a knowledge of the structural mysteries of his typewriting machine. The office mechanic fixes all that for him, and, so far as his efficiency as a reporter is concerned, an investigation of 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.

For instance, in the books and in the courses of instruction (of college grade) on "The House" we have sometimes observed elaborate accounts of the evolution of the human home, beginning with the huts of the primitive Simianians. And in pursuing the very essential subject of "Clothes and Fabrics" we have not infrequently found ourselves in the midst of spacious preliminary dissertations on the structure of the loom, beginning with that which was used by the Anthropenguins.

Now we would not for the world speak disparagingly of looms or huts. We have ourselves examined some of them in the Hull House Museum in Chicago and in the woods of Canada, and have found them instructive. We suggest only that college life is short, that the college curriculum is crowded, and that (except possibly for those students who are especially interested in anthropology or in industrial evolution) it would surely be a misfortune to learn the Simianian hut and to miss Rossetti's "House of Life," or to get the impression that as a "cultural background" for shirtwaists the Anthropengruinian loom can really compete with Carlyle's "Sartor Resartus."

If this occasional tendency toward exaggerating the importance of drain-pipes, window-curtains, and door-mats were to grow strong, and if girls, as a class, should be required to spend any large proportion of their time on the specialized history and sociology of feminine implements and tasks while the boys were still in the current of the affairs of the race, we should indeed want President Thomas of Bryn Mawr to repeat on a thousand lecture platforms her indignant assertion of the fact that "nothing more disastrous for women, or for men, can be conceived of than specialized education of women as a sex."

These parenthetical observations, however, amount simply to the expression of our personal opinion that Home Economics, like every new idea, carries with it large quantities of dross which will have to be refined out in the smelter of trial. The real metal in it is its attempt to establish the principle that intelligent Consumption is an important and difficult task. For that reason it will not only desire but demand the utmost equality of educational opportunity. And women, like men, will continue to get their "cultural backgrounds" in the great achievements of the whole race, where they can hold converse with Lincoln and Darwin and the makers of the Cologne Cathedral and George Meredith and Pasteur and Karl Marx and Whistler and Joan of Arc and St. John.

The woman voiced a great truth who said that the soul which can irradiate the numberless pettinesses of home management (and it is folly to deny that there ARE numberless pettinesses in it) is the soul "nourished elsewhere." Think it over. It tells the story. Whether that "elsewhere" is the deep recesses of her own religious nature or the wide stretches of the great arts and sciences, it is always an "elsewhere."

Let that be granted, as it must be granted. Let us say that there shall be no abridgment of the offerings of so-called academic education. What does a course of study like that of Mr. Harvey's Homemakers' School attempt to add to academic education?