Teaching Domestic Science
A GREAT deal is said nowadays about practical education, but it is to be noted that many of the manual arts that are taught to children have more reference to boys than girls. The following, taken from a clipping, may prove suggestive to some of our teachers, as instruction along these lines may be given in the schoolroom:— “Every one of the seven hundred pupils in the Hamline vacation school in Chicago was recently made a stockholder in a little gray house that stands in the shade of a weeping willow on a lot adjoining the school. “The house was presented to the school for the purpose of making possible the carrying out by Principal Henry F. Crane of what is regarded by educators as the most novel plan ever devised for the encouragement of the practical study of domestic science and household arts by public-school pupils. “As it now stands, the abandoned dwelling is an empty shell. Its boarded sides are weather-beaten, and the shingles are falling from the roof. Inside of the little building strips of faded wall-paper cling to cracking plaster, and the doors are swinging on rusty hinges. “The seven hundred owners of the dwelling are to prepare the house for occupancy, and after it has been thoroughly renovated, the four hundred girls, enrolled in classes, are to learn practical housekeeping within its walls. “While the boys of the school are repairing fence and walls and roof, the girls, with scrub brush and broom and dust cloth, are to invade the interior and make it clean. And while the boys are painting the house and fence and front steps and trimming the old willow, the girls are to design wall-paper with which to adorn the bare plastered walls. And while the girls are sewing rag carpet with which to cover the boarded floors, the boys are to touch up the walls and hang the hand-painted paper. “In the manual-training department at the school all the furniture is to be manufactured. In the household arts department the girls will make pillow-cases and pillow-shams, upholster furniture, and embroider elaborate designs on table covers. “When the house has been furnished, the girls will take lessons in housekeeping. And while they are doing all this, the basket-weaving department in the school will make baskets for the house, and the clay-modeling class will manufacture bric-a-brac.”