Mrs. Pillow, lately employed by the Education Department to prepare a special report on the teaching of Domestic Economy, gives an account of the work of these schools. She says: ‘Housekeeping and cookery are treated as part of the everyday life of the girls, and not merely as school lessons. The girls cook the meals which they are to eat; they learn to measure and fit themselves for the dresses which they are taught to make, and they are instructed in laundry work in such a way that they can quite well apply their knowledge to the “family wash” in their own homes. The cookery syllabus contains dishes which are well within the reach of the working man earning an average wage; the using up of odds and ends, bones, crusts, and cold vegetables, scraps of meat, etc. receives attention, and the utensils and stoves provided for the girls are similar[17] to those found in the majority of artisans’ homes.
‘The laundry work is taught on simple and common-sense principles, the only extra aid to speed and efficiency being a wringer and mangle, and, as these are now so frequently found in the homes of the more thrifty housewives, it is well that the girls should be taught to use them properly. The processes of steeping, washing, boiling, rinsing, blueing, wringing, drying, folding, mangling are all thoroughly taught. The washing of flannels and woollens, a part of laundry work which is frequently very badly done by laundry women, receives special attention, and starching and ironing are exceedingly well done by the girls at the conclusion of their course of training.
‘The girls are taught the market value of foods. In some of the schools special arrangements are made for this. At Battersea they are taken out to purchase meat, greengrocery, etc. When the girls cannot be taken out to market, they are sometimes allowed to purchase from the teacher in charge of the stores. They are taught to compare prices, to judge of the freshness and quality of commodities, to expend a given sum to the best advantage in the cheapest market, and how to prepare and cook their meals in the shortest time possible.’
The fee for the complete course is £1, 10s., or 7s. 6d. per month, and this includes the cost of all books and materials. The greater part of the pupils come from the elementary schools, but surely they are not the only girls who need such teaching. Many pupils leave the high schools at fourteen or fifteen to live at home in somewhat straitened circumstances. To them such a training as this would indeed be a boon. It would even be worth the sacrifice of the last six months at school, since they must in any case leave without getting the best it can afford, the teaching in the fifth and sixth forms. Girls attending second grade schools, who naturally leave early, would find these domestic economy courses an admirable means of transition between school and home life; while those, whose bent lies in this direction, can go on to the training schools, and either become teachers of these subjects, or earn a living by their practical application. In fact, the domestic economy school is fast helping to raise the home arts into their proper educational place, as affording one among many suitable careers for women, no longer the Cinderella among occupations, who sits among the ashes, because the prince has not yet come to claim her. The neglect of the middle class to use these schools is another instance of their proverbial apathy; meantime, these good things are ready for them as soon as they will take the trouble to grasp them. Of course there is no reason why such teaching should be given free, except to a minority.