If the home is to establish itself as an acknowledged success in modern conditions, it ought to be run by women with brains.  It is now becoming acknowledged that the work needs the application of the scientific method of thinking.  It may be true that home-making in the non-material sense is an art, but housekeeping nowadays is a science; and so much a science that a woman who has the chance of making herself an expert will be tempted to make housekeeping a career, and to undertake the job on a much larger scale than is needed in the ordinary house.

Thus, while there was practically no teaching of domestic subjects in girls’ secondary schools until about seven years ago, a demand for teachers of the kind has sprung up very recently, and is rapidly increasing.

The headmistress anxious to undertake something of the sort has had many difficulties to face in the immediate past.  The only teachers of domestic arts whom she could engage had received a very different education from the other members of her staff.  If their whole time were not taken up with teaching their subject, they had few or no subsidiary subjects to offer, nor were they prepared for those curiously mingled clerical and pastoral duties which fall to the lot of a form mistress.  In general education they might, indeed, be obviously below the girls in the upper forms, whose general culture had been sedulously cultivated for years.  If teachers of this kind were, nevertheless, not to be kept for selected “stupid girls,” it was possible (1) to introduce domestic work of the simple handicraft nature into the middle school, leaving it out of the upper school where there was a greater pressure on the time-table, or (2) to organise a post-school domestic course for girls who were not preparing for a profession.

The type of woman offering herself as a teacher in domestic arts has meanwhile been changing and developing, owing to the fact that a marked advance has taken place in the facilities for training.  The minimum qualifications now required by most education authorities are diplomas for cookery, laundry-work, and housewifery, granted by a training school recognised by the Board of Education.  It is advisable to take a fuller course which includes needlework and dressmaking.  Most training schools for domestic arts provide a two or three year-course, according to the subjects taken.  The three-year course, including cookery, laundry-work, housewifery, dressmaking, and needlework, costs about L75.  Scholarships are offered both by the training schools and by public bodies.  These cover the whole normal period of training, and an extension course for scientific study.  The subjects included are the principles and processes involved in cookery, laundry-work, and household management, the last comprising such diverse matters as the selection and furnishing of various types of houses, repairing furniture, the choice and care of household linens, simple upholstery,