During the past five years one secondary school after another has taken up Domestic Arts as a school subject.  The initiative usually comes from the headmistress, and is a matter of personal judgment, so that the introduction is still an experiment on trial, and the method of trial varies.  Before giving some indication of the methods tried, we must return to the demand for teachers.  It will be clear from what has been said, that a science graduate who has studied and practised household arts and cooking, or a trained teacher of Domestic Arts who has also some science certificate and a high standard of general education, will at this moment command a higher salary than the ordinary secondary schoolmistress, and is practically certain of a post.  But either of these individuals requires an unusually long period of training, for which most people have neither the time nor the spare capital.

One woman’s college in London has started courses of its own in “Home Science and Economics,” and awards a three-year certificate to its students; also a diploma for science graduates who take a year’s course, and a certificate to Domestic Arts teachers who take a closely related year’s course.  This is King’s College for Women, which has just obtained the formal approval of London University for its three years’ curriculum.  In a very short time arrangements will be made to grant a University Diploma to the students who have taken this course, the fee for which amounts to 30 guineas a session.  A scholarship, covering the cost of tuition, is from time to time awarded to undergraduate students, and there is also a one-year post-graduate Gilchrist scholarship of 50 guineas.  The name of “Household and Social Science” is recommended by the Royal Commissioners for the new co-ordination of subjects.  Various American universities and colleges give diplomas of the same kind:  and the New Zealand University has just initiated one.  The three-year course at King’s College for Women may possibly be modified by the University authorities:  at present it consists of two years’ training in various branches of pure science, and a third year in which these branches are applied to household matters of all kinds.  For instance, the usual type of academic course of Inorganic, Organic, and Physical Chemistry gives place in the third year to the study of food, cooking utensils and cookers, soap and other cleansing materials, and woven materials.  Biology and Physiology give place to household Bacteriology and Hygiene.  Practice in Housewifery and Cooking occupies one day per week throughout the three years.  A very important feature in this course is the introduction of Economics.  As with the natural sciences, two years’ study of ordinary Economics, chiefly industrial, is followed by a year of Economics applied to the household, in which an attempt is made to show the present and past relations of the household to society.  King’s College for Women is the first institution in England to see the great importance of studying the connection of domestic life with the outside industrial world, instead of treating it as an isolated phenomenon.