TRANSACTIOXS OF SECTION L. 785 



teacher of her special subjects if a high standard of general education has buin 

 attained previous to her training. 



Time of Training. — This is usually two years lor those who take cookery, 

 laundry work, and housewifery only. If students take needlework and dress- 

 making in addition, the course generally lasts for three years. Those who take 

 high-class cookery or advanced dressmaking must take an extended course of 

 training. 



Scope of Domestic Science Trainim/. — This is increasing, we might almost say, 

 yearly. About ten years ago, in certain schools, teachers of laundrywork were 

 appointed who had received only three months' training. This included not only 

 training in the art of laundrywork but in teaching it. To-day, in the same schools, 

 the teacher of laundrywork is not appointed at the ordinary scale of salary unless 

 she is qualified to teach cookery and housewifery too. This requires a two years' 

 course of training. 



The idea is becoming general that wo should aim at training the teacher of 

 domestic science rather than the teacher of one section of it (such as laundrywork, 

 or cookery, or dressmaking). 



Suggested Scheme of Training. — Such a scheme includes : — 



a. Arts. — The practical work of cookery, laundrywork, and housewifery 

 (including actual housekeeping and the keeping of real, not imaginary accounts), 

 needlework, and dressmaking. 



b. Science. — Elementary physical measurement, chemistry, hygiene, physiology, 

 first aid, and sick nursmg. 



These should have their right place in a course of domestic science. They 

 should be treated as the foundation of the empirical arts. Unless the connection 

 between science and the work done in kitchen and laundry be made an essential 

 part of the scheme of leaching, domestic science loses greatly, whether regarded 

 from the strictly educational or the utilitarian aspect. The domestic science 

 teacher should show her pupils the necessity for understanding the reason for 

 every method they employ, for tracing causes of failure, and for constant etforts 

 to discover better and easier methods of work. The chemical laboratory should 

 be regarded as a place for the working out and elucidation of problems or diffi- 

 culties met with in the ordinary course of cookery, laundrywork, and housewifery. 

 Scientific training leads to desire to experiment, to questioning of methods in 

 general use, and readiness to adopt new and better ones. It is this attitude of 

 mind which we should encourage in teacher and in pupil. Practical science 

 should include the methods for testing, approving, and valuing the ordinary 

 materials and foodstuffs used in laundry and kitchen. If the training is to include 

 so much science, more time must be given to it than has been possible hitherto. 

 While we are not endeavouring to train physicists or chemists, yet we must 

 realise that domestic economy is really applied physics and chemistry, often of a 

 very high order of complexity. Frequent conferences between domestic science 

 and science teachers are necessary in order that the subjects may be satisfactorily 

 co-ordinated. 



Instruction and Practice in Method of Teaching. — 1. The elements of psycho- 

 logy, the study of class management, and school organisation. 



2. Blackboard drawing and elocution. 



3. Actual practice in class teaching. 



It is most {jnportant that practice in teaching should be gained by teaching 

 pupils from both elementary and secondary schools and also by teaching adults. 

 The more varied the teacher's experience, the more efficiently will she carry on 

 her work. To be successful, a teacher must be adaptable. She cannot be adapt- 

 able if she has been trained to teach in one groove ; in fact, she can hardly avoid 

 being stereotyped. 



Yet the Board of Education regulations as to recognised hours for a cookery 

 diploma insist that the eighty hours of teaching practice which training schools find 

 adequate for this section of the work must all be given in one type of school — 



1906. 3 E 



