MISS MARCHANT RETIRING.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1312, 15 December 1911, Page 11

MISS MARCHANT RETIRING.

KATHER REMARKABLE SPEECH. IB 3 Tcteeraph-Prois Association.! u., ' ' Owned in, December 14. (jS,-5s b r\ k r l ' ?, f 0ta E° Girls" Uij,h bchool, Jliss Jlarchant, who is retiring alter sixteen years of service, gave some ot her views on the .teaching of domestic science, and the rOlation of free secondary education to tho education ot girts generally. Miss Alnrchant thought that the standard ol admission was too low, and another grave effect was that tho girls left so quickly. At Wellington, Christchurch, AucUand, and Dunedin there wore more grrls, oi lugh school age, in private schools than at the free high school, ihis meant that the majority of parents did not want freo education for their girls. " Though fees had been abolished, it was not enough that the schools wero thrown open tor girls to bo educated, the girls' parents needed money. A e i r i ability was undoubted onght to bo given £U a year to euable her to attend school. What was wanted was girls with brains, and not only those who had time to take high school courses; Somo of theso girls oi ability went away to earn about ss. a week.- In fifty weeks they would earn ,£l2 lOs. In preference to tho present system, Miss Jlarchant stated that she would like to see scholarships of Xl 5 per annum pyen to these girls, and the fees maintained in schools for those who could afford to pay. With respect to tho university education, she thought that an appeal to tho reason and intellect that was dominating primary schools had run mad over domestic science. Business people had an idea that if they could teach girls chemisry, cooking, "physics of this and the temperature ot something else" thev would make good cooks of them Thev make no such thing. It was not plastering science that was wanted to turn peop o into cooks. Some of the most unintel ectual people she had seen made tlio best cooks and th© best housewives lor herself instead of beginning at the top with all this scientific training, she would begin at the bottom. She would have a little housa-like somo homo such as girls would live in in after life lhero would bo no fanciful kitchen gasstoyes, fitted up quite unliko anything winch the girls have afterwards in the course of their lives. She would send the 111 tli standard to the home to work for three months day after day and she would teach them how to do work quicklv ex poditiously, and methodically. Next veir sho would send the sixtli standard' to tho same place, beginning with the girls of those standards. In that wav thev u-ni,i,i .reach three-fourths of tho womanhood ot New Zealand. (Applause.)