THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. TUESDAY, JUNE 29, 1909. DOMESTIC SCIENCE.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 9529, 29 June 1909, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. TUESDAY, JUNE 29, 1909. DOMESTIC SCIENCE.

Little by little it is being recognised in British communities that the art of housekeeping, with all that is conveyed in the phrase "domestic science," has been horribly neglected. For the past twenty years, as a writer in the London "Times" remarks, "every other aptitude of women has been trained, while it has been taken for granted that the domestic arts develop by themselves. There is no greater delusion." Fortunately with the slowly-growing recognition that housekeeping in its broadest sense is a science has come a desire to treat it as such, and to impart its elements to those who will have to practise them in the homes of the next generation. In its simplest form this instruction has taken shape in the teaching of cookery to schoolgirls, a further development is afforded in the less frequent teaching of physiology, and domestic hygiene, while the fine flower of this education in the many and complicated duties of the complete housewife is seen in the rare instances where it forms part of a University curriculum, It may be said that too much fuss is made nowadays of the importance of skilled training in the management of the home. There are no doubt many who urge that because our mothers and grandmothers knew nothing of "home economics" as a University subject, the women of to-day can get along very wall without it. They overlook the fact, which we think cannot be disputed, that the average housewife of forty or sixty years ago was better equipped for her work than her descendants of to-day. Life, too, was simpler and easier then than now. To-day in some communities home life is disappearing partly, we have no doubt, through the lack of knowledge that makes it possible. And if it be admitted that home life is the basis of national life, then it must also be admitted that life in boardirg-houses and hotels is not only a very poor substitute for the home, but a distinct danger to the nation. Any step, therefore, which exalts the profession of the housewife, and enables her to carry out her work more efficiently, must have the support of all who have at heart the welfare of the nation and (he race,