ART OF COOKING

Wairarapa Times-Age, 3 April 1940, Page 8

ART OF COOKING

TAKEN UP BY BOYS. The day has arrived in many English homes when Masters Smith, Brown, Jones and .Robinson try their hands at helping mother in the kitchen while their young sisters set about mending broken fuses and tinkering with the radio. 'this comes as a result of a minor revolution in education which is occurring at several schools in England, the basis of which is the theory that there is no reason why the mysteries of mechanical contrivances should remain mysteries for girls and not for boys, ’ any more than there is any reason why cake-making should be a purely feminine art. Two such schools which have broken into the news recently on account of the success of experiments on these lines are Clevedon Senior School in Somerset, and Ecclesfield Grammar School in Yorkshire.

Some while ago Mr A. C. Harrison, headmaster of Ecclesfield Grammar School, instituted a Hobbies Club. Part of the Hobbies Club was a cookery class. Naturally—or unnaturally, Mr Harrison says—the class was at first composed of girls. But soon boys began to lake an interest in this cooking business, and now quite half the number in this section are boys. The boys enjoy cooking just as much as the girls, Mr Harrison says. And he adds that there is nothing whatever to choose between the cooking of either.,

At Clevedon the cookery classes have had the same experience. Boys can be taught to be just as good cooks as girls, declares Mr C. H. Croft, headmaster. And Mr Croft goes further and remarks that girls can make just as good mechanics as boys. Mr Croft believes that boys and girls should be taught the same subjects. As a result, not merely arc there cookery classes for girls. but there are also special classes at which the girls learn all about electricity and how to road gas and electric meters,