contain selected groups. Below them are the people's
schools. The girls who do not go beyond these are to be the wives of
working men, in many cases can learn nothing from their mothers, and
before marriage may themselves be caught in the treadmill of daily labor.
It is probable that to these children of impoverished future we should
give the chance to learn in school facts which may make directly for
national health and well-being. But the girls in the most democratic state
university in this country are selected by their own ambition, if by
nothing else, for a higher level of life. Their power and their
opportunities to learn do not end on Commencement Day. The higher we go in
the scale of education, until we reach the graduate professional schools,
the less are we able and the less need we be concerned to anticipate the
specific activities of the future.

Furthermore, we are discussing colleges of "liberal" studies, not
technical schools. Into the former have strayed many students who belong
in the latter. The tragic thing about their errantry is that presidents
and faculties, instead of setting them in the right path, try to make the
college over to suit them. The rightful heirs to the knowledge of the ages
are despoiled. The most down-trodden students are those who cherish a
passion for the intellectual life. Among these are as many women as men.
If domestic science were confined to separate schools, as all applied
sciences ought to be, we should have nothing but praise for a subject
admirably conceived, and often admirably taught. In these schools it may
be studied by such High School graduates as prefer to deal with practical
rather than with pure science, and, in a larger way, by such college
graduates as wish to supplement theory with practice for professional
purposes. But in liberal colleges domestic science is but dross handed out
to seekers after gold. Against its intrusion into the curriculum no
protest can be too stern.

Faith in this study seems to rest upon the belief that the actual
experiences of life can be anticipated. This is a fallacy. There is no
dress rehearsal for the role of "wife and mother." It is a question of
experience piled on experience, life piled on life. The only way to
perform the tasks, understand the duties, accept the joys and sorrows of
any given stage of existence is to have performed the tasks, learned the
duties, fought out the joys and sorrows of earlier stages. In so far a