aspects of the subject--upon
"household economics" rather than the skillful doing of household
tasks.

In view, however, of the fact that the majority of girls never reach
the high school, every bit of household science which they can grasp
should be given them in the elementary school. Knowing how to do is
only part of the housekeeper's work. Knowing what and when to do is
quite as important. Elementary study of food values is quite as
comprehensible as elementary algebra. Home sanitation and decoration
are no harder to understand than commercial geography. The principles
of infant feeding and care may be grasped by any girl who can
successfully study civil government or grammar.

Shall we then crowd out commercial geography or government or grammar
to make room for these homemaking studies? Not necessarily, although,
if it came to a choice, much might be said for the practical studies
in learning to live. Fortunately it need not come to a choice. There
is room for both. We must, however, learn to adapt existing courses to
the requirements of girls.

[Illustration: Courtesy of L.A. Alderman
A model school home where all the practical details of housekeeping
are taught]

[Illustration: A domestic science class at work in the model school
home shown above]

There is arithmetic, for instance. Most of us have already learned to
skip judiciously the pages in the textbook which deal with compound
proportion, averaging payments, partial payments, and cube root. Now
we must learn to insert the keeping of household accounts; the study
of apportioning incomes; the scientific spending of a dollar in food
or clothing value; the relative advantage of cash or credit systems of
paying the running expenses of a home; the dangers of the
"easy-payment plan"; the cost of running an automobile; comparison
with the upkeep of a horse and wagon; comparison of the two from the
point of view of their usefulness to a family; mortgaging homes, what
it means, and what it costs to borrow; when borrowing is justified;
the accumulation of interest in a savings account; the comparative
financial advantage of renting and owning a home; the cost of building
houses of various sorts; the cost of securing, under varying
conditions, a water supply in the country home; and other locally
important problems. We already have "applied science" in our courses,
and we are making a strenuous effort to apply arithmetic; but we have
not usually tried to app