The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1875-09-04 00:00:00

PHYSICAL EDUCATION. .

The following communication, sent to The Times by Mr.
John Macgregor, commends itself to the thoughtful oonside-
ration of those who can in any way influence the training of
the young, as the prominent feature in education, should he
how to make boys and girls useful men and women :
Sir,--.Every ;one of the 120,000 children attending
Board Schools in London is drilled and is taught to
sing. All thei girls are methodically instructed in
sewing, and the infants learn to use hands and eyes
from kinder-garten, the "toy teaching," which plea-
santly entangles school and play. Writing and draw-
ing, wherein the mind expresses by the hand what the
eye perceives of form, are taught in all these schools to
every child, and the teachers and scholars have their
cricket clubs and bands, and simple gymnasiums.
All this is good on dry land, but we are on a sea-
girt isle, intersected by rivers, lakes, and ponds, or on
ships not always seaworthy, and The Times has told
how London boys and girls are now being taught to
swim. But, after all this school teaching of their
heads and limbs, the children go home for meals, and
meet their parents around the familytable, the expression
in most eases, of ignorant extravagance, and too of ten the
common dish of family broils. Thousands ought to
thank you, Sir, for persistently, urging the importance
of teaching plain cookery to ,the people, and at last
the Education Department has formally sanctioned
grants for this purpose from public funds, so that girls •
(boys need it quite as much) may be taught how to
stoke the furnace and charge the boiler of the human
engine which is to supply force for every nerve on land
and water, in work, and school, and play.
As one of the Executive Committee of the National
Training School for Cookery, and as Chairman of the
Committee for Cookery in our London Board School,
I may be allowed to make some remarks as to the
scheme for the instruction of girls in cookery which we
are now earnestly advancing.
In the first place, let me state that the School Board
cookery classes cannot train cooks. That is the special
work and duty of the Training School at South Ken-
sington. The girls in Board Schools are far too young
(12 to 13, or 14 years of age at most) to be made into
cooks by lectures and demonstrations. The pupil
teachers who may learn in our classes are doubtless
older, but these have chosen a mental department of
school teaching, and their culinary knowledge will be
of value chiefly for instructing others, or for their own
future family home's.
The instruction about to be given, therefore in our
"Cookery Centres" is that which a little lass of 13
years old can learn now only haphazard when she helps
her ignorant mother at home, or gets a "place," where
complaints are more frequent than advice. This is the
girl who does not know how to light a fire, how to pre-
pare the utensils, what to look for in season at the
market, what to pay for it, what to do with it in the
kitchen, how to serve it on the table, how to preserve
what is left of itifor economical use next day.
No wonder that with such a girl her father's dinner
is costly and thirsty, that her brothers, at work further
off, spend double what they ought to do in dining out,
and that no such supper is ready at night as will be-
guile them from the into publichouse. Yet every other
faculty of this girl is being developed by instruction
except that which most of all will be surely needed all
her life. To prepare this girl for home usefulness now,
for happy household service later, for earning proper
wages, and for family management in the future is
what the School Board has resolved to try.
Recommended by the mistress of her school as
regular in attendance, industrious, and willing to learn,
this girl will be allowed, as a favour and a reward, and
without special fee, to attend twenty times for two
hours once a fortnight at one of the "Cookery Centres"
now being established experimentally near New-cross
and King's-cross, and this attendance will be counted
as that at her ordinary day-school, and the Govern-
ment grant will be earned accordingly.
At the "Cookery Centre" the girl will be in a class
of thirty under the teaching of a first-rate instinctor
from the Training School at , Sauth, Kensington.
Ordinary kitae'n fires suitable for artisans' honses will
be in front of thp clase, with'ordinarylpota aed pans,
and the meat" Otl'vegetiibles botight prom the very
shops where workmen's' wives get' their infiferials.
Each two hour's leseon., $ll be directed to part of a
well arranged programihe'under such heads as roasting,
,Tbojiipir, soups, and brothr, stews, baking, frying,
..:,broilitings,usiug up cold meat, Australian meat, fish,
egetahles, milk, and eggs, puddings baked and boiled,
bread and cakes, sick-room cookery, farinaceous foods,
cheap 'minces, cheapest dishes without meat, cheapest
.dishes with meat.
By attention, taking notes, and experimental use of
these means, a girl will, in most cases have at least a
good opportunity of learning how to make economical,
appetizing, and satisfying dishes at an expense much
below the cost of what is spoilt and rendered useless
in the wasteful medley of an ordinary home. If, with
such an opportunity of learning, she is found to be
hopelessly dull in this particular line of work, how
well for her and her parents to know this soon; and
if, on the other hand, she earns her certificate for
"regularity and attention," or, still better, for " pro-
ficiency " in this initiatory apprenticeship, is it not
evident that her claims for a ' place " will be appre-
ciated, that her wages will be better at once, and her
usefulness increased, even at home, in saving time,
trouble, temper, and money? The experiment will be
tried at first with about 300 selected girls, but the
premises will be such as to admit of an immediate

doubling of the number. The estimated outlay from
the school rates will be leas than £1 for each girl in the
class, and the ratepayers will doubtless spend this
money gladly with so sure a prospect of immediate
public advantage.
If the managers of Voluntary Schools are wise, they,
too, will speedily combine to secure similar instruction
for their school girls, and the School Board will heartily
co-operate with them for the purpose.
Some day—not, perhaps, far hence—we shall find
that " places " and situations for men'and women will
be a good deal dependent upon the applicants for them
having proper -certificates for book learning, sewing,
singing, swimming, drill, and cookery; and we shall
smile looking back at the days when we taught the
botany of flowers and ch 3 miitry, of carbon and fibrine,
but left every girl to find out for herself how to light a
fire and to boil a potato.