The San Francisco call., 1910-04-23

it?
A school where boys like to cook their
own lunch, sounds still more strange.
A school where boys not only like
to cook their lunch, but where visitors
enjoy eating it, too.
There is only one school in San
Francisco in which this is done, and
that is the school where you would
last think of looking for 1.-THE
Parental
The Parental school is the school for
bad boys-boys that have done some
thing to take them into the Juvenile
court, but who were too young or not
bad enough to send to reform school.
That is why most of them are there,
although there are some who have
been sent because no other school
would have them. These are the kind
of boys who have learned in one week
to get up meal that is really good.
1T came about in this way: But
before one can begin at the beginning
of the cooking lessons one must go
much further back than that-away
back to the fact that no boy or girl
or man or woman can have good
brain in a poor body and no boy or
girl or man or woman can have Well
body without sleep and fresh air and
good food. Last, boy or girl or man
or woman with poor brain and a poor
body will, nine times out of ten, be u
bad citizen. That seems a long way
from the Parental school boys cooking
their own lunch, but that is where it
began, nevertheless.
Those in charge of the Parental
school knew this about sleeping and
eating and fresh air, SO, although they
couldn't attend TO the sleeping part,
they could do something about the last
two, and they began to map out a plan
whereby they could regulate not only
the amount of fresh air the boy got
into his lungs during school hours, but
also the food he had at lunch Perhaps
all the boys couldn't be made into
model boys by one hot lunch a day for
five days in the week, but it would
help somewhat. SO Miss Alexander
the principal. lost no time in getting
the machinery for that hot lunch in
working order
The machinery includes a large gas
range, necessary saucepans, small
larder with bins and barrels full of
strength in uncooked form, a dining
room with a long table, bathroom
with a not eT-Only lHlS was Ill
before, but it plays such an important
part in the preparation of the lunch
that it really belongs with the cook
ing-4S boys and Mrs. Gerhardt, the
cooking teacher, who, by her knowl-
edge of just how much goodness there
is in peas and beans and meat and
potatoes and hot biscuits and carrots
and all the thousand other things there
are to eat, is doing her best to make
the Parental school a school of good
instead of bad boys
Just as the reason for having the
hot lunch goes long way back, so the
lunch itself begins long before II
o'clock. In the first place, before the
cooks begin to cook each one, clean
or dirty, goes out and takes a bath,
a real bath in hot water, finished off
by a shower If his clothes are dirty
and it happens to be a garment that
can be washed, off il comes; something
else is found for him TO put on, and
into the hot water it goes, too. When
he is thoroughly clean he ties on his
apron and gets busy" in the kitchen.
At present there are only a few uni
forms. so the cooks have not begun
20 wear them but as soon as there are
enough they viii all be dressed ex-
actly as regular restaurant cooks, only