Grant County herald. [volume] (Lancaster, Wis.) 1850-1968, 1914-12-02
ACCURACY REPLACES
HAPHAzARD METHODS
Through the Teachings of Do.
meStic Science
Time is Coming When Inc House
Shall Serve as a True Labora-
tory of Home Making.

Home Economics has taken great
strides in the last ten years. 1t is
now getting to be the exception not
to find it included in the high school
curriculum. This study widens the
view, it gives US accurate informa-
tion instead of hap-hazard methods.
1t brings together and dignifies all
the disconnected, nondescript duties
of the home-keeper and simplifies and
classifes them. Home-making bristles
with difficult problems. None of
these can be answered alike for all,
and therein lies the difficulty and
pleasure of household management
it takes brains.
These courses in the public schools
land in other schools as welD aim to
save girl the hardships of learning
solely by her own experience and to
save the family and society the waste
of such methods.
We are looking forward to the
time when the house shall serve as
the true laboratory of making.
"A place where, in every arrange
ment, one feels such simplicity,
directness and refinement as one
needs for plain living and high think
ing"
Miss Abby L. Marlatt, of our
State University, discusses the sub
ject with much force and clearness.
The following is an extract from one
of her papers:
care food, clothing, shelter and
family, when studied through Greek
and Roman History, cultural, but
when studied in relation to our city
slums or country villages, utilitarian
and therefore uneducational? If
time has such a refining influence in
separating the gold from the dross
then time is the true alchemist. In
future ages the study of Home Econo-
mics will rank as pure gold in the
education exchange, for the present
home will be archaic and therefore
divorced from use and a subject of
speculation. Even now it is difficult
to determine what may be history
and what may be the tool of to-mor-
rows labor. All Home Economics
courses confront the shifting of social
standards and therefore it means that
the ''do" of today, becomes the
history of tomorrow. Over night
our pet theory becomes another
hypothesis that does not work. -
Little of our knowledge has the
exactness of mathematics. Each day
sees some new discovery which
makes the explanation of yesterday
impossible. That is the joy and the
sorrow of the student whose mind
is open. We sigh for dead
languages that are so quiet in
their repose and need only to be
excavated with care. To study where
every tomorrow may explain the un-
known of yesterday, that is the joy
of the explorer.
The broadcast education for the
woman who is to make the home
of the future must have as its
center, the training of that body of
knowledge called Home Economics,
if it is to be most efficient.
That the woman of trained mind is
needed in the control of the factors
of the modern home is voiced by Mrs.
Richards, in her book on the Cost
of Living.
'The Educated woman longs for
a career, for an opportunity to infiu-
ence the world.
Just now the greatest field offered
to her is the elevation of the home in
to its place in American life
The housewife worried by her
servants, cheated by her tradesmen
and helpless before her furnace and
her cook is still a savage-has not
grasped the meaning of the environ
ment which we call home.
''The modern home is a laboratory
for applied science where the effort
should be for the maintenance of the
physical well-being and for presenting
the right environment which shall
lead to perfection in the child's men
tai and moral development.
To manage this working laboratory
with its water supply, its heating and
lighting apparatus its sewage system
and its ventilation problems requires
more than ordinary sense.
ISABEL TROW SERVIS.