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Eleventh Series, No. 1 September 13, 1919

®eacfjer£ College Bulletin

Vocational Homemaking Education
Some Problems and Proposals

By DAVID SNEDDEN, Ph.D.

Professor of Education, Teachers College
Columbia University

Published by

QDeacftet* College, Columbia

525 West I20th Street
New York City

Teachers College Bulletin

Published fortnightly from September to May, inclusive. Entered as second-class matter,
January 15, 1910, at the Post Office, New York, N. Y., under Act of August 24, 1912. Ac-
ceptance for mailing at special rate of postage provided for in Section 1103, Act ot October
3, 1917, authorized.

Vocational Homemaking Education
Some Problems and Proposals

By DAVID SNEDDEN, Ph.D.

Professor of Education, Teachers College
Columbia University

Published by

College, Columbia

525 West 1 20th Street
New York City

CONTENTS

Page

I. Problems for Consideration 3

II. What Are Homes? 6

III. What Is the Vocation of Homemaker? 8

IV. Sociological Scope and Standards of the Homemaking

Vocations n

V. The "Total Problem" of Vocational Education for

Homemaking 13

VI. The "Case Method" of Study 16

VII. Some General Principles 20

VIII. Application of These General Principles to Home-
making Education 25

IX. The "Project Method" of Teaching Homemaking . . 26

X. Federal Board's Bulletin No. 28 30

XI. Household Arts as Liberal Education 33

Copyright, 1919, by Teachers College, Columbia University

VOCATIONAL HOMEMAKING EDUCATION:
SOME PROBLEMS AND PROPOSALS*

The education of women and girls for the homemaking voca-
tions has evolved to a point where many specific problems can
be diagnosed, (it is the purpose of this bulletin to state a few of
these problems, to suggest some methods for their further study,
and to submit certain tentative proposals for criticisms As far
as practicable, the methods employed will be those being devel-
oped in educational sociology, namely, to base all proposed aims
of education upon an analysis and evaluation of these needs of
social groups to be realized in and through education, school and
non-school, ^he standards will be those increasingly accepted
in the general theory of vocational education. The bulletin is
designed primarily for educators engaged in research in the
fields of homemaking and household arts education, or in admin-
istering state and national legislation intended to promote such
education.

I. PROBLEMS FOR CONSIDERATION

1. Do we possess as yet any definitions of the homemaking
vocations sufficiently specific and concrete to serve as founda-
tions for the formulation of satisfactory programs of instruction
and training for those vocations? Where can they be found?
(It is obvious that definitions expressed only in vague general
terms render very poor service.)

2. Back of definitions of homemaking, do we as yet possess
analyses and classifications of homes sufficiently concrete to
enable us to determine what are, for given social groups and
conditions, optimum degrees of efficiency to be expected of
homemakers? (For example, the criticism is often heard that

* In the. preparation of this paper, the writer has availed himself constantly of
the suggestions and criticism of students, colleagues, and others too numerous to
mention by name. Thanks are due them all for their patience no less than for
their courtesy.

[3]

415807

existing * programs 'oFhqrhe economics education are based on
excessively high home maintenance standards from the stand-
point of those whom they are to serve — that they ignore the
$900— $1,200 income class home, in spite of its prevalence.) .Where
can such analyses be found£>

3. Have we as yet any sufficient survey of the effectiveness of
the non-school vocational education for homemaking which now
prevails (and always has prevailed, possibly in different forms)
in various social groups or income levels? Where can the results
of such surveys be found? (It is alleged that programs of basic
home economics education now take no adequate account of
the effectiveness of non-school education, and therefore fail to
utilize its results, cooperatively or as basis of correlation.) What,
for specified groups or conditions, are the contributions of such
education to (a) ideals and appreciations, (b) technical knowl-
edge, and (c) skills, at age levels 1-12, 12-15, I5~i8 for non-wage-
earners or school attendants, (d) 15-18 for wage-earners or
school attendants, (e) 18-22 for home "boarders," (/) 18-22 for
home assistants, (g) 22-30 for young married women, etc.?

4. Is it practicable to distinguish in the actual exercise of the
homemaking vocation by given individuals the factors, respec-
tively, of "skills," forms of "related technical knowledge," and
forms of "related hygienic, social, and cultural knowledge (and
ideals)" in such a way as to deduce therefrom the best parts
which should be played respectively by home apprenticeship,
school education, and undirected experience, in the total edu-
cative processes of producing vocational competency? (Home
economics classes and courses have heretofore restricted them-
selves largely to technical instruction; they seem to have done
little to produce the two classes of skills essential in homemaking
— manipulative and managerial; and both their methods and
results have been freely criticised as "impractical," "over-tech-
nical," "excessively wedded to book and laboratory.") Under
what conditions can technical instruction alone function in voca-
tional competency — (a) as instruction unconnected with home
experience for girls 12-16 under conditions of home apprentice-
ship, (b) as instruction uncorrelated with home experience on
part of girls 16-20, (c) as extension instruction to housewives?
Does Bulletin 28 of the Federal Board for Vocational Education

[4]

definitely provide for "training"? How can training in 'home-
making arts" be given? Have we as yet any satisfactory analyses
of "training" for homemaking at ages 12-14, 14~16, 16-20,
before marriage, after marriage?

5. In general it is agreed that the best time for vocational
education is just prior to the individual's undertaking "full
responsibility" work as operative or manager in the vocation
itself., When do the following persons usually undertake "full"
or "part" responsibility work: farmers' daughters not leaving
home until married; domestic servants; women, wage-earners
from 16—23, then marrying and discontinuing outside work;
home-staying daughters? How far are girls exceptions to above
principle by virtue of constant living in homes? How far do
girls at 14-16 possess active motives for entry upon vocational
-homemaking? How far can results of homemaking instruction or
training keep in "cold storage" (without application), e.g., in cases
of girls 16-22 working for wages, but living at home? How far can
"instincts" for homemaking contribute to expected proficiencies
— along food lines, clothing, sick-nursing, child care, management?
Which of these problems have been well investigated?

6. To what extent have aims, methods, and administrative
organization of home economics education taken shape under
limitations imposed by conditions of other forms of education?
Why do we think of it chiefly as related to ages 14-18 in high
schools? As parallel to liberal arts courses? As dependent upon
"laboratories"? As yielding almost no forms of cooperation with
homes? How can we provide for investigation of problems of
specific aim and method on assumption of "optimum" conditions?

7. What is the "case" method of study? Is it practicable to
procure, within reasonable limits of precision, type "cases" of
home practice, preparation for home practice, needs of prepara-
tory training, present schemes of school preparation, and the
like, and tentatively to analyze and evaluate these?

8. What are principles of vocational education in general
which are capable of application in homemaking?

9. What is the "home project method" of vocational home-
making?

10. Are the suggestions of Bulletin 28 conclusive?

11. What is the place of household arts in liberal education?

(si

.-.: ••:.•:-...<•• ,.V

II. WHAT ARE HOMES?

The "home" is a very much generalized conception. Every
person can in a measure appreciate, even visualise, a home or
homes. But we still possess no adequate analysis of the essential
characteristics and functionings of homes of various kinds. Be-
cause of the indeterminateness of prevailing "job analyses" of
homemaking and the hardly less vague standards of functioning
of the home as a! social agency, most current proposals and prac-
tices toward education for homemaking exhibit endless evi-
dences of artificialty and impracticality.J)

1. In the most universal sense, the home is obviously a place
for the rest and recreation of adults. It is manifestly also a
workshop for the elaboration of consumable goods — foods, clotty-
ing, beds, social intercourse, worship, education. .In its pro-
founder aspects it is a means for the nurture of children. These
functions are interdependent, interlocked; but, for any given
type of home, which are more fundamental, more socially essen-
tial, than others? We greatly need concrete analyses of these
problems along the lines of the classifications suggested below.

2. It is, indeed, highly desirable that we should have func-
tional analyses of various types of "homes." In the modern
world there are many specialized agencies which function,
temporarily or permanently, as homes for adults engaged in
vocational pursuits — barracks, cantonments, ships, hotels, bache-
lors' cabins, dormitories, hotels, Pullman cars. There are hive-
like homes for children more or less abnormally situated — asy-
lums, boarding-school dormitories, institutional cottages. Homes
for monogamous families also exist in several species, from the
hotel apartment and housekeeping apartment, the urban "row"
or semi-detached house, Ao the detached urban dwelling, and the
farm homestead.

3. If we assume that, sociologically considered, the primary
function of the "home" is to contribute to the rearing of chil-
dren, then the various species of "family" homes should be
divided into a number of varieties according to scope of their
work, and the means wherewith it is to be done. The following
at least are some of the types that require extended analysis (the
words "normal number of children" denote expectancy of from

[61

four to six children by time mother is at age of forty) : (a) tene-
ment home, no servant help; normal number of children; annual
income less than $800 (1900-1914 prices) ; (b) same, but income
$8oo-$i2OO; (c) same, except apartment with hot-water and heat,
and income $I2OO-$2OOO; (d) same, income $2OOO-$3OOO; (e)
apartment home, one servant, subnormal number of children, in-
come $25OO-$4OOo; (/) same, subnormal number of children (one),
no servant, income under $1200; (g) apartment, subnormal num-
ber of children (two), one servant, income $2OOO-$4OOO ; (h) de-
tached urban or suburban house, no servant, normal number of
children, income under $1000; (i) same, but subnormal number
of children, income under $1000; (j) same as (h), but income
$1000-$ 1 500; (k) same, income $I5OO-$25OO; (/) same, except
one servant, and income $2OOO-$4ooo; (m) detached urban or
suburban house, subnormal number of children (one or two),
no servant, income $I2OO-$2OOO; (ri) detached house, normal
or subnormal number of children, three or more servants, in-
come $7ooo-$2O,ooo; (o) detached farm home, excess number
of children, net income (money and kind) under $700, colored;
(p) same, white; (q) same, white, but net income $750— $1100;
(r) farm home, normal number of children, no servant, net in-
come $8oo-$iooo; (s) same, net income, $iooo-$i5OO, irregular
help; (/) farm home, normal number of children, two or more
servants, income $3000-$ 10,000.

4. It is also desirable that homes should be classified in
terms of the ideals or standards toward which they aspire, as
well as the conditions they must meet. (What are the "standards
of living," or perhaps better, the standards of comfort, toward
which are striving: (a) The American-born manual working-
man's family? (b) The American-born land-owning general
farmer? (c) The American-born well-educated professional man
or commercial worker? (d) The colored tenant farmer in the
South? r(e) The recent Italian immigrant, manual laborer in
city?") Sociological research is needed to define prevailing types,
to evaluate their persistent and their "fluid" ideals.N

5. Of the above types, which are "modal" — that is, statisti-
cally most numerous — from the standpoint of the vocational
education of prospective homemakers? Which are most preva-
lent, or expected to be most prevalent, in given communities?

[71

Into which types are the girls whose abilities and favoring home
circumstances enable them to "go through" high school likely to
fit? Into which types are the girls of a manufacturing city, who
leave school at 14-16, likely to fit? What are the types likely to
be filled by daughters of poor "renting" farmers? Are we to
expect the flat or apartment home to replace the detached house
in cities? in suburbs? Are home economics teachers expected
to prognosticate the future availability of servant help — and for
several income classes of homes considered separately? The
probable extension of the apartment or flat type of dwelling?
The possible evolution of cooperative housekeeping? Develop-
ment of agencies for the cooperative or delegated care of small
children? Future possibilities of "boarding" life in nurture of
children? Cooperation of the father, on a short wage-earner's
day, in duties of twenty-four-hour day homemaking? Probable
future size of family in different social groups?

6. It is suggested that in class work, where not otherwise
specified, the term "home" should imply these conditions: de-
tached urban house, no servant, from four to six children, $900-
$1500 income standard, American traditions. From this, as a
point of departure, variants could be described. In many cities
the "cold water" (no heat supplied), "walk up" three-to-five-room
flat for workingman's families is becoming very common; it
means normal number of children at least, no servants, income
$700-$! ooo. Also the separate land-owner's farm home is very
prevalent.

III. WHAT Is THE VOCATION OF HOMEMAKER?

Homemaking a Composite Vocation: It is obvious that the
vocation of homemaker is composite to an extent characteristic
of only a very few other occupations. This remains true, not-
withstanding the extent to which certain functions have in
America been removed from the homes — such as weaving, teach-
ing, food preservation, gardening, and, now, baking, brewing,
and garment-making. Compositeness of vocation is ordinarily a
sign of primitiveness. When human beings live under primitive,
pioneering, or dispersed conditions, there is relatively little sub-
division of labor and exchange of commodities. Every primi-

18]

tive hunter, fisherman, tiller of -the soil, warrior, teacher, and
housewife is in large measure and of necessity a jack-of -all-trades.
The home retains this character long after it has largely dis-
appeared in manufacture, transportation and commerce, because
the family is the most universal unit of consumption and especially
of the productive processes that just precede or are intimately
associated with consumption. Sociologically speaking, we can
again affirm that children are the cause of the present composite-
ness of the homemakers activities. ^IL children could be as
effectively reared in barracks, hotels, or asylums as adults can
live and carry on consuming activities in these elaborate organiza-
tions of specialized service, then we should speedily see the end
of the highly localized home.

Organization and specialization of service lead to depth of
knowledge, refinement of skill, and intricacy of managerial
relations. The small "general" farmer, the country store-keeper,
the teacher in a small high school, the village mechanic, the
country doctor, like the housewife, must always experience the
trials of realizing themselves less competent in the special arts,
which they must attempt, than the specialists. Utopian sugges-
tions that "homemaking" is (or ought to be regarded as) a
"profession" render no service in mitigating the hard reality that
for the great majority it must long continue a composite of ill-
defined and imperfectly standardized arts.

The first step in the process of defining the vocation of home-
maker is that of segregating for detailed consideration some
^ fairly common and constant types of home. The second is to
analyze, describe, and, perhaps, evaluate the various prevailing
forms of skill, knowledge, appreciation, and ideal now found
among those of the practitioners of this type of homemaking who
would be judged to be slightly above the average by persons
possessed of critical and common-sense judgment.

Analysis of Type Homemaking Vocation: Let us assume as the
type to be considered homemakers in detached village or urban
houses, no servants, family budget, $iooo-$i2oo per year,
American ancestry, normal number of children (two or three at
ages assumed for mothers — 28-34), mothers of elementary
school general education, no school education in homemaking.
Call this type M. Taking one hundred of these at random, we

[9]

can for convenience classify twenty as A grade (excellent), thirty
as B grade (good), thirty as C grade (fair), and twenty as D
grade (poor). For purposes of determining prevailing require-
ments of the vocation we can confine ourselves to the B grade.
The vocational activities of these B grade homemakers can
readily be classified under such major and minor heads as those
given in the following table; and a consensus of competent critics
could assign to these various groups of activities, for the type of
homemaker under consideration, crude measures of their relative
importance (weightings) along the lines tentatively suggested by
the figures here arbitrarily assigned (it is assumed that total
optimum competency would be rated at 10,000 units; and that
optimum competency in any one division would be rated as given ;
and that individual MBx might be rated as shown):

TABLE I
CLASSIFICATION AND RATING OF ACTIVITIES OF TYPE M HOMEMAKER

Optimum Rating of

Activity Group (Majors) Standards Individual

for Type M MBx

1. Foods (buying, preparation, serving) 3000 2000

2. Clothing (buying, up-keep, making) 1500 1200

3. Household care and up-keep (beds, cleaning,

etc.) 1000 900

4. Laundry r 500 400

5. Care of children 3000 1500

Activity Group (Minors)

6. Accounting 300 \ 10

7. Sick nursing 300 250

8. Housing and furnishing 100 50

9. Adult sociability 150 150

10. Garden and yard 150 100

Detailed Analysis Required: But it is clear that such an analysis
as that given above is too crude and general to serve for practical
guidance. For one thing, it makes no distinctions between skills
and related technical (or artistic and scientific) knowledge. Some
homemakers are strong in certain skills acquired purely on the
basis of imitation and "trial and success" methods under compe-
tent direction; and weak in technical knowledge. Some have

[10]

excellent technical knowledge but inferior skills. Possibly a third
type of power (or appreciation) should also be distinguished,
namely, social insight, or, more adequately, physical, social, and
cultural insight. It is also probable that distinctions should be
made between manipulative and managerial skills.

Furthermore, any adequate analysis must distinguish, weight,
and evaluate numerous concrete subdivisions in the above
scheme. "Skills" in preparing foods are not general, but often
very concrete and specific. Skill in bread-making may coexist
with lack of it in beefsteak broiling. Competency in making
certain articles of clothing may be found alongside of low ideals
of up-keep.

Let it be repeated that the first object of the analysis and
evaluation suggested above is to ascertain what powers and
capacities are now prevailingly found among homemakers of
slightly more than average ability as found in a certain type or
class. Such analysis should normally precede attempts to deter-
mine what powers and capacities the next generation of home-
makers of similar groups should possess as a result of purposive
vocational education. In much of current literature on the aims
of home economics confusion exists because aspirations are not
presented separately from diagnoses of existing conditions; and
also because in diagnoses various types and grades of homemakers
are jumbled. (The problem of vocational education for the girl
or woman whcTin all probability will direct the labor of two or
more servants will undoubtedly be found to be different in many
essential respects from that of the girl or woman who is almost
certainly destined to carry the full load of homemaking by her-
self. No less important at certain points are distinctions between
rural and urban homes, and between homes in apartments and
homes in detached or semi-detached houses. Scientific study is
certain to reveal other classifications of importance, based,
perhaps, upon climatic, occupational, and other considerations.

IV. SOCIOLOGICAL SCOPE AND STANDARDS OF THE
HOMEMAKING VOCATIONS

i. There are in the United States some 16,000,000 women,
chiefly married and widowed, whose principal vocation is home-

[ii]

making. Of these probably 90 per cent are unable to divide
work or responsibility with co-laborers; hence they must carry on
all phases of homemaking work by themselves — conspicuously
the procuring, preparing, and serving of food, the making and
up-keep of clothing, laundry work, house care, care of children, etc.
For women of this class, homemaking, therefore, at least among
white people, presents relatively few variable features, as between
East and West, North and South. Hence, homemaking is the
most numerously followed of all vocations. Next to it, in point
of numbers, is "farming." But "farming" includes many very
unlike vocations, from cranberry, orange, asparagus, cotton or
sheep growing as specialties to dairy, grain, market garden or
"general" farming.

Domestic service for hire, or favor — specialized and unspe-
cialized — may be classified here as "assistant homemaking."

2. From the standpoint of the sociologist the central fact in
homemaking is the rearing of children. The monogamous mar-
riage and the home have evolved side by side, most conspicuously
in the north temperate zone, probably in chief measure because
of their suitability to the rearing of the children — to the making
out of children the kind of men and women who could best
cooperate in producing and sustaining the valuable elements in
civilization. /All adults must, of course, have places of temporary
or permanent abode ; but the beginnings of the most realistic home
are laid when a man and woman form a partnership in marriage
and soon face their responsibility of rearing through the "pro-
longed infancy" the children born of the union.

3. Endless conventions, customs, and laws have been evolved
to perpetuate and to improve the home as a social institution.
Most conspicuous is the division of labor between husband and
wife. The prevailing American standard, which expresses in
fullest development the standards aspired to in other countries,
requires that the husband shall be the "money getter" of the
family — that he shall produce the marketable goods (or services)
wherewith goods for the home can be purchased. The wife is
expected to do the "elaborative" or preparatory work required in
the home to make goods purchased in more or less raw form
suitable for immediate consumption. To the mother falls the
prolonged and sustaining care of children, especially when small.

[12]

To the father falls induction of boys, as they mature, into pro-
ductive service. To the mother falls the vocational "by-educa-
tion" of the girls.

a. Space need not be taken here to elaborate the biological
concomitants of these sex differentiations of work, attitude, and
responsibility. Doubtless the respective "natures" of men and
women have become somewhat biologically differentiated toward
the best rearing, as well as toward the best begetting and bearing
of children. On the other hand, many apparently deeply rooted
differentiations are founded only in the social inheritances of
customs, conventions, and other "social" habits and traditions.
These last can, obviously, be much more readily changed than
the former.

b. A secondary function of the home is to reinforce and
develop personality and community of interest in the adult
members of the family group. For these it gives a place of rest
and some forms of recreation, protection from invasion of
weather, and privacy for the social intercourse valuable to the
family group.

4. From the sociological standpoint, therefore, the primary
standards of good homemaking are to be found, first in the
children brought to appro vable manhood and womanhood
through this agency; and, second, through the enrichment of
personality (health, sociability, culture) accomplished for its
adult members.

a. It is obvious, of course, that each age brings new conditions
to assist or restrict the home in the discharge of its social obliga-
tions. Schools take over certain functions; adults resort to clubs
for sociability and other recreation; the man's workshop is
removed to a distance, so that he loses contact with adolescent
boys ; many productive operations that once gave variety to the
work of the wife and opportunities to share work with children
are being removed from the home.

V. THE "TOTAL PROBLEM" OF VOCATIONAL EDUCATION
FOR HOMEMAKING

One great mistake has frequently been made in constructing
programs or curricula of vocational education in that teachers

[13]

and administrators have proceeded to work with existing limita-
tions always in mind from the outset. This procedure is funda-
mentally unscientific. Programs and curricula should first be
worked out on the assumption of optimum conditions; then revi-
sions, corrections, reductions, and other accommodations should
be made with reference to known and defined limitations or
other modifying conditions.

For example: Assume the problem before us is that of pro-
viding vocational homemaking education for certain women who
are usually factory hands from fifteen years of age to marriage,
who commonly marry at from 22 to 25, whose family income from
marriage to forty-five will range from $1000 to $1500 (the
mother not being a wage-earner), who will rear from four to six
children, and who will live in small urban or suburban houses.
It is desired that this homemaking education shall function in
reasonably immediate competency when first children are born.
Let us assume that we are working in a manufacturing city with
large numbers of recent immigrants.

We know that the actual situations confronting us are endlessly
varied. Some of the girls go to work at fourteen, having -finished
only the fifth grade; others leave after going half way through
high school. Some at fifteen have been well trained in home
craft by their mothers, some possess little or no skill. Some have
been wise "little mothers" and know much about the care of
babies, even at twelve years of age; but most of them will have
learned nothing of child care by the time their own first baby
arrives. Some of them will approach marriage with considerable
appreciation of the responsibilities of homemaking, others will
rush in heedlessly. If a good day vocational school of home-
making were available, a few of them would stop work and attend
it for one or three months in preparation for their new vocation ;
but most of them would not. If well advertised evening classes
in "short units" of homemaking were available, many girls would
come for some months, but their interest would center chiefly
in making articles of personal wear or adornment or in cooking
dishes suitable for "parties"; but a few would do genuinely pro-
ductive project work in evening classes.

Confronted by this heterogeneous and confused situation, how
shall we proceed to devise curricula? Efficient procedure cer-

[14]

tainly requires that we first determine and document in detail
curricula and programs on the assumption of clear-cut and
optimum conditions.

1 . We can assume as basal these factors : (a) All the girls and
women we are to deal with are wage-earners from 14-17 to 21-25.
(6) All will marry, and have families, (c) All will be wives of
workingmen, having family incomes of $900-$! 500. (d) It is
desirable that all families shall live in accordance with "good"
American standards.

2. For the purposes of getting our "total" or "complete"
curriculum defined we can assume the existence of these condi-
tions: (a) Women engaged to be married and eager to qualify
for the vocation of homemaking. (&) The prior experience or
home training of these women is so slight and ineffective as to be
negligible, (c) The woman free to give three or six months as
may be required to "full time" (eight hours daily) for this voca-
tional education, (d) The woman living with her parents in a
small home which can be used in any and all ways as a "productive
shop" for educational practice in homemaking. (e) The woman
living in the midst of neighbors among whom she can find oppor-
tunities to care for sick or to assume charge of infants when work
of this character becomes essential to her program. (/) The
school so staffed and equipped as to give all needed individual
instruction, supervision of home projects, laboratory work,
related reading, etc.

In the light of these conditions we produce curricula, programs,
courses, projects, etc., having paid due regard to the various
kinds of educational products to be produced — skills, applicable
knowledge, ideals, managerial abilities, appreciations, etc.
Overzealous or "theoretical" teachers might well consider warn-
ings, and queries at this point: (a) We are not expected to train
these young women for a "profession." (b) In view of the
multiplicity of operations involved in homemaking, we are not
expected to train these young women to be as good cooks as
hotel chefs, as good nurses as hospital graduates, as good seam-
stresses as those working for wages, or as good teachers of little
children as kindergartners. Overambitious standards or ideals
here defeat their own aims, (c) What additions to their powers
and capacities can we expect these people to make during, say,

the first five years of married life, as the burdens of homemaking
rapidly increase? (d) (Remember, always, that technical knowl-
edge not built on experience is apt to be a useless possession,
whereas skill, even if unaccompanied by technical knowledge,
has a large place in the world. The ideal, of course, is skills,
manual and managerial, illumined by technical knowledge and
social insight.

3. Having made our curricula and programs for the situation
described above, we can then proceed to make adaptations and
adjustments of it for situations like these:

a. Where young women have had a substantial apprentice-
ship in their own homes.

b. Where it is not practicable to reach young women, but it is
practicable to provide two to six hours weekly of training and
instruction in regular public schools during ages 12 to 15 or 1 6.

c. Where young women are eager for homemaking education,
but home facilities for training are unavailable.

e. Where no school facilities are available and teachers must
do all work in the homes of the girls.

/. Where women can or will take training only after marriage,
but where their own homes can then be extensively used for that
purpose.

VI. THE "CASE METHOD" OF STUDY

Probably the most profitable methods of approach to the
problems here under consideration from the standpoint of the
determination of desirable objectives of vocational homemaking
education are to be found in the provision of curricula and
programs for typical "case" situations, as illustrated below:

CASE A

A woman, 22 years of age, expecting to be married, wishes six
months' full-time training in homemaking. She has been an
industrial wage-worker for seven years and knows nothing on
the "doing" side about homemaking. She cannot cook, set a
table, make a bed, or patch a dress. She has had no experience
in handling babies, entertaining small children, caring for the
sick, buying furniture or keeping household accounts. As a

[16]

"boarder" or consumer in her own home she has the usual "appre-
ciations" of good cooking, well-kept rooms, etc.

Assume that at 30 she is to have three children, that she will
have a five-room house, in a suburban or village community, and
that the family income will be $1200 annually. Assume that after
marriage she will have to rely largely on herself (not having a
mother or other elder person living with her), and that she is
ambitious to start married life as a good worker in her new voca-
tion as homemaker.

Assume also the availability of sufficient means to give her a
good vocational education — a home as a workshop to meet re-
quirements for prepared food, patched clothing, care of babies,
on a strictly productive (as opposed to "exercise") basis, as well as
books, laboratory facilities, etc.

Problems to be Solved

Problem I . What should be the specific aims of the six months'
vocational education to be provided?

Problem 2. What amounts of available time (assume 150
working days of eight hours each) should be given respectively to:

Majors

a. Foods: selection and purchase, preparation, serving, dis-
posal, re-use, dishwashing, etc.

(a) Skills, practical performance.

(b) Related technical studies.

(c) Related social studies.

b. Clothing: selection, purchase, making, remaking, repair,
up-keep.

(a) Skills, practical performance.

(b) Related technical studies.

(c) Related social studies.

c. Care of house: bed-making, sweeping, keeping articles in
order; cleansing furniture, wood, glass, stoves, bathroom fixtures,
etc. ; making minor repairs to lights, plumbing, locks, etc.

(a) Skills, practical performance.

(b) Related technical knowledge.

(c) Related social knowledge.

d. Laundry, including ironing, etc.

(a) Skills, practical performance.

(b) Related technical knowledge.

(c) Related social knowledge.

e. Children, including sociability and by-education.

(a) Skills, practical performance.

(b) Related technical knowledge.

(c) Related social knowledge.

• Minors

f. Household accounting, including especially planning of
expenditures, budget making, use of inventories, segregation of
expenditures, investment of savings, etc.1

(a) Skills, practical performance.

(b) Related technical knowledge.

(c) Related social knowledge.

g. Housing and furniture: selection, fundamental or long-
period readjustments and renovation (not included under "care
of house").

(a) Skills, practical performance.

(b) Related technical knowledge.

(c) Related social knowledge.
h. Care of sick.

(a) Skills, practical performance.

(b) Related technical knowledge.

(c) Related social knowledge.

i. Adult sociability and social culture (excluding sociability
with children).

(a) Skills, practical performance.

(b) Related technical knowledge.

(c) Related social knowledge.
j. Yard and garden.

(a) Skills, practical performance.

(b) Related technical knowledge.

(c) Related social knowledge.

Problem 3. What order of presentation of the above subjects
would be followed?

1For some type of homes, and perhaps eventually for all, this should be a
major.

[18]

Problem 4. In each case what provision would be made for
training in practical skills?

Problem 5. How should related technical knowledge be given,
and in what relation to practice on productive, useful, skill-
forming work?

Problem 6. Should "practical" exercises (non-productive) be
accepted in lieu of productive work?

Problem 7. How should related social knowledge be given?

Problem 8. What tests of final competency in each case would
be provided.

CASE B

Identical with Case A, except that the total time available for
training for vocation is three months, or seventy-five working
days, of eight hours each.

CASE c

Identical with Case A, except that women must continue wage-
earning, and can give only four (evening) hours weekly for sixty
weeks, divided between two years.

CASE D

Identical with Case A, except that women can give only time
after she is married and living in her own home. Can then give
six afternoon hours in school and twenty-four (or more if neces-
sary) hours to productive work in her own home, weekly, for
sixteen weeks. Assume teachers with ample time for visiting
and supervision of home work.

CASE E

Farmer's daughter, 22 years old, eighth grade education. Has
always helped in farm home and can perform all ordinary opera-
tions with the moderate efficiency produced by home apprentice-
ship, including care of small children. Has little technical
knowledge or social insight relative to the homemaking vocation.

Expects to get married within a year, to have a farm house
(northern Mississippi Valley), with cash budget of $600 yearly
and income in "kind" (owned house, water, wood, vegetables,
fruit, milk) equivalent to $250. Assume three children at age of
thirty and only occasional household help.

[19]

Assume possibilities of her attending full time for three months
a vocational school of homemaking distant 100 miles from her
home. Assume this school to possess all reasonable equipment
and teaching force required to carry into effect such programs as
it might decide to be desirable for students of the class of Case E.

Problem I . What would such a school establish as its standards
of vocational proficiency for such a woman? Classify objectives
separately under the categories given for Case A, distinguishing
under each between practical skill, related technical knowledge
and related social insight.

Problem 2. How will the school test and evaluate the powers
and capacities in homemaking possessed by the woman at
entrance? How will it correlate these with the new powers and
capacities it will seek to produce?

Problem 3. What will such a school seek to offer as training
and instruction under each of the categories given in Case A?
Or, what will be its programs of instruction?

Problem 4. What will such a school provide in the way of
facilities for practice? In foods? Laundry? Child care? Sick
care? Housing?

Problem 5. How will such a school avoid stressing urban
conditions? How can it keep solidly in touch with rural condi-
tions?

CASE F

Identical with Case E, except that the woman has gone to
high school and normal school and has taught two years, as a
consequence of which her skills and technical knowledge of home-
making at the outset are negligible while her appreciations arc
normal.

CASE G

Identical with Case E, except that the woman can give three
hours daily to the homemaking school, located one hour away,
and the remainder to her mother's home, where productive
educational work can be done.

VII. SOME GENERAL PRINCIPLES

In the framing and passage of the Smith-Hughes Act, granting
national aid to certain forms of vocational education, home eco-

[20]

nomics was included at the eleventh hour. (A distinguished
member of the Federal Board for Vocational Education has
publicly asserted that the home economics provision was a
"monkey-wrench thrown into otherwise perfectly good machin-
ery. "^JMany teachers of home economics in elementary and
especially in secondary schools who were serenely pursuing the
even tenor of their way before the enactment of the Smith-Hughes
law now find also that that law is playing the disastrous part of
money-wrench in their heretofore smooth-running machinery.

JWhat is the vocational education that prepares for home-
making or the work of housewife? Under what conditions is
home economics "vocational"?' What else can the subject be, if
not vocational?^ These, and many other similar questions are dis-
concerting, if not haunting, many of our home economics teachers
to-day. They are destined to put to the test not a few of current
traditions as to aims and methods of education in fields only
distantly related to the homemaking vocation. They show the
utter inadequacy of some current interpretations of educational
values made by men of strong academic prepossessions.

The immediate difficulties confronting home economics teachers
arise from a few simple but more or less conflicting conditions:
(a) Congress enacted the Smith-Hughes law to aid vocational
education, and only vocational education. (b~) The public has all
along believed that the home economics courses which had be-
come so generally established in progressive school systems were
vocational in intent and results. Hence the public has insisted
that schools maintaining these courses should proceed to claim
their due share of "Smith-Hughes" money, (c) The administering
authorities have in some cases denied that home economics
courses as ordinarily found are in fact vocational, and have in-
sisted on new and sometimes difficult modifications.

Now, it is well known that many differences of mind in this
imperfect world are due to failures to define terms and standards.
How far is this the situation here? On the other hand, sore
contests always arise when progressive action is being taken, the
very nature of which necessitates discarding of familiar habits,
and readjustment of standards. The authorities charged with
the enforcement of the law claim that such is often the case
here.

[21]

The history of the evolution of vocational education shows how
present confusion in almost all fields of vocational education
arises under both the conditions stated above. A few basic in-
quiries will make this clear. (What does "vocational education"
mean? Does it include all those forms of experience, instruction,
and training, in school and out of school, which, superadded to
the individual's native endowment, finally give him that which
we recognize as vocational competency?) Then it will be admitted
that, in the sense iised, every one, substantially, for thousands of
years, has received a vocational education — good, bad or indif-
ferent, complete or incomplete, wasteful or economical, as the
case may be. In that sense, then, every housewife and every
domestic servant in the United States to-day has received some
vocational education, although few have received any part of
that education through an agency which could properly be called
a school.

£ We are now on educational bedrock. When and why do we
/seek to establish schools for vocational education to supplement
or replace the other agencies? Only when these other agencies
are insufficient to the needs of the time and when a type of a
school is invented that can give the education. That has been
the history of vocational schools of war leadership, medicine,
priesthood, pharmacy, navigation, law, civil engineering, stenog-
raphy, telephone switchboard operating, nursing, and elementary
school teaching. It will probably be the history of schools of
journalism, acting, indoor salesmanship, waiting on table, poultry
farming, house carpentry, school nursing, automobile repair,
homemaking and engine firing. (It can hardly be said that W3
have vocational schools for this second group of vocations as yet;
current attempts are hardly beyond the experimental stage.)

Do vocational schools at first undertake to give complete com-
petency for a given vocation — complete, that is, as reasonably
practicable for the age at which graduation is expected? Rarely
ever.^ Sometimes they assume a previous period of apprentice-
ship^—as did earlier schools of law, medicine, engineering, and
teaching (under the pupil-teacher system in England). Some-
times they have counted upon what is in effect an apprenticeship
subsequent to schooling — as do present-day schools of law,
medicine, stenography, and engineering. Sometimes, however,

[22]

they have paralleled practice and study in order to dispense with
prior and subsequent apprenticeship, as do present-day schools
of nursing and elementary school teaching and as some engineer-
ing, trade, and farming schools are endeavoring to do.

It is now good usage to call that vocational education in
schools which presupposes previous or concurrent practice of an
occupation, extension teaching; all that instruction in the art,
science, mathematics, and language of a vocation which antici-
pates or precedes practice of a vocation, technical instruction;
and all that vocational education which undertakes to teach prac-
tical skill and related technical and social knowledge in close
correlation as basic vocational education. (But technical in-
struction not directed towards, and usually functioning in,
vocational practice cannot properly be called vocational edu-
cation.)

In discussing standards for vocational education let us frankly
recognize that many professional schools, notwithstanding the
years of history behind them, are far from having yet determined,
with any useful degree of precision, either their aims or the
validity of their means and methods. Even the best engineering
schools are to-day only higher technical schools, although some
are now attempting, through summer practice, to give a certain
amount of skill and managerial ability. In general, their facul-
ties still satisfy themselves with the easy assumption that prac-
tical skill and mangerial powers are things that must be learned
in "the school of experience" — with all the wastefulness and mal-
adjustment which that involves. Most varieties of commercial
education are still on an essentially technical basis — they do not
prepare for a given vocation, but only give the instruction sup-
posed to be useful to one beginning what will be practically an
apprenticeship in the practice of the vocation. The one sub-
stantial exception is stenography and typewriting — here the
candidate is, in the best schools, actually prepared to begin at
once the commercial practice of her vocation.

Probably the most disputed question in recent and contempo-
rary movements for the extension of vocational proficiency in
various callings has been the value of technical instruction in
advance of practice. Long before we had basic vocational schools
for such occupations as machine-shop practice, electricity, print-

[23]

ing, carpentry, homemaking and farming, our technical high
schools had developed courses of technical instruction in, or
somewhat related to, these callings. But practical men have
always been very skeptical of the results of such courses. It is
true that these schools can easily be administered so that they
will select the most promising candidates for the respective occu-
pations. A little judicious advertising and testing of entrants
will accomplish that purpose. Having selected personalities
that are certain to attain success in their callings in any event,
it is easy and natural, reasoning post hoc ergo propter hoc, to
attribute the success of these students to the instruction they
received in school. During recent years a classic example of
this kind has been given very wide publicity. A certain tech-
nical high school collected data which showed that boys leaving
school at fourteen and commencing work at, say, $5 per week,
will have been advanced to the point where at thirty years of
age they will be earning, say, $15 per week; whereas graduates
of the technical high school, possibly starting at age of 18 at
only five or six dollars per week will be earning twenty-five to
thirty dollars per week at the age of 30. Now, admitting the
facts, they, of course, prove nothing as to the value of technical
high school instruction and training. Every observer of schools
knows that only very high-grade boys enter technical high
schools ; that of these only the, best survive the first year or two ;
and that the graduates are a very picked lot, and destined to
success in life, schooling or no schooling.

Among all well-informed educators the conclusion is now
generally held that for a large majority of callings technical in-
struction in advance of practical applications — which usually
means applications in productive work and under commercial
conditions — is almost valueless, and sometimes decidedly harm-
ful. It is obvious that electrical engineering offers a relatively
large volume of technical knowledge. A person of exceptional
capacity for abstract thinking can spend several years in master-
ing this knowledge — as organized in mathematics, mechanics,
chemistry, engineering theory, etc. Then he can begin practice,
and apply his knowledge as he finds occasion. But every man
familiar with the conditions of higher education is aware that
only from one to three per cent of persons between eighteen and

[24]

thirty years of age are able to develop the powers required,
according to current standards, of electrical engineers.

In pattern-making, on the other hand, skill bulks large and
technical knowledge small. The men who ordinarily enter pat-
tern-making are usually strong in "mechanical instincts" and not
so strong in those powers of abstract thinking which are exem-
plified in the study of mathematics. Every educator knows
that appeals to common experience will help us here. We should
hardly expect a person to profit greatly from several months'
instruction in the theory or technique of swimming before he
enters the water. The writer once saw an advertisement,
"Horseback-riding taught by mail," but he retained the hope
that the recipient of these lessons had a horse to practice on
while learning. In training a man to be a barber or a girl to be
a waitress, it is apparent that only a very little advance technical
knowledge could be given with profit.

In analyzing scores of occupations from this standpoint, it is
apparent that two types of considerations are involved, (a)
What, in any given vocation, are the relative values of skill and
managerial abilities. on the one hand, and what we call related
technical knowledge on the other? (b) What are the various
learning capacities of those who are likely to enter such
vocation?

•
VIII. APPLICATIONS OF THESE GENERAL PRINCIPLES

TO HOMEMAKING EDUCATION

It can be readily understood from the foregoing discussion
what have been some of the obstacles encountered in various
endeavors to develop vocational homemaking education. In
earlier stages, when technical knowledge was imperfectly devel-
oped, only the practical arts were taught — cooking, sewing,
bedmaking, etc. Often, of course, these subjects, as taught in
schools, were very superficial and artificial. Then came the
enormous development of technical knowledge, especially in the
departments of foods, household accounting and household
management. Under the head of "domestic art" similar develop-
ments of technical knowledge in departments of clothing, hous-
ing, etc., were attempted, but with less success.

[25]

A second stage of evolution in homemaking education came
when, under the collective name of "home economics," courses
based on the productive activities of the home assumed a largely
technical character — it must be remembered that laboratory
work, experimentation, and practical exercises are integral parts
usually of technical instruction, since, almost never, are they
designed to produce basic skills.

Hence the general demand of competent critics to-day that
home economics education, seeking to meet requirements of voca-
tional education for homemaking shall: (a) provide for the nec-
essary practical experience in productive work required to pro-
duce enduring skills, manual and managerial, if it is to be re-
garded as basic vocational education; or else (b) connect posi-
tively and purposefully with previous practical experience if it
is to be regarded as extension vocational education.

It is denied that vocational competency in homemaking as
that is found now in millions of American homes, and as it is
desired on behalf of millions more in the future, can be more
than slightly produced by technical instruction alone, even if
that include laboratory and amateur productive exercises.

It is recognized that some home economics departments take
charge of school lunches. This is good productive practice as
far as it goes, even if on excessively large scale for home food
preparation, but what schools cover the various fields of foods,
clothing, house care, child care, laundry, etc., in this practical
way?

IX. THE "PROJECT METHOD" OF TEACHING HOMEMAKING

I. In the total process of producing homemaking competency
to function in adult life, we should recognize several distinct
stages or even different areas of possible operation. For example :
jra. .In girlhood, from six to twelve, it is obviously possible for
the mother or for a teacher who can control conditions of time,
motive, and familiar implements as can the mother, to train the
girl in various specific skills — tea-making, dusting, outing care
of infant, darning — and to attach to these and related operations,
appropriate technical knowledge, appreciations, aspirations, and
ideals.

[26]

b. From ten to sixteen, at least during the time of transitions
from play motives, interests and powers to work motives, inter-
ests and powers, it is clearly practicable in the case of a large
proportion of girls, to elicit fairly strong interests in amateur
homemaking — when the desires and motives are for results
functioning as in the adult world of work, but the appreciations
and powers are still those of the play stage and spirit, unwilling
to tolerate long routines, to search for technical knowledge, to
undergo drill or training.

In many cases this would seem to be an appropriate time for
rich offering of household arts as general education. Apprecia-
tions, insights, aspirations, even ideals, can easily be formed in
relation to novel situations in homemaking, where familiarity
with, and en forced drudgery in, domestic operations has not bred
the blase attitude or even contempt. But teachers should be
careful not to confuse the results of this general education with
those to be derived from effective vocational education.
7 c. From fifteen to eighteen would seem to be an appropriate
time for offerings of basic or extension vocational homemaking to
girls who could see clearly ahead of them wage-earning employ-
ment as assistant homemakers, as trained employees in the homes
of their mothers or others. For the present, of course, little can
be done here because popular valuations of the vocations of
"domestic service" are so adverse that self-respecting and ambi-
tious girls seek non-domestic vocations by preference.

d. For young women from eighteen to twenty-five, who expect
to become independent homemakers, there exist large oppor-
tunities for: (a) extension vocational education for those who,
like many farmers' daughters, have already had extensive basic
experience in a large variety of homemaking operations ; and (b)
basic vocational education for those who, like a large majority
of factory and office employees, have had almost negligibly small
experience in, or even contact with, domestic operations. Mo-
tives may be strongest just before or soon after marriage.

e. Other stages or areas could easily be defined, especially by
taking account of different social classes.

2. The "project" is, from many points of view, the best educa-
tional device for basic vocational education. It has not yet
been tried extensively in homemaking. Its best developments

[27]

o

are found in agricultural education. As applied to vocational
education, the project is a "job" or unit of productive work, usu-
ally of a utilizable or even marketable character, selected and
organized as constituting a valuable stage in an educational
process.

3. Homemaking projects illustrated:

a. A girl or woman of no previous experience undertakes to
make ten shirtwaists of exactly the same pattern and material.
From the making of the first she gets a large amount of new ex-
perience, accompanied by a certain amount of technical knowl-
edge, appreciation, etc. In making the remainder she increases
her skill, organization of effort, etc. Parallel with her work, she
can be helped to insight, as to social, hygienic, and other general
aspects of her work. If, after the making of ten shirtwaists,
further increments of permanent skill of applicable technical
knowledge would be small, then the educational value of the
project has largely been realized. Further making of shirt-
waists would be valuable for production rather than education.

b. An inexperienced girl, directed by a competent teacher,
gives three hours daily for a month to providing the breakfasts of
a family of six. Linked up with the actual preparation of the
food and washing of the dishes, will be such technical matters as
planning variations in menus, selecting and buying materials,
keeping suitable accounts. Related studies of nutrition, markets,
technical processes, etc., can easily be linked up to, and inter-
preted by, this project by the teacher through lectures, readings,
problems, etc.

4. Scores of other suitable projects, large and small, can ba
devised. Care of the outing hours of an infant for two weeks;
care of a bed-chamber for two weeks; performance of family
washing for four weeks; washing and dressing of a child or
infant for two weeks ; baking family bread for a month ; canning
four dozen jars of plums; preparation of five successive Sunday
dinners; keeping the accounts of a family for six months on basis
of "slips" supplied by the family; keeping clothing of three
children in repair for three months, etc. For service in schools,
those projects should be analyzed in detail, reference readings
specifically indicated, and related technical and social studies
analyzed in detail.

[28]

5. Where the previous practical experience of the student
justifies the offering of extension rather than basic vocational
courses, there may be less place for projects, and relatively more
for topics of study, collection of materials and reports, problems
for analysis, laboratory exercises, investigations, etc.

a. For example, a farmer's daughter, age twenty, coming to
a short-course, full-time school, who has had much experience
with her mother (frequently supplementing her), may be most
in need of technical knowledge which she can relate to her already
well-assimilated experience. She may most need explanations
of the processes she has learned by imitation or rule of thumb
methods, including improved processes, accounting, etc.

b. Where home economics is taught as one subject in a cur-
riculum of general education — being paralleled by courses in
English, mathematics, physics, etc., it might be possible to give
the home economics a vocational flavor by offering it, in the case
of pupils of known home opportunities, as extension instruction;
but the difficulties are great, and the method is seldom used.

c. The "project" is often confused with an "exercise" or even
with a "demonstration." For the sake of explicitness it would
seem best to confine the term to a unit of work which combines
productive and educative possibilities, and possessing possibili-
ties of repeated performance so as to give skills.

6. Problems of Project Method:

a. What should be the "magnitude" of a project? This
partly dependent on external character of the work, partly on
psychology of learners. Young learners need smaller and
shorter time projects than older. Every project should take
the learner beyond the play stage of experience into work stage.
Short, fragmentary experiences, even in fields of drudgery may,
by novelty, sustain play interest for a time. For girls twelve to
sixteen, it is" surmised that valuable projects should require
from ten to fifty hours, no period of application being less than
two, and preferably four to six hours. For young women, pro-
jects may require 20 to 60 hours, optimum single periods of
application (in productive work and related study) being four
hours.

b. What should be the "compositeness" or "complexity" of
projects? For best learning purposes, probably, a project should

[29]

center in one natural or normal "strand" or field of activity.
Within one day, a housewife dresses children, prepares meals,
makes beds, etc. But a learner can probably make best progress
by focusing effort on one or two of these recurrent series of jobs,
so as to attend to acquisition of skills, interpretations, etc.
On the other hand, the related minor jobs normally belonging to
a major job should be included in the project. A cooking project
not involving related cleaning up; a laundry project not involv-
ing subsequent ironing; a breakfast project not involving buying
and accounting — these would probably be unwisely broken.

c. How can related technical knowledge and social insight be
integrated to the project? Eventually we shall probably have
hundreds of projects given in detail in booklets, with references
to related readings, etc. For the present the teacher should seek
to build about each project a series of readings, technical and
social.

d. Should cooperative projects be provided? Occasionally,
but not to an extent which will prevent fullest acquisition of
individual powers (of execution) and capacities (for appreciation).
Cooperative sociability projects are especially good — giving a
reception or entertainment, relieving a poor family. Probably
also certain projects necessarily of an "observation and report"
character — planning the location of a farmhouse, furnishing a
kitchen, etc., could be of a cooperative character.

X. FEDERAL BOARD'S BULLETIN No. 28

(Organization and Administration of Home Economics
Education)

This bulletin "may be considered as an official answer to the
many inquiries concerning matters of policy in home economics
education received by the office of the Federal Board."

In general, the definitions and interpretations found in this
bulletin represent the best of available knowledge and practicable
expectations in homemaking education. The problems sug-
gested below, dealing mainly with questions of objectives, are
expected to arise as further developments take place in this field ;
but for sake of concrete analysis these problems are here stated as
of the present, and with no intention of conveying adverse criticism.

[30]

1. It is unfortunate that the Jaw uses the term "home eco-
nomics" which describes neither a vocation nor the common
characteristics of a group of vocations as do the terms "commer-
cial," "professional," etc. The words "home economics" will long
continue to connote a group of technical studies only, in spite of
all effort to the contrary. Educators should now make con-
certed efforts to settle on more serviceable terminologies.

2. Why should it be held that in "separate vocational schools
of home economics" which have "but little articulation with the
other phases of work of the school system" the courses offered
"are usually two years in length, although a few schools offer
four-year courses"? Are these arrangements defended? Ought
not administrators move steadily toward short, intensive courses,
each composed of short units, in vocational homemaking? Will
not "long courses" perpetuate the weaknesses of "long course,"
over- technical, insufficiently practical, industrial, agricultural
and commercial courses?

3. Is it well to try to force the word "laboratory" to .include
the meanings given on page 33 and elsewhere? Etymologically,
the word "laboratory" may mean the same as workshop or place
of productive work; but historically and practically, in thousands
of industrial establishments, colleges, and other centers of re-
search, it now means specially equipped places of experimenta-
tion, investigation, testing, and study. It once meant, also, a
place of production of drugs ; but even this meaning is becoming
obscured. To try to use the term in a special sense as designating
a place for "practice in all the home activities which are taught
within the (vocational) school, such as housekeeping, garment-
making, etc.," is to court endless misunderstandings, misdirected
effort and perpetuation of old traditions of technical instruction.
A laboratory is not a place for the practice of a vocation:
that is a farm, shop, office, kitchen, home, or school. Let a
homemaking school, using "local (or actual) homes" or "school
homes" for practice, have one or more small laboratories for
testing, experimentation, etc. ; but call the practice place a school
home or an actual home/)

4. Is it wise to provicle so extensively for the necessarily arti-
ficial equipment suggested on pages 19 and 20? Homes are
found in large numbers within a dozen blocks of almost all

except country schools. These are real homes, where real pro-
ductive work must be done. Judging by experience in other
fields of vocational education, artificial equipments of this kind
can be used for genuinely laboratory purposes and for demon-
stration purposes, but never effectively for practice purposes.
More readily than in almost any other field it should prove prac-
ticable in homemaking to establish cooperative or part-time
arrangements. To realize the maximum benefits, these should
be on a project basis.

; 5. "Vocational subjects to be selected (for a course in voca-
tional home economics) should be determined by an analysis of
the occupation." This is, of course, indispensable, but it should
be noted that, for practical purposes:

a. Such an analysis by strands of work or types of daily
duty is almost valueless unless it also somehow indicate degrees
of proficiency in each. All homemakers in America now, the
very poor no less than the good, can cook, serve, repair clothing,
care for children, buy furniture. But we want the next genera-
tion to do these things better.

b. Because of the few fundamental types of homemaking and
the universality of home activities, central authorities (state or,
preferably, national) can make these occupational analyses to
best advantage. Individual teachers need much help here, espe-
cially while standards are so vague. fAs suggested before, home
economics teachers are usually insufficiently equipped with
practical knowledge of home productive processes (as carried on
in actual homes) as these should be scientifically analyzed, de-
scribed, and evaluated.)

6. "The law provides that schools or classes giving instruction
to persons who have not entered upon employment shall require
that at least half of the time of such instruction shall be given to
practical work on a useful or productive basis." But the Federal
Board here holds "practical work on a useful basis" to mean
"instruction in vocational subjects designed as preparation for
homemaking." Experience will undoubtedly show that this
interpretation is indefensible either as good law or good pedagogy.
Practical work on a useful basis is just as capable of recognition
and of being provided in homemaking as in gardening, dressmak-
ing, carpentry, elementary school- teaching, and hospital practice.

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y. Home projects are recommended (pp. 28-34). But the
rank and file of teachers can make little or no progress in home
project work until the leaders shall have worked out guidance
materials no less elaborate than are those now found for labora-
tory practice in technical instruction. Many model projects
worked out in utmost detail, and hundreds in outline involving
close adjustments to varying conditions, are required as pre-
liminary to any effective utilization of the project method. These
should be available in booklet form.

XL HOUSEHOLD ARTS AS LIBERAL EDUCATION

It is very important that schools of general education, and
especially those dealing with girls from 12 to 16 years of age (the
period of true amateur spirit of production) should offer courses
of household arts, conceived very much as are now home gar-
dening, scouting, and the best manual training, as a means
of genuine liberal education. Such courses should preferably
be elective, should occupy from two to four hours weekly,
and should center in "project" work and general inspirational
reading. For a few girls vocational skills and knowledge will
doubtless accrue from these courses, as they do for boys in
home-gardening and shopwork; but unless these are regarded
as incidental products the "liberalizing" spirit of the work will be
spoiled. Probably appreciations and ideals of ultimate vocational
significance will also accrue for many, but these also should
normally be regarded as incidental or secondary accompaniments
for these ages of effective liberal education. A few general theses
are submitted:

i. The fundamental difficulties now encountered in realizing
valuable results from home economics instruction by depart-
mental teachers with girls from 12 to 16 years of age are due in
large part to confusion of purposes between vocational and liberal.
The courses offered constitute minor offerings in schemes of
education primarily liberal or general; the specialized teachers
have in view ends that are somewhat vaguely vocational, at least
so far as technical instruction can serve these ends under the
circumstances.

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2. The primary purpose of schools for children from twelve to
fourteen years of age is the giving of liberal, as distinguished
from vocational, education. For pupils who elect to continue
their general or liberal education in regular high schools, primary
purposes should also be found in liberal education. There is no
evidence that a small amount — one-tenth to one-third — of total
time available, given to vocational education, can be made to
function as assured vocational competency.

3. Household arts for girls from 12 to 16 years of age (and, if
motive can be enlisted, for boys as well) can certainly be made a
means of liberal education. To effect this will probably require
some important modifications in the means and methods now
usually employed.

4. The objectives of liberal education are less easily defined
than those of vocational education, the most visible and measur-
able outcome of which is power of producing in a specified field
and for a prolonged period, valuable service or goods, commonly
of the kind called "exchangeable" and the exchangeable worth of
which is usually for convenience given a money value which
readily serves as a measure. "Liberal" education has as its ob-
jectives the product of a variety of qualities, many of which may
be included under such terms as appreciations, tastes, sentiments,
ideal valuations, ideals, insights, understandings. Liberal educa-
tion in a given field — language, literature, science, sociability,
art, nature, society, religion, government, agriculture, household
arts, urban surroundings, etc., etc. — seeks the humanistic ends of
deepened and widened social sympathies.

It is very difficult to get teachers to understand the difference
^between, for example, vocational training and amateur execution,
/ because too few teachers have ever been definitely trained for their
vocations, as have been physicians, nurses, locomotive engineers,
dentists, military officers, and architects. College professors,
superintendents, principals of schools, high school teachers, and
home economics teachers are rarely, if ever, trained to a deter-
minate work of teaching. They have received much instruction,
of course, which, more or less vaguely, has been assumed to be
necessary to their success as teachers or executives. But for the
rest they have "picked up" their vocations in a nai've, primitive,
and more or less "hit or miss" fashion. Hence, educators find it

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exceptionally difficult to form distinct ideas of what is meant by
specified specialized vocational training.

5. What will be some of the means and methods of "liberal"
household arts education?

a. It must not be obligatory. The girl must be attracted to
it, not driven to it.

b. It must, to the maximum extent practicable, use the girl's
own home, yard, bedroom, mother, father, brothers and sisters,
pets, dress, health, and aspirations as means of objective inter-
pretation, but always only in the friendliest cooperative spirit.
Nothing forced or inquisitorial will do here. To a large extent,
teaching must be impersonal, reference always being made to
"third parties."

c. Much reliance must be placed on stimulating reading.
We have hardly begun yet to produce readings idealizing and
interpreting the home, as the army, scouting and business enter-
prise have been idealized for boys. Results of individual reading
must, of course, be socialized by conference, discussion, reports,
etc.

d. The demonstration of standards by "model apartment,"
house, room, article of furniture, curtain, bed, set table, dress,
home apparatus, should play a part as objectifying means, but
due allowances should be made for the "soullessness" of these
when they are not in practical operation or use.

e. Demonstrations of process — cooking, clothes-making, bed-
making, washing of baby, gardening — give vitality and concrete
interpretation of standards. The apperceiving powers of girls
are obviously great here toward the formation of tastes and
standards.

/. Projects are especially valuable as educational means, and
naturally the majority will be "home projects" — that is, the in-
spiration and direction will come from the school, but the time,
place, and, largely, the means of execution will be provided by the
home. The range of projects offered by the school should be as
extensive as practicable so as to give utmost latitude for choice
by learners. Projects for purposes of liberal education should
possess elements of novelty, appeal to creative powers, and should
enlist all that can best be summarized as "amateur powers."

[351

6. What would be some of the' specific objectives of household
arts organized as a means of liberal education for girls from 12 to
1 6 years of age?

a. To help the girl to see her own home in its most ideal light.
All over southern France, we read, the war-dislocated women will
take even one room, a bed, a trunk and a little stove and will
make a nest, a home, a haven, a foyer, for frightened, tired, and
sleepy children, a place to which the lonesome hard-driven man
comes back as to the center of existence for rest, the supreme
recreative activities, and social uplift. Only the woman, rich in
homemaking instincts, customs, and, perhaps, training, can make
the real home. Can we not, by readings, pictures, discussions,
model apartments or houses, help to see the home as the little
central power plant or cell whence radiates much of the social
energy that makes the world go well?

b. To help the girl appreciate the facts and problems of the
financial up-keep of the home through labor given outside.

c. To appreciate the fact that labor, devotion and management
wisely given in the home, are in the highest degree productive,
even though not appearing in the United States Census as "gain-
ful occupations."

7. The spirit of the school of liberal education is largely that
of high-grade play; the spirit of the vocational school must be
that of serious work. Only one worker in ten thousand can afford
to pick daisies as he travels the roads of work. The spirit of
liberal education is that of the traveler for recreation and
enlightenment; the spirit of the vocational school is that of the
man who has business at a given destination, which destination
he must reach at the earliest possible moment. The spirit of the
school of liberal education is diffusive, catholic, rich in varied
human contacts; the spirit of the vocational school is one of
concentration of effort, singleness of purpose, and contacts
limited to those essential in the economic process, that moving
toward fulfilment. "Work while you work," is the motto of the
vocational school; "play while you play," of the liberal school.

For interpretations as to what is meant by "liberalizing"
education, we must go to such fields as literature, music, history,
geography, plastic art, travel, the moving pictures, current read-
ing and gardening.

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