HOME SCIENCE AND ECONOMICS.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXXII, Issue 15533, 6 February 1911, Page 9

HOME SCIENCE AND ECONOMICS.

[Fr.on Odt CoßßEsi’oxnnxT.j DUNEDIN, February 4. Jn the course of an interview, Miss Winifred “Boys-Smith, who has been appointed to the chair of Home; Science and Economics at Otago University, said:—“ Dunedin is certainly aware of tho value of education, and it appears to me that they are prepared to givo this new Chair a fair chance and take up the project thoroughly. 1 can ask for no better start in my work. I may add that the work itself is of such great interest and importance that it cannot fail if people take pains to know anything about it. It must be of immense importance to tho community. If the men are to have a chance to do their best, we must have women doing their best as wives and mothers, women who can keep the home comfortable, who know how to properly bring up children and to so nourish them as to fit them physically and mentally to take their places in the world and to become morally well trained. All these tilings wo want to do. Wo want to make good and capable women, to teach them to play their part properly,-so that they may fulfil their highest functions and truly become the complement of tlie men. If a woman is really a woman, she will see that her highest happiness and her light calling is not in trying to do man’s work, for she cannot do that adequately owing to lack of physical strength and her imperfect Knowledge of business «vrfairs, but in doing such tilings as are complementary to a man’s work, thus setting him free and enabling him to do liis work well. The man is, of course, protective. It is ho who produces and creates. The woman is not so original, but she is much more receptive. She has what is commonly called instinct, but as a rale * not so much judgment. She is naturally more artistic and generally has a finer and more dceplymgrained religious sense, and will do her work on moral lines with the happier instinct which comes of an inborn conviction. In that way wo are trying to make domestic work wliat we believe it ought to be, to instil an idea of the dignitv of all labour, to show women that their highest happiness is in making the homes good homes and in laying the foundations for the development of the race, wherefore they must, look after tlieir own health, because that means tlie health of the generations to come, and for tlie same reason attend properly to the feeding and educating of tlieir children. . A\a are to take all' our students to the Karitane Home, where they will see how infants should be fed. That is a simple fact to prove the practical side of the work. Really, it is all practical. It is all scientific. This means adopting the best known methods of doing tilings about the house, so as to shorten labour and givo tho best results. Yes, I have had experience in a corresponding position. For fourteen years I was lecturer on physiology and hygiene in connection with the domestic science movement at Cheltenham College. I liavo been most pleased with tho way the technical schools managers have welcomed tho movement here. They arc most willing that we should send our students to take the cookery and needlework courses, and one of tlieir cooking staff wishes to take the degree course at the university; therefore, from the outset we work hand in hand.” Miss Boys-Smith added that the syllabus is to be submitted to the University Council on Monday.