HOSTESS TRAINING

Matamata Record, Volume XVIII, Issue 1626, 9 May 1935, Page 2

HOSTESS TRAINING

NEW SCHEME FOR SCHOOLGIRLS In - a small house of their own * n Willesden, Middlesex, nearly 200 elepientary schoolgirls are being taught ,how to be perfect hostesses when they grpw up. This is part of a new educational scheme which, is being developed by Dr. E. Davies, Director of Education for Willesden, to train girls as ( homemakers as part of their ordinary elementary schooling, states the “News Chronicle.” Batches of girls from the senior classes in neighbouring schools spent a whole day in this model home once a week. ' The house, which is a disused school building, has a reception hall, a lounge,' a' lcitehen arid scullery, a bedroom and a bathroom. It also has, a small garden which the girls are planting. Every day, the house is cleaned and swept from'top to bottom and meals are cooked and served. The bed is made every morning, though no one has ever slept yet at this model home. “My idea in equipping this little house and sending our girls to live and work in it,” Dr. Davies said, “is j to train them to some extent for the j part most of them will play in later J life—that of wives and mothers. I “My idea* is not to train these girls only to do domestic wbrk, but as hos-l tesses. They learn how to receive guests and look after their needs. At I the same time they acquire standards

of taste in decoration and furnishing.

“This house is a kind of ‘dream house’ to girls, and it will be the kind of place they will aim at creating around them when they grow up and have homes of their own.”

Willesden schoolgirls also learn to cook, wash, mend and make clothing, and to sew and embroider.

Many of them have learnt to weave on small hand-looms and have made their own scarves and school ties.