School to Train Girls as Wives.

Otago Witness, Issue 2762, 20 February 1907, Page 67

School to Train Girls as Wives.

I In view of the departure made by the Board of Governors of Canterbury College, to accept Mr Shedholme's gift towaods the i payment of a salary for the holder of a I choir on Domestic Economy, the following despatch from Cleveland, Ohio, is of mii terest : — Superintendent Elson and Assistant Superintendent Hicks have planned, a technical high school at which girls will be prepared to become wives. The instruction will be thorough, and in charge of women who have been successful as wives and mothers. The pupils will be taught to swesp, to cook, to economise in houee-

j hold expenditures.^ to make their own j cloth. s. to take card of babies, and to, nurse ilieir husbands when they come home tick fiom the office. There will bq real babies to practice on. "Wo are going to fit our girls to bfl »wlve^ and not servants, ai d cooking is only oiie of the features of the course," j said H'eks to day. A partial outline oi I the couise wou'd be thus: First year, i app'Ld arts ard elementary sewing ; second I year, elementary chemistry in its relation to household duties and 1 continuation of the arts and sewlsg : third and fourth years, cooking will be taken up. The average girl who marries nowadays is pitiably ignorant of the dutka the average man expects her to perform as his wife. We shall teach her to cook, how to care for an invalid, how to care for babies, how to do marketing economicJ ally, and all other things wives should know.

—In Italy. Sunday is usually selected for the marriage of those person who have been married before. Widows, however, in accordance with an old custom, usually choose Saturday. — Within recent years increasing atten. tion has been bestowed Abroad on the state of a child's teeth. At Strasburg a dental clinic has been opened at the I* Diversity £or the streatment of school* children. v lt consists of a. waiting-room, an operating-room, and a doctor'e room. Hither all the school children are sent, /"n order, by their teachers. Each child is quickly examined, as many as 80 children, being dealt with in an hour, and nearly 300 per day, by a single doctor. Teaching goes hand in hano! with treatment. The doctor tells the child how to use a. tooth* brush, sees that he uses one, and then sends him home to practise with it. The movement is spreading. In Wiesbaden Mulhausen school dental clinics are to be erected.