FEMALE EDUCATION UP TO DATE.

Tuapeka Times, Volume XXIV, Issue 1904, 15 June 1892, Page 6

FEMALE EDUCATION UP TO DATE.

A good education is now pre-eminently necessary. I do not merely mean the hißtory, geography, etc., one learns while at school, but a good, sound, all-round, sub- j stantial training of the faculties. There never was surely a more erroneous fallacy than that of supposing that one's education finishes on leaving school. Our education is never finished ; there is (or ought to be) always something yet to be learnt. One is often learning moat when one finds out how little one really does know. Girls at school nowadays have inestimable privileges compared with what their fathers and mothers (not to speak of grandmothers) had before them. If they would only seriously realise these advantages and make the most of their school days, what a boon it would be to themselves and others. In these nineteenth century days of higher education and technical school teaching, not to mention cookery, our girls ought to make excellent mistresses and housewives. Will a girl cook a chop a bit the worse because she knowa political economy, Euclid, or science? Not at all, provided she has learnt how to cook first. Two of the most important thing 3 girls can learn are sewing and cooking. Ignorant people will tell us composedly that anyone can sew or cook. Now we know to our cost that anyone cannot sew and cook ! Anyone can cobble and spoil, if you like, but I oontend that good cooking and sewing are only learnt by practice and example. What sort of housewives would our girls have made if the famous Salisbury Government had not insisted on these branches being taken up in Board schools ? Free education is a great, an inconceivably great, boon when it includes two such branches as sewiDg and cooking. In Coctonopolis (which everybody will grant is a nineteenth century town) I was agreeably surprised to see the interest and pleasure the pupils took in their cookery lessons, though this is not to be wondered at when one catches a glimpse of the fair cookery instructresses and hears the skilful and kindly manner in which they bade their pupils dissect and manipulate the good things set before them. In Manchester the old saying : " Providence sent meat, but the Devil sent cooks," falls short of the mark. I wonder if there can be anything nobler (pardon my use of the] word) and more practical than instructing the young idea in the first principles of the culinary arts. There should be no more broken and wasted food, no more badly cooked meats, no disappointed mankind (for " where is the man that can do without dining ?") forced to seek j comfort (?) in the public-house with the advantages we women have nowadays. Nineteenth century education takes the proper j stand when it looks after the practical training of girls and women. £ think no more disgraceful thing exists than a woman who goes in for " higher education " and yet cannot darn her father's socks or cook her brother's dinner (I do not say husband's, for she doesn't deserve such a commodity). Higher education is good ; nothing better, but it must be combined with practical education, too, A woman ia nothing if she is practical. A "kiss " will not compensate a man for a badly- cooked dinner even if his wife is a "8.A. ," and has been studying j higher mathematics during his business hours. No, we nineteenth century people are. practical, hard-working folk. This is an age of work, and the quality must be good and of sterling value, else the result is failure, What we want is not only higher 1 education for women and girls — that is necessary also— but, first and foremost, we wish our girls to be experienced housewives, and in every sense man's " better half." A happy day is dawning in the annals of England, for surely and clearly does she see .that if we would do anything to raise the standard of comfort, as Malthus says, of the masses and classes, it is with the mothers of the nation (to quote Mrs Marshall's words) that we must begin. A good mother makes a good daughter. It is round the domestic circle that our women and girls will best develop those qualities " which are excellent things in woman." O, woman, in our hours of ease, Uncertain, coy, and hard to please ; When pain and suffering ring the brow, A ministering angel thou ! When those at home have learnt to appreciate and experience the result of their daughters' practical education in the shape of better-cooked food, appetising dishes, neatly-mended garments, then — and not till then — will female education be up to date. — Exchange. There arc always more people in tho earth ■ than on it. Throughout tbe entire world about 35,000,000 people die every year,