The Housekeeping and Servant Problem

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLI, Issue 6, 5 August 1908, Page 50

The Housekeeping and Servant Problem

TECHNICAL EDUCATION IN GERMANY

1 To show what is being done in other Countries in connection witli the above subject, we subjoin an extract from an article published a short time ago by a .well-known German periodical. We have no doubt it will interest our readers, and especially those who have the furtherance of technical education at heart. The extract is, of course, a translation. “Modern conditions of household management make it necessary that the education of young women of every position in life for household work or superintendence, can no longer be abandoned to accident or even to traditional instruction, but that systematic teaching and schooling should be substituted, not only as a preparation for work in our own home in the capacity of wife and mother,, but also for work done for wages among strangers, as lady helps, teachers of household management or domestic servants. Expert education for the calling of housekeeper is of the utmost importance not only to the single family, but to the whole population. The Female Workers Home Union (of Munich) has extended its care to women and girls of every position, while it has added to its already highly prosperous and successful arrangements a department for teaching housekeeping, which is connected with the lately opened housekeeping seminary and the old housekeeping school of the PrincrZs Arnulf. The latter includes a cookery and sewing school, housekeeping courses, and domestic servant education courses for girls just left the public schools.

The seminary is in one of the best positions in Munich, and provides also in connection with it a really practical and well organised modern home for ladies living solitary, or for married people without families, a number of apartments in a distinct part of the building being let for this purpose unfurnished. The cooking school and the courses for chambermaids- are beginning in September. They will be held every year, and have for their object the education of servants. The seminary and house management school is quite separate from this, and the superior class of instruction in the higher school, may be assumed from what takes place in the lower. The young women trained in the seminary for the calling of teachers of cookery and home management, require to undergo instruction of a year and a-half, while for the calling of housekeeper, a one year’s course is usuallyfound sufficient for a pass, without examination. J ’ . . in connection with the above a fine building has been erected in Romerstrasse, which is an ideal home for education in household work, where all the newest material for teaching and illustration are at hand. By a free passage through a charming garden, there is entry into the public dining-hall,iwhere the productions of the cookery school -are served to. visitors or the occupiers of the apartments. This dining-hall presents a very attractive appearance, with its walls in white stucco work, high wainscotting, elegant buffet, sideboards; fountain, cherry tree furniture, brass chan-

deliers and some decorative pieces of Munich art. From this spacious apartment the dining-room of the young ladies of the seminary is separated by folding doors, which admit of the occasional union of the two apartments into one large dining hall. Beyond the small hot kitchen (Warme Kuehe), there is the great instruction hall. The red wall colour and white stucco work, with the green furniture, give a special tone to this bright, comfortable room. Here learning is made easy. The desks are made suitable for all school purposes, and provided with all necessary material and aids for the study of chemistry, physics, grammar, hygiene, needlework and garden cultivation, while all the methods of the most refined and thorough household management are taught, including knowledge of the qualities of all utensils, eatables and goods, from thr raw material up, distinguishing bad from good. There are convenient wardrobes for the young ladies of the seminary, reception rooms for the lady directors, and a number of other rooms for the different objects of the institution. A nice staircase leads down to the lower storey, where a practical knowledge of the treatment of all fruits and vegetables it, taught. Here, also, is the great kitchen of the cooking school, and in the middle of it an extensive kitchen range, all shining bright and clean, while beautiful dish covers and crockery of all kinds look down from the wall faced with white tiles. Still more attractive, in fact a real household gem, is the adjoining teaching kitchen of the Seminary. All kinds of requisites, utensils, and modern machines are found here, in copper, brass nickel, aluminium, enamel, and clay, and there is a beautiful water fountain in larch wood. The products of this kitchen are made, use of in the seminary dining-room. Outside this under storey there are further instruction and diningrooms for the cookery school, the apparatus for heating water for the house, baths, large and practically got-up cold storage rooms' and pantries, and a welllighted room with platforms for stores. Equally practical and comfortable as the lower and ground storey of the In-

stitute are the sleeping rooms of the seminary, with their walls picked out in white and gold, nice furniture, and abundant bed clothes. A large and not less agreeable apartment is the rest room, intended for pupils who may be delicate or convalescent from illness. The living rooms of the teachers of the seminary are charming and arranged with all the comfort which distinguishes the rooms of the parties who rent the apartments in the third and fourth stories. The expert teachers live outside the school. As an addition to the instruction room, there are for the sewing and washing courses a large washing kitchen, smoothing room, drying room, etc., in the fourth storey of the new building. Ventilating shafts, the most modern ventilation arrangements for the windows, and large balconies allowing abundant entrance to light and ajr, assist to make residence really agreeable in this large and beautiful house, which represents in fact a kind of model home. To see the troop of young girls in their practical and becoming working dresses, engaged in their earnest work, gives real enjoyment to every onlooker. For the Munich ladies who have founded this new institute, and unselfishly carry it on, it is a real honour and a matter of fact contribution to a great economic question. How much better would it be if parents came to the conclusion that a year spent in a well-organised housekeeping school would widen the outlook for their daughters, and perfect their training in a direction which lies quite outside the programme of the young ladies’ school, and which would fit them better for practical life than the privileged ‘finishing touch’ of a distant boarding school.”