The best method of approach to Household Science in the rural school is
through the medium of the hot noon-day lunch or the preparation of one
or two hot dishes to supplement the lunch brought from home. Owing to
the fact that many pupils live far from the school, it is impossible for
them to go home for the mid-day meal, and they are thus dependent upon
lunches which they bring with them. Very frequently the pupils are
allowed to eat their lunches where and how they please, and the method
chosen is conducive neither to comfort nor to health. In fine weather
they do not wish to lose any time from their games, and so they eat
their food while playing, or they bolt it, in order that they may get to
their play more quickly. In severe weather they crowd round the steps or
the stove and do not hesitate to scatter crumbs and crusts. In one case
even a teacher has been seen holding a sandwich in one hand and writing
on the black-board with the other.
In many cases the lunch does not attract the pupil. It is often carried,
without proper wrapping, in a tin pail, and it then absorbs the taste of
the tin; again, it is often wrapped in a newspaper and is flavoured with
printer's ink; occasionally, it is wrapped in cloth not too clean.
Conditions such as these are not fair to the pupils. They come a long
way to school, often over poor roads; and it is necessary, for both
their physical and their mental development, that they should receive
adequate nourishment served as attractively as possible. Many of the
defects found among school children can be traced, to a greater or less
extent, to lack of nutrition. The United States military draft shows
that the number of those physically defective is from seven to twenty
per cent. higher in rural districts than in towns and cities, and this
difference is not peculiar to that country. May we not reasonably
suppose that many of these defects are caused by mal-nutrition, and that
this mal-nutrition is in part due to the poor noon-day lunch? As these
defects hinder mental as well as physical development, the question of
proper nutrition through the medium of the school lunch becomes an
educational one.