Respect for the noble art of cooking is being greatly enhanced by its
introduction into our public and private schools as an important branch
of education.
When this innovation was first suggested, the funny men of the
newspapers seized on it as a welcome new subject for their jokes and
cartoons, and even now not a few persons who have given the question
insufficient thought speak of cookery as one of the fads and frills
of our schools. But at a budget hearing in October, 1910, Dr. W. H.
Maxwell, Superintendent of the New York City Public Schools, made the
memorable statement that he considered the retention of cooking-lessons
more important than the study of languages.
He might have gone further; he might have said that because health is
more important than learning, therefore cookery is more important than
anything else now taught in our schools.
It is useless to say that cooking should be taught at home. Most
mothers, especially among the working classes, have neither the
time nor the knowledge to teach their daughters how to prepare food
rationally.
Recognizing this fact, the Young Women's Christian Association also
began some years ago to provide culinary lessons.
One of the reasons for this action may be found in a statement made in
the Twenty-seventh Report of the New York Cooking School, that "good
coffee and a palatable meal often remove the need of strong drink, and
many a working-woman has had her cares lightened by the child who has
learned to cook."
An English girl, who had thus been taught, said: "Mother tells me she'd
make a drop of nice broth for the children out of an old bone as she'd
have thrown away."
A glimpse of future possibilities is given by an experiment made in six
Chicago schools, with 1,200 pupils. The boys in the manual-training
classes made fireless cookers, and the girls did the rest. One result
was a rich, palatable soup costing one cent a bowl.
The most encouraging aspect of the situation is that both in England
and in America the experience has been that the children _like the
cooking best of all their lessons_ and are glad to practise them at
home. As one principal wrote, "The cooking has been enthusiastically
received by the pupils, and _the parents are heartily in favor of it_."
[Illustration: COOKING CLASS AT THE WADLEIGH HIGH SCHOOL]