Instruction in
Cooking.

WHAT

HAT COOKING MEANS.

"Cooking means. the knowledge of Medea and Circe, and of Calypso, and of Helen, and of Rebekah, and of the Queen of Sheba. It means the knowledge of all herbs and fruits and balms and spices, and of all that is healing and sweet in fields and groves, and savory in meats; it means carefulness and inventiveness and watchfulness and willingness and readiness of appliance; it means the economy of your greatgrandmothers and the science of modern chemists; it means much tasting and no wasting; it means English thoroughness and French art and Arabian hospitality; it means, in fine, that you are to be perfectly and always, ladies (loafgivers); and, as you are to see imperatively that everybody has something pretty to put on, so you are to see, yet more imperatively, that everybody has something nice to eat."

It is cooking in this broad sense that Mrs. Hogan evidently has in mind in her admirable report on instruction in cooking in the schools of New York City, which has just been issued from the government printing-office at Washington. It is the most suggestive pamphlet on a subject of this kind that we have ever read.

We all recognize that, with reference to instruction in manual training in our public schools, one result has been that the common industries have been divested of much of the drudgery that tends to make them distasteful to our more intelligent youth. The same may be said to apply to Copyright 1898 by A. W. Mumford.

cooking as a special branch of manual training. Again, it is a subject that is within the scope of the faculties of all children whose minds and bodies are in a normal condition. Instruction in this branch is of advantage both because of practical utility and the educational value of the process. Children enter into such work with a will and a zest that is astonishing; besides, there is bound to result from such study the cultivation of habits of attention, neatness, accuracy and judgment which will benefit the pupil, not only in the special branch of cooking or serving, but in all the other studies of the school career as well as in after life.

In New York it has been actually found, as a reflex ad vantage of teaching cooking and other subjects in manual training, that parents are inclined to keep their children longer in school because the children themselves are more inclined to stay. If there were no other reason for such instruction, this alone would be ample. But think, too, of the admirable sense-training afforded. In no subject is there a possibility of a fuller presentation to the mind of sensations—and sensations are, indeed, the raw material of thought. Each of the powers of mind-memory, imagination, judgment, comparison, reasoning-depends on senseexperience for its raw material. Then, such work as instruction in this department of manual training offers an exceedingly valuable outlet for the surplus store of nervous energy so frequently found in healthy childhood. As it exercises, so it does, if properly carried out, develop the attention, judgment and especially the will. There is a growing interest in the subject of food and nutrition of mankind throughout the country. Any school course that provides preparation for a better knowledge of the chemistry of food and nutrition and the real philosophy of cooking certainly goes a long way in the better capacitating our children for citizenship. What we eat is more important than what we wear. We build up our bodies by using proper nourishment. Health so largely depends on pure, nutritious, well-cooked foods, that whoever leads another.

toward health is a public benefactor worthy of the highest praise.

Workings of the
Child-Mind.

OUR

UR readers may have already observed that we publish the sayings of children for a higher purpose than that of the mere entertainment of the reader. They are nearly all authenticated as true and are not "children's sayings" from the pen of some staid old editor who knows nothing about children. When thus well authenticated they serve as an excellent means of Child-Study. Nothing more clearly illustrates the child's powers of induction, inference or association of ideas than some of its unconscious witticisms. An illustration: Recently the editor's little boy was observing the work of carpenters building a house across the street. Before the weather-boarding was put on, the sides of the house were covered with black tarred paper to keep out the winter's cold. Previously, the boy had seen only red oiled paper used for such a purpose and at first this black paper greatly nonplussed him, but presently he exclaimed, without the slightest suggestion from anyone: "Oh, I know why they use black paper-Mrs. B——— (the lady for whom the house is being builded) is a widow and red paper would not do for mourning!" This shows the readiness with which association of ideas takes place in children, though such association may be, at times, of the "tangent" variety.

tional Number.

A Special Educa- THE Forum, under the able editorship of Dr. J. M. Rice, is always an. exponent of the best advanced thought along political, social, economic and educational lines. A single number of The Forum devoted especially to any one of these departments must needs be a veritable mine in its wealth of thought and discussion. We are pleased to know that the June number of this excellent magazine is to be a special educational number. It will afford a rare treat to all engaged or interested in school work.