ry it in phrase but not in
effect by saying that home-economics courses, totaled, do not give a
_technique_ so much as an _outlook_.

The homemaker may happen to be a specialist in some one direction, but
it is clear that she cannot simultaneously know as much about food
values as the real dietitian, as much about the physical care of her
child as the real trained nurse, as much about the wholesomeness of
her living arrangements as the real sanitarian, as much about music as
the Thomas Orchestra, as much about social service as Mr. Devine, and
as much about poems as Mr. Stevenson. Her peculiar equipment, if she
is a good homemaker, is a round of experience and a bent of mind which
make it possible for her to cooeperate intelligently with the
dietitian, the trained nurse, the sanitarian, the Thomas Orchestra,
Mr. Devine, Mr. Stevenson, and the various other representatives of
the various other specialized techniques of the outside world.

It follows that her school discipline cannot be too comprehensive. No
other occupation demands such breadth of sense and sensibility. One
could make a perfectly good cotton manufacturer on the basis of a very
narrow training. One cannot make a good consumer without a really
_liberal education_.

For this reason it becomes necessary to resist certain narrownesses in
certain phases of home economics.

One of these narrownesses is the assumption that because a thing
happens to be close to us it is therefore important. We have heard
lecturers insist that because a house contains drain pipes a woman
should learn _all_ about drain pipes. But why? In most communities
drain pipes are installed and repaired and in every way controlled by
gentlemen who are drainpipe specialists. The woman who lives in the
house has no more need of a professional knowledge of the structural
mysteries of drain pipes than a reporter has of a professional
knowledge of the structural mysteries of his typewriting machine. The
reporter is supplemented at that point by the office mechanic and, so
far as his efficiency as a reporter is concerned, a technical inquiry
into his faithful keyboard's internal arrangements would be in most
cases an amiable waste of time.

Another possible narrowness is the attempt to manufacture "cultural
backgrounds" for various important but quite safe-and-sane household
tasks.

For instance, in the books and in the courses of instruction (of
college grade) on "the house" we have somet