ities in
sex matters. She may, or may not, be called upon to furnish sex
instruction to the girls under her care, but no rules can free her
from her moral responsibility in striving to keep the sex atmosphere
clean and invigorating. The "conspiracy of silence" on these subjects
is broken, and we must accept the fact that modesty does not require
an assumed or a real ignorance of the most wonderful of nature's laws.
"The idea that celibacy is the 'aristocracy of the future' is soundly
based if the Business of Being a Woman rests on a mystery so
questionable that it cannot be frankly and truthfully explained by a
girl's mother the moment her interest and curiosity seek
satisfaction."[4] And what the mother should tell, the teacher must
know.

Practical use of the teacher's carefully worked-out theories will be
made all along the line of the girl's, and to a certain degree the
boy's, education. The indirect teaching of the primary grades will
give place in the higher grades to more direct dealing with the
science, or, better, sciences, upon which homemaking rests. The
classroom becomes a "school of theory." The home stands in the equally
vital position of a laboratory in which the girl sees the theory
worked out and in time performs her own experiments. The finest
teaching presupposes perfect cooeperation between school and home.

[Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros.
Mothers' and daughters' meeting on sewing day. Cooeperation between
the home and the school makes for the best teaching of domestic
science]

The first duty of the mother, like that of the teacher, is to preserve
always a right attitude toward home life. The girl who grows up in an
ideal home will be likely to look forward to making such a home some
day. Or, if the home is not in all respects ideal, the father or
mother who nevertheless recognizes ideal homes as possible may show
the girl directly or otherwise how to avoid the mischance of a less
than perfect home.

The prevalence of divorce places before young men and women sad
examples of mismating, of incompetent homemakers, of wrecked homes. We
can scarcely estimate the blow struck at ideals of marriage in the
minds of girls and boys by these flaunted failures. Nor can we even
guess how many boys and girls are led to a cynical attitude toward all
marriage by their daily suffering in families where parents have
missed the real meaning of "home." However practical we may become,
therefore--and we