A strange phenomenon is becoming more and more apparent that could give pause for thought. A survey of all the domestic schools in the country and beyond shows that girls almost everywhere go to school rather than to the actual female schools, the domestic schools. The commercial schools, it is said, are overcrowded; the colleges of higher studies dismiss a good number of female graduates every year; on the other hand, factories and offices also provide many, many unemployed women: but if one asks for girls who train themselves in housekeeping, they are rare, and apparently becoming rarer and rarer.

Why this? "Oh," you hear, "I don't want to be a housemaid!" "Good jobs as a servant are very rare!" "Who's going to cook for themselves when there are cafeterias. Communal kitchens, etc., where you can have everything much faster and more conveniently!" "Well, it's really never worth having your own business!"

This is the modern way of thinking and slowly but inexorably something of the most precious thing that still glorified life as something sacred is being lost: the caring, loving home. Certainly, in many, very many cases it has already been destroyed by hard hardship, and even where there is still an honest will to be at home, it has torn open ugly oases and brought haste and insecurity where fine contemplation and prudent, intelligent efficiency and love should be in charge. Hundreds and hundreds go out to earn money because there is not enough at home, and people do not know how to manage what they have earned. They haven't learnt to do it, and why should they? - Things are going downhill! Many people complain silently and loudly about the economic hardship, but where you could start to improve on a small scale, that's where the local, Tyrolean way of thinking turns round!

The home economics schools are almost empty. Is the expansion, the curriculum to blame? Is too much theory being taught, which is less suited to girls with a practical sense? Can they not use what they have learnt at school in life? Is the teaching not adapted enough to the actual circumstances of individual groups of girls and is not enough attention paid to the difference between rural and urban, the rough heavy labourer's kitchen and that of the intellectual worker? Perhaps a reorganisation, a re-learning is needed here and there: but certainly a reorganisation on the part of some parents and girls is also necessary, so that the economic development on a large scale is first preceded by work on the small and smallest scale. Only when the individual household is run rationally, economically and yet profitably, and such households multiply in town and country, will there be a viable foundation for a healthy national economy that strives outwards. Otherwise we are heading towards a Bolshevik, family-dissolving collective economy, towards mass impoverishment.

Prudent parents may ask themselves whether it would not be appropriate to let their daughters go through a proper year of economics (not just an occasional sip, as is not otherwise possible alongside the other secondary school subjects, for example!) before they enter a professional position, and prudent girls may consider whether it would not still be possible, despite everything to the contrary, to include such a year before entering as a machinist or any other profession, if this has to be done. In many cases, it will not be easy for young girls to give up earning a living or earning their own money, but it is quite certain that they will be more capable of living and more stable in their modern jobs with the domestic training than without it. And if sooner or later the girl does start a family of her own? - What will benefit her more then? So foresight! Many people have to relearn in this day and age. Why not quietly educate parents, young women and, hand in hand with them, also home economics schools where necessary?

*

Following on from the above thoughts, which should not be dismissed out of hand, we should point out the opportunities for domestic training that we have in Tyrol. Apart from the professional higher education offered by the household seminary of the reverend Ursuline nuns in Innsbruck and the so-called "Ferrari School" in Fabriksgasse (also in Innsbruck), there are household schools with ten-month courses in the two aforementioned institutions, as well as in the girls' institute in Pfaffenhofen, at the reverend Terziar Sisters in Hall (municipal school! There is also a private housekeeping school with its own curriculum in the refuge in Hall. Winter courses lasting five months with an emphasis on home economics for rural girls are offered by the agricultural provincial training centres: a three-month day course with a very practical approach, especially for middle-class girls, starts in September in Innsbruck at the Ursuline nuns. The Vinzenzheim in Ried and the convent of the Sisters of Mercy in Ried offer girls six to eight-week internal winter courses in sewing and cookery with the most necessary theoretical instruction, while exclusively practical cookery courses are held over the winter at Miss Staudacher in Stams. So there is undoubtedly enough opportunity for every relevant demand in the country. May the consistently hard-working and efficient leaders of these courses also experience the satisfaction that their efforts are appreciated by the people and all circles of the same according to our time of need!

From the Tyrolean Girls' Association.