Cooking, or reading, writing and sums? June 1938 - Susan Isaacs says if she had her way could let children cook when they wanted to - it is invaluable.

June 1938 in Home and School "Readers' Questions"

Should they be cooking rather than doing school things? 

“Enquirer” writes: “ I have a little daughter of six years who goes to the infant school just nearby. She came home the other day and told me that they had been doing some cooking in their class and had made cakes, with real flour and milk and butter, etc. I was surprised that such little children should be doing this sort of thing, because they certainly can’t do it properly. And he has not learnt to read and write and do her sums yet. Don’t you think it better to keep this sort of thing until they have learnt to read and write, and until they can do it properly in cookery classes when they are older. if she wants to play with cooking she can help me at home. I don’t see that it is what school is for.”

Quite a number of infant schools are nowadays beginning to allow children of five and a half and six to try to make real things, and surely this is a very good plan. Children of this age adore cooking. Both boys and girls seem to take an immense amount of pleasure in it. 

If I had my way I would let every child cook, make cakes and pies and bread, sweets, etc., not merely at this age but when they wanted to do it. It is not only a very useful art, but from it they can learn so many other things. 

In preparing flour, etc., they learn how to measure and to weigh and the use of scales. They can work out the cost of the various ingredients and of the cakes as a whole. Talk about these things will lead to where the flour, the butter, the currants, the milk, etc., came from, which stirs up an interest in shops and farms and the means of transport, and places in the world where these things are grown – other countries, different climates, and so on and so forth. In this way the foundation of the knowledge and geography is laid. Not only so, but the children learn the effect of water, of heat, etc., and from this an interest in chemistry may later on develop.

More formal studies or arithmetic and geography and of all the various aspects of everyday life, the shop, the town, transport, etc., are all in this way made much more alive to the children. They see much more reason in these formal studies if they spring from their own practical pursuits.

It is surprising, too, how skilful little children of five and six and seven can become in the actual cooking and in the preparation and in the clearing away of utensils and materials afterwards.

Not only so, but they learn to cooperate with each other through this active pleasure in cooking together. One can fetch and carry, another can mix, another can weigh, another can help to clear things up, another can look after the stove, and so on.

I am always sorry when for those schools which have to stop before the final stage of actually baking has been mixed because they have no gas oven. Some infant schools, however, come to an arrangement with the cookery class in the senior school nearby, to have their cakes actually baked by the older children. But it is better when the children can do these things for themselves. 

It is not found that this cooking in school interferes with the child’s wish to help mother at home or with the more careful work at a later stage. But its great value now is not so much that it makes the child a good cook as that it gives such a fine starting point for so many of the ordinary school studies in measuring and weighing and doing money sums, and geography and history, and of course reading and writing too. 

The children can write down their recipes and pay bills for the food at the shop, can write an account of the whole procedure, and they usually do all this in the schools that are enlightened enough to use these more enterprising methods. You will find that your little daughter will learn reading and writing and arithmetic all the more quickly and satisfactorily because she is able to link these things with such strong natural interests as cooking and cleaning and home-making. 

You can find more letters offering parenting advice from Susan Isaacs in my recent book: Wise Words: How Susan Isaacs changed Parenting (Routledge)