What Is the Lebanese Home Economics Association? Its Founding — Its Aims — and Its Conference

In our deep comprehension of the importance of home economics we are still infants learning to crawl — yet a select group of our ladies has awakened to the matter, called a conference last month at Beirut College for Women, and set a blessed movement in motion... One of its pioneers, Mrs. Nahla Marwa Shuman, tells the story of this movement...

The science of home economics in Lebanon is still confined to a small number of girls' schools, and this subject in the teaching program remains obscure to some people. How many a school among us gives a lesson in needlework, or a lesson in hygiene and foods, and calls it home economics! There are likewise a number of parents who imagine that in home economics lessons a girl learns only how to make a pretty, decorated cake.

This, upon my life, is an error, for home economics is a comprehensive, wide-ranging subject embracing the important topics that touch our daily life and our upbringing. Home economics takes in fundamental topics that have a great effect on raising the level of our family and social life, and that play the leading part in rearing healthy, happy children — and in consequence, good men and citizens.

Here are some of the fundamental topics on which the science of home economics rests: foods and nutrition; the budget and the management of the home's economic affairs; child-rearing; family life and psychology; the house and its furnishings; the science of textiles and sewing; the art of dress; and so forth.

Running a home and building a family are an art and a science that call for study and specialization; but we in Lebanon still take these matters as they come, just as we take many other matters besides.

A high percentage of our homes in Lebanon are run by the maid or the "ashshiyeh," while the lady of the house occupies herself with social life outside her home, as if she had been created to play this role alone. Many people suppose that the husband, the master of the house, is at ease with this state of affairs, or that he is happy in such a home. The truth is that a man, whatever his culture and his circumstances, finds ease and happiness in a home where his wife is the heart of its activity and its mainspring.

A happy family life requires familiarity with most of the topics I have mentioned above, and of course it requires a relish for carrying out the various household duties — a relish that comes after study and practice of these matters.

A group of our ladies who specialized in the branch of home economics at the universities of America and Europe felt the pressing need to encourage and help the schools to introduce this subject into their programs, just as they felt the necessity of valuing this subject and understanding the extent of its effect upon our family life.

So they founded the Lebanese Home Economics Association and set its aims as follows:

1 — To raise the level of family life in Lebanon.

2 — To create a relish for the science of home economics.

3 — To encourage the teaching of this subject in the various schools.

4 — To undertake tests and experiments in the broad field of home economics.

5 — To cooperate with the groups working in this field in the Arab countries.

This association was founded in October 1954. It includes among its members ladies of Lebanon who have specialized in the science of home economics, or in one of its branches, or in any branch bearing directly on the improvement of family life.

The association organizes a general conference once a year, to which it invites the members as well as all the principals and women teachers of the schools that teach home economics, and all the societies concerned with one of its branches.

This year's conference was held on the ninth and tenth of last March at Beirut College for Women, in cooperation with the Home Economics Department of the said college.

It was a crowded conference, attended by ninety-six invited guests from all parts of Lebanon. The program included lectures and various studies, and the guests also watched numerous demonstrations of sewing and cooking. Various exhibits were mounted, and valuable motion-picture films were shown.

In this its second year, the association intends to carry on sustained activity in the field of home economics. It will found societies among the girl pupils in the various schools; it will present programs on various subjects from the broadcasting house; and it will begin publishing certain booklets of which we stand in pressing need.