I heard that there is a story of the Shach where 2 girls came to him with a “shaila” in torah, maybe Ramban or Rambam. I don’t know what they were asking, but he listened patiently and then asked his Rebbetzin to bring in a heimishe cake platter. Then he turned to the girls and said “when you are able to bake this..come back”.
The point was they were focusing on something that was unnecessary.
There is nothing wrong with learning, and there are lots of ladies all through the generations who were VERY learned and could even paskin, if needed, but the point is that ladies’ tikkun and duty is to first and foremost run the home, and know how to clean, bake, cook and teach /raise children properly. This totally does not mean it was any less of a “job”. Just as the kohanim were the ones cleaning the garbage of the bais hamikdash.
(By the way who decided this was a demeaning or denegrating job?)
All these ladies who could paskin, for example Rashi’s daughters had well run homes. (I assume)…I mean they were intelligent and we can expect they conducted themselves in the “middle of the road”, in all spheres. Ruchnius and Gashmius.
Look at the Aishes Chayil from Mishlei. Most of it is talking about the running of the home, but the Aishes Chayil type lady will take the mundane running of the home and take it to serve Hashem properly.
I know a Satmar Seminary girl who came home from school yesterday afternoon and she had spent the last period of the day together with her whole class in the teacher’s kitchen preparing and learning how to do a fancy cheesecake. They were focusing on how to do that zebra effect across the top. Apparently this class has already learnt how to do kreplach, shlishkes. They have a home budgeting class, using a pretend family set up for the year. They learn how to budget the family’s finances. Which is more important because not everyone is going to become teachers, and even if they do, teachers are still be responsible for budgeting their pay check.
One class they have in this Satmar Seminary is Shalom Bayis or Toras Habayis, as the teacher also calls it. Another class they take is how to handle shmiras haloshen when giving information for shiddichum. Again, I must reiterate this is not to say they are not learning everything else such as Teaching Children Literature, Special Ed., Parsha, Yehadas, Hilchos shaboos, teaching methods, computers, accounting.
In my opinion all of these courses are far more practical and realisitic for the future than Calculus, biology, high maths, and learning goyisher literature. I understand they teach these in some of the Bais Yakkov schools. My question is what these girls need that for.
Even if girls could learn how to do cooking with their mother in the kitchen, its a chore and usually under tension and pressure out of sheer need erev shabbos or otherwise. There is no comparing it to the new and fresh perspective a girl feels when learning it in a educative-style-environment, knowing she is going to be practicing these new skills in the home she will build, after marriage. They take pride in the lessons and skills they learn.