In my generation, girls took home a house. Boys took woodworking. If we were to actually implement a proper home economics course, it would have to be taught to both girls and boys equally. And not be optional. I agree with the basic outline that you put up. I would put financial management at the top of the list. Rather Financial education At the top of the list. The debt load that many couples put themselves into early in their married life is a burden they carry for a long time. Teaching home economics with the emphasis on economics might give us a generation of people who can make long-term choices rather than short-term pleasures. They can figure out when to change the sheets on their own.
At my middle school (mid 1990s), we all took "Home and Careers" for half the year, and "Technology" for the other half. I remember learning to cook on the stove, how to safely use a microwave, and how to use a sewing machine (we all made boxer shorts) for the Homes part. Maybe there were some childcare/babysitting lessons? I don't remember cleaning. For the Careers part, we came up with a business idea as a class (I think we sold flowers at lunch), made resumes, and interviewed for jobs at our company.
In technology we used jigsaws and plastic injection molds to make tic-tac-toe games and built bridges out of toothpicks. Maybe there was a computer part too?
I think the list of elements of a Home Ec class you've come up with are interesting because there's a mix of things that are more objective (when is food safe to eat) and things are more subjective (how often do you need to change sheets) and things that seem like they could be or are covered in existing classes (I learned about compounding interest in math, about other cultures in social studies, ELA, and world language classes, and how to use a planner and get stuff done was explicitly part of my middle school curriculum).
I wonder if putting these things in a separate class, rather than integrating it into what school is generally, sends a message that this is something that one can opt in or out of.
My kids' middle school does not offer any Home Ec-ish class, and I haven't seen anything like that at the high school. My own high school offered a Life Skills class, but I'm not sure who all took it.
We have that class in our New York public school now! It’s called Family and Consumer Science. In our school district it’s a required half year class in both 6th and 7th grades. (The other half of the year they have Art.) My son and daughter learned all sorts of useful skills. The first homework assignment was to wash a load of laundry after learning about the different machine settings and watching a YouTube video on how to do laundry. They also learned how to use a stove, follow a recipe, and basic cooking skills. There were also sections on house safety, fire prevention, creating a home budget and paying bills. My kids enjoyed the classes and it opened my eyes that they were capable of contributing much more to the household than I realized.
Our high school (in Colorado) a just reintroduced Home Maintenance & Repair as a class. Also offers Culinary Arts I & II and has a cooking club (part of a national network). 🤷🏼♀️ Our state also requires personal finance (it is folded into social studies), and we have a standalone personal finance class (one semester).
🌟 I'd like to se an alternative the widespread and only narrowly useful pre-engineering math track -- Econ, accounting, stats, personal finance & tax, maybe demographics -- instead of or alongside trig / pre-calc, calculus, etc. Could be equally rigorous, more useful, and less repellent to non-engineering/non-medicine college-bound and tech-pursuing students.
I took home ex and shop in jr. high. The shop class was way more useful. Because we only had one trimester of each the content was very basic and the home ec was things my mom taught me. They had us making muffins and a tote bag. I was already seeing my own skirts and dresses.
I’m so grateful to have the parents I had. They taught us so much useful stuff: how to grow a garden, how to cook tasty meals with food you have in the fridge and pantry, how to grocery shop and stick to a budget, how to host a party, how to take care of clothing. My dad taught us to clean and polish our school shoes weekly and to notice when the heels were running down so he could take them in for repairs. This was all 1960’s and ‘70’s.
I love the book “Home Comforts” since it so neatly packages up things I was taught but lost track of over the years.
I had home ec in middle school but only really remember sewing lessons from it, which didn't/don't interest me. I am so grateful my high school made me choose between typing or mechanics in order to graduate — those keyboard skills I learned at 16 are used all day every day. I wish I had been extra and also taken that auto body class.
My high school offers a personal finance class, and they're currently learning how how to buy a home. THIS. I asked if I could audit the class as a 46 year old alumni. 😂
YES!, absolutely adult home ec, or what I just call adulting, resources would be wonderful. So wonderful, they're part of what I do/offer! 😄 Classes. Templates. Worksheets. Lists. 1 on 1 consulting — around topics like cleaning, home maintenance, productivity, time management, life fulfillment/ease, networking, hosting, preparing for death of self and loved ones, physical and digital organization, making friends, travel, etc. I noticed awhile ago that what brings me joy and is easy to do is difficult for others, and nothing makes me happier than supporting people in those areas especially if there's any shame or "I should know this..." One of my offerings is an Adulting Kit. Cause it's overwhelming to adult!
Colleges should require a "Real World" class where all this stuff is talked about before venturing into young adulthood.
I adore I know when to re-buy and change ALL the filters in my home, and I wish that for every adult! 😍
My son has grown up in Switzerland, where middle school has the following mandatory classes: cooking-food safety-nutrition; ‘home skills’, which includes sewing, basic tool use and repairs, personal finance and budgeting; and ‘art and design’, which judging from the output seems more like wood- and metalworking!
I think this is great, but the boy is now 18 and I don’t see much evidence of these skills 😂. This could be more about our parenting, though: if he doesn’t see either of us doing this stuff regularly, he’s not going to think it’s useful or necessary.
(to be more fair to self and spouse: the kid can cook, clean, do laundry, and iron. 👍🏻 )
We had something called FACE (Family and Consumer Education) in grade 6 and all kids each had a quarter on a different subject. I know one was woodworking, one was cooking, and I forget the other 2. It was good that all kids did all subjects so we weren't split along traditional gender lines. But 6th grade to adulthood felt like a long time to not cover anything else! I really, really wish I'd had classes on things like how to do taxes, how to set up a 401k, plan meals (not just make one-off cookies or scrambled eggs, but make and shop for a weekly meal plan), how health insurance works, how to handle basic home repairs, how to clean households, that kind of thing. I learned this from my parents along the way, mostly my mom and Nana especially on cooking and sewing. Making and keeping a home is a real skill that I take interest in pride in, but I do think more should be taught in school. (Sorry, I still have not used the quadratic equation, though I can recite it for you!)
Agree -- 6th grade is pretty young to teach life skills and then no follow-up.
I think this all the time about CALCULUS which I suffered through my senior year. I can think of 100 things more relevant and useful to my life I wish I'd spent my time on instead!
In high school, I took Chemistry of Food. It was just a cooking class with one day dedicated to a chemistry lesson that the teacher handed out worksheets for. It was clear that someone higher up felt that a simple cooking class was not enough and they needed to added a STEM twist to justify the class. We learned cooking safety, got ServSafe certified, made simple dishes and made more complex things including a cheesecake where we made the ricotta for it.
My mom and grandmother went to the same high school as me. Home Ec was available when they went. That was the late 90s for my mom and it was not there by the time I went to school in the early 2010s (my mom had me at the end of high school).
I took home ec (why is sewing so hard??), woodworking, and financial literacy in middle and high school. I wish we would bring this back to schools, and start in elementary school too. I do think it should be required for all, regardless of gender. I do think it would help with the mental load that women are so saddled with all the time. The reality though is - this will only be possible if we are also properly funding all school districts. Resource scarce school districts would have a much harder time doing this, maybe?
I took Home Ec in high school. Girls only. I wasn't allowed to take the boys only class of woodworking. I already knew how to cook, clean, sew, iron. I did learn how to sew better, iron better. But I'd love to have learned how to handle finances, safety, and most of all how to have good relationships. I had to learn all those later, and sometimes the hard way.
I did and as I remember we had it for a couple of years. Basic skills like cookies, we learned basic oven safety, but since we were a diverse but small population, not everyone had a gas stove, or it was't there primary cooking source. Some used the old large wood stoves and those were attended by our Mothers or Fathers. We were taught what not to do. We also learned how to properly put out a fire. sewing, cleaning, making a proper bed. Next was "girl" thing, using make up properly, and then there was the ultimate girl issue, menstrual cycles, pads, tampons etc. Little books with pictures of female reproductive systems etc. More sewing, incorporating crochet, proper use of the sewing machine and knitting. We actually made socks and slippers. The slippers were hand sewn. No machine. Learning basic sewing stitches etc. I think that was 5th and 6th grade. I got zero home economics in high school. We had a coed health class. My friends couldn't thread a needle to save their lives.
Well in all honesty, it was a tiny tube of cover girl makeup that was more liquid than anything else. Nothing other than that. No blush or eye makeup and we didn't take the makeup home, and washed our faces before leaving class (removing makeup properly) We were mostly farm kids that came from fairly non make up wearing homes.... lol.
I was homeschooled, and some knowledge of how a home runs is absorbed by being home when your parent (my mom) is doing household work. It wasn’t explicit, but I probably caught more than many of my peers educated outside the home. I am now homeschooling my kids (1st grade and preschool plus a baby) and I’m making the household work piece more explicit (dusting lessons and responsibilities and well as weekly baking and sorting of laundry - no one has a personal laundry basket, it’s taken each night to labeled laundry baskets). BUT I still often feel like my knowledge is not as deep as I’d like it to be, and I spend more time learning and adding to my skills than I’d like. If this was wrote from childhood, I could be spending the time I spend now skill building in other domains that interest me more. Or just relaxing etc!
Home Ec and Shop (woodworking) were available to everyone back in my day in junior high school (we’re talking the mid-1980s here in Canada). I took both and found them valuable; however, most of my homemaking skills were garnered through my mother, who worked part-time while she and my dad raised me and my younger brother. Nowadays, most households where I live (in a large and expensive city) require both homeowners/parents to work full time to cover the expenses of today’s ever-increasingly financial burden. While I do believe schools should be including life-skills classes (everything from cooking to finance), I also think a lot of what we pick up when we are young is what we live with in our home environment. This is getting lost in today’s societal construct (ie digital world) that we are trapped in, with dual-income families who have little time to dedicate to passing on critical “adulting” skills.
Hard agree here! In my junior high school in Iowa in the late 1970s, students were required to take EITHER home ec (cooking, sewing, etc.) OR “shop” (woodworking, some metalworking). This tended to split along gender lines, though there were a handful of brave kids who chose their interest and toughed it out.
I did not have to take either class because of some weird elective exemption; I had music (orchestra), advanced language (French), and some talented-and-gifted programs so I guess it was assumed I’d manage.
That said, I learned everything about homemaking from my mother and grandmother (hospital corners? hand-stitching a seam? petit-point embroidery? you name it!) and everything about hand- and power-tools and simple repairs from my dad in his basement workshop.
I do think that families today don’t have as much time with their kids to pass this knowledge on— to be honest, the current generation of parents is probably a generation removed from learning at home, so even if they have time, they may not have the skills.
My junior high school required Home Ec for all students (and Woodworking), but I confess I don't think I took much away from it. I learned more about cooking and cleaning from my high school jobs.
I don't think I took much away from my Home Ec class too. Part of what's tough is that you don't really NEED those skills for several years after, and by then you've forgotten much of it. It'd be cool to teach those classes and integrate with the parents so carryover could happen at home...but that's a tall order.
In my generation, girls took home a house. Boys took woodworking. If we were to actually implement a proper home economics course, it would have to be taught to both girls and boys equally. And not be optional. I agree with the basic outline that you put up. I would put financial management at the top of the list. Rather Financial education At the top of the list. The debt load that many couples put themselves into early in their married life is a burden they carry for a long time. Teaching home economics with the emphasis on economics might give us a generation of people who can make long-term choices rather than short-term pleasures. They can figure out when to change the sheets on their own.
At my middle school (mid 1990s), we all took "Home and Careers" for half the year, and "Technology" for the other half. I remember learning to cook on the stove, how to safely use a microwave, and how to use a sewing machine (we all made boxer shorts) for the Homes part. Maybe there were some childcare/babysitting lessons? I don't remember cleaning. For the Careers part, we came up with a business idea as a class (I think we sold flowers at lunch), made resumes, and interviewed for jobs at our company.
In technology we used jigsaws and plastic injection molds to make tic-tac-toe games and built bridges out of toothpicks. Maybe there was a computer part too?
I think the list of elements of a Home Ec class you've come up with are interesting because there's a mix of things that are more objective (when is food safe to eat) and things are more subjective (how often do you need to change sheets) and things that seem like they could be or are covered in existing classes (I learned about compounding interest in math, about other cultures in social studies, ELA, and world language classes, and how to use a planner and get stuff done was explicitly part of my middle school curriculum).
I wonder if putting these things in a separate class, rather than integrating it into what school is generally, sends a message that this is something that one can opt in or out of.
My kids' middle school does not offer any Home Ec-ish class, and I haven't seen anything like that at the high school. My own high school offered a Life Skills class, but I'm not sure who all took it.
We have that class in our New York public school now! It’s called Family and Consumer Science. In our school district it’s a required half year class in both 6th and 7th grades. (The other half of the year they have Art.) My son and daughter learned all sorts of useful skills. The first homework assignment was to wash a load of laundry after learning about the different machine settings and watching a YouTube video on how to do laundry. They also learned how to use a stove, follow a recipe, and basic cooking skills. There were also sections on house safety, fire prevention, creating a home budget and paying bills. My kids enjoyed the classes and it opened my eyes that they were capable of contributing much more to the household than I realized.
This sounds so great!
Our high school (in Colorado) a just reintroduced Home Maintenance & Repair as a class. Also offers Culinary Arts I & II and has a cooking club (part of a national network). 🤷🏼♀️ Our state also requires personal finance (it is folded into social studies), and we have a standalone personal finance class (one semester).
🌟 I'd like to se an alternative the widespread and only narrowly useful pre-engineering math track -- Econ, accounting, stats, personal finance & tax, maybe demographics -- instead of or alongside trig / pre-calc, calculus, etc. Could be equally rigorous, more useful, and less repellent to non-engineering/non-medicine college-bound and tech-pursuing students.
I love this idea.
I took home ex and shop in jr. high. The shop class was way more useful. Because we only had one trimester of each the content was very basic and the home ec was things my mom taught me. They had us making muffins and a tote bag. I was already seeing my own skirts and dresses.
I’m so grateful to have the parents I had. They taught us so much useful stuff: how to grow a garden, how to cook tasty meals with food you have in the fridge and pantry, how to grocery shop and stick to a budget, how to host a party, how to take care of clothing. My dad taught us to clean and polish our school shoes weekly and to notice when the heels were running down so he could take them in for repairs. This was all 1960’s and ‘70’s.
I love the book “Home Comforts” since it so neatly packages up things I was taught but lost track of over the years.
Love that you're chatting this topic!
I had home ec in middle school but only really remember sewing lessons from it, which didn't/don't interest me. I am so grateful my high school made me choose between typing or mechanics in order to graduate — those keyboard skills I learned at 16 are used all day every day. I wish I had been extra and also taken that auto body class.
My high school offers a personal finance class, and they're currently learning how how to buy a home. THIS. I asked if I could audit the class as a 46 year old alumni. 😂
YES!, absolutely adult home ec, or what I just call adulting, resources would be wonderful. So wonderful, they're part of what I do/offer! 😄 Classes. Templates. Worksheets. Lists. 1 on 1 consulting — around topics like cleaning, home maintenance, productivity, time management, life fulfillment/ease, networking, hosting, preparing for death of self and loved ones, physical and digital organization, making friends, travel, etc. I noticed awhile ago that what brings me joy and is easy to do is difficult for others, and nothing makes me happier than supporting people in those areas especially if there's any shame or "I should know this..." One of my offerings is an Adulting Kit. Cause it's overwhelming to adult!
Colleges should require a "Real World" class where all this stuff is talked about before venturing into young adulthood.
I adore I know when to re-buy and change ALL the filters in my home, and I wish that for every adult! 😍
What a valuable service you offer. Thank you for sharing!
My son has grown up in Switzerland, where middle school has the following mandatory classes: cooking-food safety-nutrition; ‘home skills’, which includes sewing, basic tool use and repairs, personal finance and budgeting; and ‘art and design’, which judging from the output seems more like wood- and metalworking!
I think this is great, but the boy is now 18 and I don’t see much evidence of these skills 😂. This could be more about our parenting, though: if he doesn’t see either of us doing this stuff regularly, he’s not going to think it’s useful or necessary.
(to be more fair to self and spouse: the kid can cook, clean, do laundry, and iron. 👍🏻 )
Thank you for sharing the international angle. So interesting!
Home Ec was not offered to students in the college track at my public high school - South Park, Buffalo NY.
As a senior, any girl could take the test for the Betty Crocker Homemaking Award. I took it only bcz it was offered during my algebra class.
I thought it was a joke, who doesn’t know what a gauge is, I thought, we have two in our sewing basket.
I won the award.
This was deemed unfair to the home ec students and teachers but they said anyone could try!
I learned from my mother and grandmother, proud and excellent homemakers, sewing, cooking, routine maintenance, laundry, everything,
We were working class ppl but we had a huge Hotpoint sheet presser and the scars from burns have faded but the memory hasn’t.
I still use their methods for many chores.
We had something called FACE (Family and Consumer Education) in grade 6 and all kids each had a quarter on a different subject. I know one was woodworking, one was cooking, and I forget the other 2. It was good that all kids did all subjects so we weren't split along traditional gender lines. But 6th grade to adulthood felt like a long time to not cover anything else! I really, really wish I'd had classes on things like how to do taxes, how to set up a 401k, plan meals (not just make one-off cookies or scrambled eggs, but make and shop for a weekly meal plan), how health insurance works, how to handle basic home repairs, how to clean households, that kind of thing. I learned this from my parents along the way, mostly my mom and Nana especially on cooking and sewing. Making and keeping a home is a real skill that I take interest in pride in, but I do think more should be taught in school. (Sorry, I still have not used the quadratic equation, though I can recite it for you!)
Agree -- 6th grade is pretty young to teach life skills and then no follow-up.
I think this all the time about CALCULUS which I suffered through my senior year. I can think of 100 things more relevant and useful to my life I wish I'd spent my time on instead!
In high school, I took Chemistry of Food. It was just a cooking class with one day dedicated to a chemistry lesson that the teacher handed out worksheets for. It was clear that someone higher up felt that a simple cooking class was not enough and they needed to added a STEM twist to justify the class. We learned cooking safety, got ServSafe certified, made simple dishes and made more complex things including a cheesecake where we made the ricotta for it.
My mom and grandmother went to the same high school as me. Home Ec was available when they went. That was the late 90s for my mom and it was not there by the time I went to school in the early 2010s (my mom had me at the end of high school).
I took home ec (why is sewing so hard??), woodworking, and financial literacy in middle and high school. I wish we would bring this back to schools, and start in elementary school too. I do think it should be required for all, regardless of gender. I do think it would help with the mental load that women are so saddled with all the time. The reality though is - this will only be possible if we are also properly funding all school districts. Resource scarce school districts would have a much harder time doing this, maybe?
I took Home Ec in high school. Girls only. I wasn't allowed to take the boys only class of woodworking. I already knew how to cook, clean, sew, iron. I did learn how to sew better, iron better. But I'd love to have learned how to handle finances, safety, and most of all how to have good relationships. I had to learn all those later, and sometimes the hard way.
I'm sorry you didn't get to take woodworking -- that was one of my favorite classes of all time.
A relationship skills class would be amazing!
I did and as I remember we had it for a couple of years. Basic skills like cookies, we learned basic oven safety, but since we were a diverse but small population, not everyone had a gas stove, or it was't there primary cooking source. Some used the old large wood stoves and those were attended by our Mothers or Fathers. We were taught what not to do. We also learned how to properly put out a fire. sewing, cleaning, making a proper bed. Next was "girl" thing, using make up properly, and then there was the ultimate girl issue, menstrual cycles, pads, tampons etc. Little books with pictures of female reproductive systems etc. More sewing, incorporating crochet, proper use of the sewing machine and knitting. We actually made socks and slippers. The slippers were hand sewn. No machine. Learning basic sewing stitches etc. I think that was 5th and 6th grade. I got zero home economics in high school. We had a coed health class. My friends couldn't thread a needle to save their lives.
I was on board till the makeup lesson!
Well in all honesty, it was a tiny tube of cover girl makeup that was more liquid than anything else. Nothing other than that. No blush or eye makeup and we didn't take the makeup home, and washed our faces before leaving class (removing makeup properly) We were mostly farm kids that came from fairly non make up wearing homes.... lol.
I was homeschooled, and some knowledge of how a home runs is absorbed by being home when your parent (my mom) is doing household work. It wasn’t explicit, but I probably caught more than many of my peers educated outside the home. I am now homeschooling my kids (1st grade and preschool plus a baby) and I’m making the household work piece more explicit (dusting lessons and responsibilities and well as weekly baking and sorting of laundry - no one has a personal laundry basket, it’s taken each night to labeled laundry baskets). BUT I still often feel like my knowledge is not as deep as I’d like it to be, and I spend more time learning and adding to my skills than I’d like. If this was wrote from childhood, I could be spending the time I spend now skill building in other domains that interest me more. Or just relaxing etc!
Yay for homeschooling! How wise to include these important aspects of being a person in your homeschool curriculum.
Home Ec and Shop (woodworking) were available to everyone back in my day in junior high school (we’re talking the mid-1980s here in Canada). I took both and found them valuable; however, most of my homemaking skills were garnered through my mother, who worked part-time while she and my dad raised me and my younger brother. Nowadays, most households where I live (in a large and expensive city) require both homeowners/parents to work full time to cover the expenses of today’s ever-increasingly financial burden. While I do believe schools should be including life-skills classes (everything from cooking to finance), I also think a lot of what we pick up when we are young is what we live with in our home environment. This is getting lost in today’s societal construct (ie digital world) that we are trapped in, with dual-income families who have little time to dedicate to passing on critical “adulting” skills.
Hard agree here! In my junior high school in Iowa in the late 1970s, students were required to take EITHER home ec (cooking, sewing, etc.) OR “shop” (woodworking, some metalworking). This tended to split along gender lines, though there were a handful of brave kids who chose their interest and toughed it out.
I did not have to take either class because of some weird elective exemption; I had music (orchestra), advanced language (French), and some talented-and-gifted programs so I guess it was assumed I’d manage.
That said, I learned everything about homemaking from my mother and grandmother (hospital corners? hand-stitching a seam? petit-point embroidery? you name it!) and everything about hand- and power-tools and simple repairs from my dad in his basement workshop.
I do think that families today don’t have as much time with their kids to pass this knowledge on— to be honest, the current generation of parents is probably a generation removed from learning at home, so even if they have time, they may not have the skills.
My junior high school required Home Ec for all students (and Woodworking), but I confess I don't think I took much away from it. I learned more about cooking and cleaning from my high school jobs.
I don't think I took much away from my Home Ec class too. Part of what's tough is that you don't really NEED those skills for several years after, and by then you've forgotten much of it. It'd be cool to teach those classes and integrate with the parents so carryover could happen at home...but that's a tall order.