High school is a time that begins as a rite of passage from middle school and can end in questioning whether any of the information that is being stuffed into the brain will ever really be useful. Classes that encourage health, like Physical Education are being cut and rigorous spitting out of useless facts (or lies) is required. Students are forced to learn complex math equations that may never be used in life outside of the classroom. They then go on to graduate having no idea how to actually survive on their own.
Let’s look at some statistics. The rate of college attendance for high school students is somewhere around 70 percent. The official four-year rate for graduation is about 33 percent. That means roughly 70 percent of high school students may end up in real-life situations pretty quickly and may be doing so very unequipped. The roots of Home Economic classes began at MIT with the first woman admitted to the college, Ellen Swallow Richards. She continued on to become a chemist and instructor at the school and helped to create MIT’s Women’s Laboratory, which existed from 1876 to 1883. The goal of the lab was to advance the scientific education of women at the Institution. One area of Richard’s focus was to make the home an efficient running machine. The first home economics courses incorporated a variety of scientific disciplines into the classroom and aimed to professionalize the work of women. According to the Chemical Heritage Foundation, “Richards was very concerned to apply scientific principles to domestic topics — good nutrition, pure foods, proper clothing, physical fitness, sanitation, and efficient practices that would allow women more time for pursuits other than cooking and cleaning.” What started off as “Home Economics” eventually changed to “Family and Consumer Sciences.” The seven areas of life skills that are covered in the class were: Cooking; Child Development; Education and Community Awareness; Home Management and Design; Sewing and Textiles; Budgeting and Economics; and Health and Hygiene. In a nutshell: life skills. One could expect to learn how to prepare nourishing meals, care for a child, organization, mending clothes, shopping within a budget and how to care for an unwell family member while also keeping the rest of the family healthy. With so many students being thrown into real life at an early age, in a culture where independence is glorified and simultaneously the support of the community has been all but extinguished, it’s hard to imagine a class like this not existing. Students may leave the protective nest of the nuclear family being able to solve f’x=x(2 ln x+1), but may not know how to meet the basic needs of the baby that they are about to take care of in an unexpected pregnancy. College students strapped for time and cash are at the mercy of department store clothes and shopping rather than having the skills to mend a pair of holey jeans in five minutes. Stereotypes of “bachelor meals” are enforced by males really and truly just not knowing how to prepare themselves delicious, healthy and nourishing meals. How do history classes, where we learn only what the dominant culture has to tell us about manifest destiny take precedence over basic living education? So while Home Ec started off as a feminist pursuit, it seems time to bring it back and offer it as a required course for all students to be fully prepared for life outside of their growing-up situation, whether that be college life or the Standard American Life. We can even give it a modern name that the kids will understand, like Adulting 101. Maybe even #Adulting. One woman wrote about her time in high school in rural Missouri, where Home Ec and Shop were both electives, but if a student wanted to take one, they had to take the other. Imagine a generation of students, feeling confident in preparing meals AND changing the oil in their car that was bought with consideration of what they could afford in both car payments and insurance requirements. Ideally, we would be living in communities and children would be learning these skills from the very start. Realistically, we are living in a very fractured society, where children are sitting in front of a screen and dinner comes from a delivery person. We are being kept from the knowledge of maintaining a harmonious, well-flowing home space. Often, both parents are at work and a child never really witnesses an adult “homemaking.” Clearly, schools could go a lot further in preparing students to be successful in life. While there is a time and a place for academics, the majority of one’s life is filled with the moments that the knowledge gained in a Home Ec class would benefit. Most mathematics that a person will use ACTUALLY later in their lives can be learned easily early on in the school venture. Making food? Doing laundry? Caring for a child who is vomiting and knowing when to treat them for dehydration? What does dehydration even look like? How do I know if I’m dehydrated? Bringing back Home Ec seems like an, “of course.” It is one of the answers to the questions around what makes a successful human. Questions that have to do with what we are preparing our children for. What do we want to prepare our children for? Are the lessons we know to be important for our children aligned with the Culture’s lessons? And if they are not, are we, as parents and caretakers of these children, willing to stand up to the Dominant Culture and say enough is enough? Are our children enough to demand a change? Comments are closed.
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AuthorKOB Latvija komanda.КОБ Латвия команда. Archives
December 2020
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