Why Home Economics Classes Should Be Mandatory

As budget cuts wreak havoc on our school system, elective classes like music and art are falling by the wayside. Most people, myself included, lament the loss of these classes because while you might not be able to measure their results on a test, their influence makes an incredible difference in creating well-rounded kids who live rich lives. I'd like to add to that list, though, another class that has often gone overlooked in recent decades: home economics.  It's clear that learning how to cook is quickly becoming a thing of the past, and home ec classes can help change that.

Once upon a time, home ec was a given for girls making their way through the education system. But due in no small part to this gendering of the class, it's fallen by the wayside in popularity, though not as much as you might think. Rebranded as "Family and Consumer Sciences" (FCS), these classes are still taken by a good 25 percent of middle school students. It's a flexible class these days, no longer focused on how to be a good housewife, but covering subjects as broad as nutrition, child development, hospitality careers, catering, and yes, culinary arts.

It's clear that the classes that fall under the FCS umbrella (California is the only state that still uses the term "home economics") have become more career-oriented, but the one thread that tends to tie them together is learning how to cook. It's no secret that America's youth generally eat a terrible diet. Lacking an interest or basic skills in cooking, many rely on a pre-packaged diet and whatever their parents cook up. Once they're on their own, though, mom and dad aren't cooking for them anymore, and they often find themselves without even the most basic cooking skills. Merely boiling water for pasta becomes an adventure. As a result, many teens and young adults rely completely on pre-made food, which is typically highly processed and contains tons of fats and sugar. Suddenly, the "freshman 15" starts to make sense.

Home ec and FCS classes can change this. So many kids go off to college these days without any idea of how to take care of themselves. Their parents never taught them how to cook, clean, or manage money responsibly, and these essential things are not usually part of school curriculum. This is where home ec steps in. It gets a bad rap because it has traditionally taught girls how to do "women's work," but the truth is that these are skills that people of any gender need to have. The recent media focus on "femivores" similarly missed the mark when it looked at the returning popularity of backyard chickens and gardening through a gendered lens. Both sexes are becoming interested in making their own things and growing and cooking their own food. The only difference is when women do it, society makes us angsty about whether we're doing so because of our interest in self-reliance and healthy food, or whether we are yearning for a return to the "good little wifey" role.

I experienced my very own version of this angst in 6th grade, when I had my home economics experience. I really wanted to take shop because I thought power tools were cool (and I still do), but the prospect of being the only girl in a class full of boys that hated me was too much for me to bear. So it was with a sense of shame and resignation that I signed up for the "girly" home ec class instead. It turned out to be a blessing in disguise, one that I wouldn't truly appreciate until years later. It was there that I first learned the basics of cooking and sewing, skills that I was somewhat embarrassed to have but that have been incredibly useful to me nonetheless. I may have felt like I was playing into the patriarchy by taking home ec, but my classmates were always jealous of me as I headed into my pre-algebra class with a stack full of fresh, warm Snickerdoodles. By making FCS classes mandatory, we can teach these essential skills to kids while taking away the gendered stigma associated with them.

Photo credit: Archives of Ontario