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The Evolution of Home Economics Programs

From the L.A. Times. I know what happened to MINE--it got hijacked by the microwave, and that's all she wrote.

"...home ec has not disappeared, it's changed, evolving into classes focusing on child development, nutrition, family health, food service and hospitality. It hasn't been lost as much as translated. In 1994, the name of the course in most of the country was officially changed from Home Economics to Family and Consumer Sciences, or FCS, in an effort to dispel the impression that home ec was about teaching girls how to be housewives."

...

"In fact, in California, home ec is still called home ec; it's the only state in the nation that has kept the name. But whereas in the '60s and '70s, classes were composed entirely of girls and the curriculum focused on traditional homemaking, today they've evolved, says Patricia Scott, home economics teacher expert for the Los Angeles Unified School District, herself a longtime home ec teacher. "The name is still home economics; it's still around. But they're not the traditional programs; they're more specialized."

...

"...although today's flexible curriculum results in some remarkable success stories, it can also mean that basic cooking skills can get lost, translated into after-school specials, trade classes or boutique electives if they're not ignored altogether. And if home ec is ignored or replaced by more academic classes, then learning how to cook, something that was once routinely taught at home, is now often not taught at all."

...

"Making home ec compulsory is one thing that Alice Lichtenstein, a nutrition scientist at Tufts University and the co-author of a May commentary in the Journal of the American Medical Assn. titled "Bring Back Home Economics Education," emphasized in a recent telephone conversation.

Lichtenstein cites the alarming rise in pediatric obesity and the poor diets of American adolescents, including an over-reliance on packaged and fast food, as major issues of concern.

"I'm just talking about basic cooking skills," Lichtenstein says. "The only way to really ensure that more kids get this type of instruction is to have it mandatory."

My mother used to say that Christianity begins in the home (right before she slammed the door in a bible-thumper's face), and I believe economics also begins in the home--isn't that the pure essence of frugality? The microwave brought us nothing but dependency on several things all at the same time:

1. electricity

2. pre-prepared microwaveable foods

3. microwaveable dishes/cookware/bake ware

4. push-button technology

5. instant (or near-instant) meal gratification

Now we're paying for it as a society with increased morbidity, increased chronic illnesses, increased health care costs, increased food costs for unprocessed foods, and increased energy costs with more electricity usage as we zap our food into being in a minute or less.

I'm with Alice Lichtenstein on this one--here's part of what I wrote previously about hunger and the microwave:

"If you were to give a poor person today 2 cups of flour, ½ cup of sugar, an egg, 1 t. baking soda, and some milk, they wouldn’t know what to do with it. This, by the way, is a recipe for basic pancakes—it cannot be casually tossed into the microwave in any but the finished form."

...

"At least two generations (possibly more) have grown up without public school access to Home Ec classes—and with mothers marching off to work, leaving kids at home to fend for themselves, the microwave has replaced the mother as the main source of nourishment. As we well know, food engineered for the microwave leaves a LOT to be desired when it comes to good nutrition, and it doesn’t help matters when bad shopping skills, a lack of nutritional knowledge, and a lack of preparation skills are thrown in."

If it wasn't for the microwave, people today would starve to death--they would choose microwaving despite an analysis of what that microwaving actually costs them in terms of energy use, food cost, and the costs associated with making the money to afford such luxury.