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It’s Time To Bring Back Home Ec
There’s a hilarious scene (one of many) in the film Superbad, in which the character Seth says to his Home Ec teacher, “Look, we all know Home Ec is a joke - no offense - it's just that everyone takes this class to get an A, and it's bullshit.” It’s hard to argue with Seth, and I recall feeling the same way when I was a high-school student and forced to seamlessly transition from learning about the French Revolution to baking chocolate chip cookies. But with more than half of all adults and more than a third of all children being overweight or obese, perhaps we ought to reconsider Home Ec as something more than just bland food, bad sewing and self-righteous fussiness. Consider the program’s original premise — that producing good, nutritious food is profoundly important and takes study and practice. Seems downright reasonable, no? And in light of the failed efforts made by many cities and states to tax junk food or to ban the use of food stamps to buy soda, Home Ec may just be the weapon beneath our noses to effectively fight skyrocketing rates of heart disease and diabetes. Indeed, in the early 20th century, home economics was a serious subject. When few understood germ theory and almost no one had heard of vitamins, home economics classes offered vital information about washing hands regularly, eating fruits and vegetables and not feeding coffee to babies, among other lessons. Eventually, however, tenets about health and hygiene became so thoroughly popularized that they came to seem like common sense. Today we remember only the stereotypes about home economics, while forgetting that many Americans still don’t know how to cook, or that consuming vast amounts of highly processed foods made cheaply outside the home only adds to the enormous health crisis on our hands. In the midst of contracting school budgets and test-oriented curricula, the idea of reviving home economics as part of a broad offensive against obesity might sound outlandish, but teaching cooking — real cooking — could help address a host of problems facing Americans today. At the very least, it gives kids the tools they need to objectively decide whether or not Ronald McDonald has their best interests at heart.
There’s a hilarious scene (one of many) in the film Superbad, in which the character Seth says to his Home Ec teacher, “Look, we all know Home Ec is a joke - no offense - it's just that everyone takes this class to get an A, and it's bullshit.” It’s hard to argue with Seth, and I recall feeling the same way when I was a high-school student and forced to seamlessly transition from learning about the French Revolution to baking chocolate chip cookies. But with more than half of all adults and more than a third of all children being overweight or obese, perhaps we ought to reconsider Home Ec as something more than just bland food, bad sewing and self-righteous fussiness. Consider the program’s original premise — that producing good, nutritious food is profoundly important and takes study and practice. Seems downright reasonable, no? And in light of the failed efforts made by many cities and states to tax junk food or to ban the use of food stamps to buy soda, Home Ec may just be the weapon beneath our noses to effectively fight skyrocketing rates of heart disease and diabetes. Indeed, in the early 20th century, home economics was a serious subject. When few understood germ theory and almost no one had heard of vitamins, home economics classes offered vital information about washing hands regularly, eating fruits and vegetables and not feeding coffee to babies, among other lessons. Eventually, however, tenets about health and hygiene became so thoroughly popularized that they came to seem like common sense. Today we remember only the stereotypes about home economics, while forgetting that many Americans still don’t know how to cook, or that consuming vast amounts of highly processed foods made cheaply outside the home only adds to the enormous health crisis on our hands. In the midst of contracting school budgets and test-oriented curricula, the idea of reviving home economics as part of a broad offensive against obesity might sound outlandish, but teaching cooking — real cooking — could help address a host of problems facing Americans today. At the very least, it gives kids the tools they need to objectively decide whether or not Ronald McDonald has their best interests at heart.
