Home Ec: A Discontinued Class That Deserves Redemption
Written by Layla Salloum SJND ‘28
High school and adolescence are times of transition, growth, and learning. With the threat of college looming over you, that learning becomes especially important. Remember to get your grades up, join clubs, and jam in as many extracurricular activities as possible. But then comes another hurdle you need to prepare for: living independently, a task that requires many skills that you’re just expected to learn. Where are you expected to learn these skills? In the past, the answer to this question would have been home ec.
Home ec, or home economics, was a class that was offered during the mid-1800s and taught students a variety of basic home and life skills. While it was mostly intended for young women, it was available for both girls and boys to take to help prepare them for living independently.
Back in its prime time, home economics focused on seven main areas, which were cooking and basic kitchen skills, stages of child development (and how to respond to each one), how to teach basic school and moral subjects, how to clean and organize a house, sewing, budgeting and investing, and how to stay safe if you or family members are sick.
However, these classes were also used to bring students together and help teach group work. I learned this from my grandfather, who took the class during both his middle and high school years. He said, “They [the teachers] had a group of boys working together, and they would be each given a different task. […] Some boys would prepare the food, one boy would cook, and one boy would do the dishes. I didn’t like cooking, so I was always the boy who did the dishes. I regret that because now I can’t cook! But, it still helped us work together.” This benefit of working together is part of the reason why home ec is crucial to a student’s education.
While you could watch a tutorial online on how to cook or sew or google any questions that come up in your life, it doesn’t build the same kind of community that an in-person class would. Recently, there has been more focus on working in groups and creative problem solving rather than independent work, and adding a class like home ec, where students can collaborate more, would help further reach this educational goal.
But, more important than the teamwork skills home ec could build are the actual life skills it teaches. The first pillar of home ec is cooking, which is obviously a crucial skill to have. However, when asked to rate how confident they were in preparing a healthy meal by themselves, with five being very confident and one being not confident at all, only 25% of students chose five. While it’s fantastic that many people are confident in their skills, the people who responded with a three or lower, making up 58.3% of survey takers, should be able to receive support through home ec lessons. One survey interviewee added, “I think that it could be just as important/useful to know how to cook breakfast as knowing how to do algebra or know the preposition in a sentence.” This sentiment could not be more true.
Cooking is a skill that is used in anybody’s day-to-day life, especially with how many convenient food options that could be either really unhealthy or really expensive. Students need to know how to cook healthy meals while staying safe in the process. The internet can be a good resource to find recipes and other kitchen hacks, but most don’t teach actual kitchen safety skills. Information like how to properly use and take care of knives, put out grease fires, and other really important things are overlooked because they are assumed to be common knowledge. Home ec could be a resource that would actually teach those skills so students can stay healthy and safe in the kitchen.
The second main purpose of home ec was to teach sewing and just how to deal with fabrics. With fast fashion and vague sizing options, it’s important to know how to fix your own clothes so you don’t have to buy new ones. Although you could get them adjusted for you, usually it’s much cheaper and time effective to just do it yourself. I always wish I knew how to sew; whenever I buy clothes, I can never find any pants that fit me because the legs are too long. That’s a problem that could be easily fixed if I just knew how to hem them. But, because I don’t and don’t want to spend my money on getting someone else to do it for me, I usually have a very difficult time finding clothes that fit me.
I’m not the only one with absolutely no sewing experience. In my survey, only 16.7% of interviewees reported that they were very confident that they could sew or mend their own clothes or other fabric items, while a whole 41% rated their confidence at two out of five and another 29.2% responded with one.
To conclude my survey, I asked how prepared students thought they were to live independently. Although 29.2% of students responded with a four or higher, indicating that they weren’t too worried about it, 50% of students responded with a three, and 20.8% of students responded with a two or lower. There should be a class that helps build confidence in this area because living alone can be a big transition everyone should feel prepared for, not just 29.2%.
Also, regardless of how prepared they thought they were for living alone, 85% of the 20 surveyed students responded that yes, it is a school’s responsibility to teach students life skills along with academics. An anonymous participant added their thoughts on this responsibility: “I honestly think that by the end of high school, I should be able to perform daily tasks in a manner that doesn’t interfere with my work/college life. I think that it is the school’s job to prepare students for real life and being able to manage your time is probably one of the most valuable skills one needs to learn, so if my school doesn’t teach me to live on my own, then why am I paying $25,000 a year to go here? I personally feel that academics isn’t everything so I would very strongly encourage taking home economics classes.”
This point only becomes more valid when you realize how busy both your life and your parents’ lives are. Generally, it’s considered the parent’s job to teach their children everything they need to know about life. But, many households have parents both working full time, which leaves little room to teach basic stuff. Just like how sex ed started being taught in school so everyone could be equally prepared and know how to stay safe, home ec needs to be taught so everyone has fundamental skills that can help prepare them for living alone.
However, adding home economics into the school curriculum would raise some issues. Students already have a limited amount of space for electives, pathways, and AP classes; space becomes even more limited. If home ec is offered as an elective, many students will probably choose to forgo it because even though the pressure to be prepared to live alone is great, the pressure to have a good college application is even greater.
The most sensible solution is this: instead of it becoming a full fledged class, home ec should become like a club where students could show up during flex or lunch. Even though it’s unlikely that many schools are going to suddenly start implementing home ec classes, it’s still a good thing to think about. The next time you have nothing to do, think to yourself, are you really prepared to live by yourself? This might sound cliche but just google it. Although the internet does not provide the same experience a proper home ec class would have, it’s better than nothing. So, focus on your academics, but also keep your mind open to other skills! Who knows, they might just come in handy.
SJND Pilot Island Editorial Staff 2024–2025:
Editor-in-Chief: Anne Obuchi ‘25:
News Editors: Jaslyn Ho ’26
Features Editors: Naomi Seche ’26 and Anabel Arista ‘27
Opinion Editors: Nicolaus Thyen ’27 and Victor Pham ‘27
Reviews Editor: Austin Ly ’27 and Sean Kimbrew ‘27
Sports Editors: Jeremiah Myers ‘27
