The first thing people usually think of when someone says Home Economics is girls cooking or baking. Home economics teaches all students important and useful skills including how to make good choices and to live on their own. These skills should be taught to students at school to push them to have the solution when facing a problem while living on their own.
Kids play sports, join clubs, do homework, and hang out with friends. Learning basic skills, like balancing a checkbook and learning how to use a sewing machine is not on their agenda. Students spend hours at their desks working on homework then they go to sports classes, clubs, lesson or other activities. Students have busy schedules already, trying to learn things like managing a checkbook is not on the top of their priorities list. Personally, I would love to learn to use a sewing machine, but I never find the time or have a place where I can learn. Also, I don’t know who would teach me. So when can kids learn these skills and how? Teaching Home Economics during the school day will teach kids important skills, with the essential tools needed.
One concept taught in home economics, that is probably the most popular is cooking. Cooking is necessary when living on your own because it teaches you how to make good decisions when it comes to what you eat. Along with teaching students how to make healthy decisions, teachers can show them how to make these foods, because what is the point of knowing healthy dishes if you have no clue how to make them? If more people cooked better home cooked meals, people would stop going to restaurants, such as fast food place for dinner each night. Two thirds of adults in America are obese or overweight. Imagine how much lower we can get that number if everyone knew how to cook good healthy meals. I love to cook with my family and friends. My family used to go out to restaurants for dinner all the time. Now, we mostly cook dinner at home, and when we are on the go and I need to eat something quickly, I can just have leftovers from dinner the night before. Because of my knowledge of cooking I can prepare meals for myself.
Some people believe that Home Economics is an unimportant class that would just take up valuable time, and that students could be using that time to do more important things during the school day. But, Home Economics teaches students valuable skills that teach them to survive in everyday life.
When you get to that ripe age of living on your own, sorry to tell you, but you don’t get an instruction book on how to take care of yourself. Now, you’re probably thinking that you already know to live on your own. But, do you know how to use a sewing machine? Or how to balance a checkbook, or manage your money? In 2010, Americans owed over 2,400 billion dollars in consumer debt. In 2015, they owed 1.19 trillion dollars in student loans alone. This number would probably be lowered a ton if people were taught how to manage money by practicing since they were kids. If these skills were taught in schools all students, all people in general would know the basic skills needed to live.
Having Home Economics is a crucial class that should be in schools. With this class students would be able to make better choices when living on their own and making healthier decisions. So, what is stopping us from having Home Economics in all schools?
