The State of Home Ec in 2016

Schools, colleges are keeping the Home Ec fires burning

Did you know you can major in Home Ec in college, at various four-year undergraduate institutions? Brigham Young University in Utah offers a BS in what it calls “Family and Consumer Science Education” (the name chosen after Home Ec underwent a rebranding in the mid-90s) and if I were feeling punchy I might be tempted to say, “BS is right.” I mean, one of the qualifying classes is “Preparation for Marriage.”

Not that Americans as a whole don’t need a “Preparation for Marriage” class, mind. Ideally one taught by Allan de Botton. But this one sounds much more like Sunday School than something you should be able to get course credit for. It has no Pre-Reqs (not even sex ed?) and no lab work (ha!). Here are the first three bullet points of the class description:

* Understand the Lord’s “divine design” (Proc. ¶ 7) for marriage relationships (e.g., the nature of the marriage covenant, equal partnership, stewardships of husbands & wives, etc).

* Increase awareness of marriage as a social institution.

* Become sensitized to the modern threats to marriage.

But why pick on the Mormons? They’re hardly the only ones offering the contemporary equivalent of Home Ec as an undergrad major. You can get the same degree from state schools across the nation, as well as numerous other mostly Southern and Midwestern universities, including my favorite, Liberty U. Liberty’s home page for the discipline insists that “a variety of challenging, profitable, and exciting career opportunities are available to graduates from the program, including interior design, human development, food and nutrition and clothing.”

More compelling is this argument from the Huffington Post.

Home Economics Is Still Offered As A College Major In 2014, And Here’s Why

According to Chris Moore, Brigham Young University’s director of the Family and Consumer Sciences program, “If you have your Master’s degree and you can’t live within your means or go home from your job and feed yourself a nutritious meal, you’re not a complete graduate. Without [home economics educators], who teaches that? They need us as much as we need them,” she told HuffPost Home. …

despite popular belief, these students aren’t just spending their days living out what Moore calls the old stereotype of “stitching and sewing.” While there are courses such as “introduction to interiors,” “textiles,” “food preparation in the home” and “history of apparel” that are dedicated to these more traditional views of home economics, the program maintains a strong basis in STEM academics of science, technology, engineering and math, as well.

Yes, cooking is a crucial life skill, and knowing about the history of apparel would be cool. What really stands out here though is the part about living within one’s means. Most of these program pages I’m looking at mention money and finance only in passing, and that’s too bad: what students could really use are programs that emphasize the “Ec” rather than the “Home.”

We didn’t have Home Ec at the Jewish Day School I attended for 13 years; perhaps administrators thought it would come off as insufficiently rigorous or perhaps the idea just felt kind of … goyish. Ben, by contrast, had to take it in middle school, so he actually learned to sew. And as it happens, Home Ec at his middle school is still going strong. It may have changed its name but it’s taught by the same teacher Ben remembers fondly. I am far more impressed by its curriculum than the one offered to college students at Liberty U.

Did you take Home Ec at any point, from middle school or at the university level? Did it teach you important life skills?

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