Old textbooks often sandwich eerie prescience with flamboyant mementos of our former ignorance and bad taste. For every molded gelatin salad, vintage home economics textbooks and educational monographs have some wisdom to impart.
I’ve spent most of today reading ‘Home Economics in American Schools’; Supplementary Educational Monograph (Vol 2, No. 6.) printed by The University of Chicago, 1920 and it has some gems I’d like to share.
Observation shows that young children are more interested in the cooking classes than in the sewing class. The reason is not hard to find. Young children like activities which bring quick returns.
Several studies have found that children are more likely to try new foods, including vegetables, when they have been involved in the food preparation. Additionally, the majority of people that do cook at home originally learned at home. Some learn from recipe books, others from classes, from friends, from TV. With fewer parents cooking at home, there are diminished opportunities for children to handle and prepare foods.
Previously, public schools provided children with an outlet to develop cooking skills through home economics, a program that’s dwindling across the nation-along with most electives-and is often associated with inane projects and bad behavior.
While there is significant and laudable momentum around school gardening, farm-to-school procurement, school wellness policy implementation, and improved nutrition for school food offerings, there are several unique reasons to advocate for home economics for both genders.
DEMOCRATIC NEED FOR FOOD PREPARATION-SKILLS
In 1996, the introduction of the National Curriculum on schools in England and Wales relegated nutrition and cooking skills to the realm of the optional and elective. Scott Stitt wrote an article in the British Food Journal eloquently defending school-based cooking, providing examples from other European countries in support. The article may be more than a decade old, but the points remain relevant.
Because food is one of humankind’s most basic wants and needs, its place in the education system of any country should be assured.-Scott Stitt, British Food Journal 1996.
The result [of diminished cooking-classes], it is feared, will be an even greater reliance on precooked, convenience foods which are, in general, nutritionally inferior to home-cooked meals - and generally much more expensive, a major consideration for low income families. Therefore the concern is that the nation’s diet will be adversely affected which, in turn, will have a detrimental influence on the nation’s health.
Although after-school cooking classes are flourishing, enrollment may be limited to those who can afford tuition and concentrated among those who already know they like to cook. All students stand to benefit from basic nutrition knowledge, knife skills, food handling, and kitchen sanitation practices.
A SPACE TO SUCK
The school kitchen is a great space to fail. One of the key arguments in Michael Pollan’s critique of cooking becoming a spectator sport is that The Food Network and the world of celebrity chefs help set unrealistic culinary expectations, leaving potential home-cooks paralyzed. Cooking doesn’t need to involve ingredients culled from five different stores. Everyday food shouldn’t require equipment purchases.
And sometimes your food will suck.
You will burn things. You will confuse baking soda with baking powder. Your first omelet will likely resemble scrambled eggs. The school kitchen provides a forum for demystifying food, for making mistakes, and gaining confidence along the way.
CAPITALISTS IN TRAINING
The arguments for cooking skills are fairly straightforward: we don’t cook enough and we’d probably be healthier if we did. The 1920’s Home Economics in American Schools manual makes a great point about purchasing decisions.
The teaching of intelligent buying. -It doubtless will be agreed generally by home economics teachers that public schools should develop in the children those abilities of judgment which are involved in intelligent buying. The development of “consumers” judgment is a prominent aim today.
As consumers, we could stand to become more intelligent buyers-more financially literate and more knowledgeable about the food choices we face. The discussion of household economics and cooking is particularly pointed today, as households adopt divergent strategies to manage tightened budgets. Yes-sales of canning and freezing supplies were up last year, signaling an up-tick in homecooking and preservation. So too were global sales for McDonalds in the fall quarter. Although several reports cite consumers decreasing their number of trips to quick service restaurants and other restaurants, it is not clear whether people are preparing foods at home or just heating-and-serving prepared, packaged, foods.
Whether or not they offer cooking classes or rudimentary nutrition and meal planning, public schools continue to develop future generations of consumers.
School children are a captive audience, making schools an ideal space for the dissemination of ideas but also of brands. A 2008 Federal Trade Commission report found that food and beverage companies had spent nearly $186 million dollars on in-school marketing to children, amounting to 11% of the total reported youth marketing expenditures. Many journalists and academics have studied the ways in which food and beverage marketers have worked to infiltrate the school environment.
There are more subtle ways in which school cafeterias train children to become fast-food customers. The limited lunch period and rushed line promote the selection of the most hands-on, ready-to-eat options, instilling at an early age the need to eat quickly and on the go. [This is especially true if recess is offered after lunch.]
There are many factors beyond skill and knowledge that preclude people from cooking more at home. Time and the availability and affordability of nutritious foods come to mind. Moreover, competing priorities, limited funding, and the pressures of standardized testing are real obstacles to the re-visioning of home economics across American public school systems. And yet, it’s about time we take it seriously. Jamie Lee Curtis agrees.
Photos by: University of Michigan Home Economics, Life Magazine
