Cooking, cleaning, and doing the dishes are a lot simpler than we make them out to be. Sure, we procrastinate on them quite a bit, but not because they’re hard. That said, why isn’t everyone taught how to do them?

There was a time when schools did just that.

Home economics were staples in many schools where students learned how to wash dishes, cook meals, clean, and any other skills you’d need to live on your own. It began with the Smith-Hughes act of 1917. With it came the mandatory teaching of household skills in classrooms.

It came to be known as home economics.

The mandate worked, but not as effectively and fairly as it should have.

With it came the unhealthy enforcement of gender roles. It was the early 20th century after all. You don’t need me to tell you that cooking and cleaning back in the day (and even now, to an extent) was seen as a woman’s job. Home economics became a “womanly” class, in a way.

And it stayed that way for a while.

It took a few decades for people to catch on.

When the obvious sexism became widely known, things changed a bit.

Men were equally expected to know how their way around a clean house, and the “woman’s job” stereotype slowly became a thing of the past.

And things continued to change until we got to where we are now. While gender stereotyping is almost becoming a thing of the past, so too is home economics.

Fewer and fewer schools are offering home economics courses.

Governments have progressively stopped funding for home economics in schools. Most of the funding now goes to things like science classes. Ironic, since 19th century MIT chemist Ellen Swallow Richards treated the subject as a science. She paved much of the way for the subject, and we could learn a thing or two from her even now.

No more home economics courses pose a new problem for a generation of people looking to live on their own. No one will judge you for doing the housework, sure.

But what good is that if you don’t know how to do housework in the first place?

Knowing how to cook your own meals, clean the house, and take care of a child is life-saving knowledge. Anyone who’s left college to live independently will tell you that.

In fact, home economics even included childcaring lessons with actual babies at one point. This happened at the New York State College of Home Economics at Cornell.

Maybe we should bring it back?

Caring for a child never stopped being hard. It’d make a world of a difference for lots of us if we were taught that in school, I’m sure.

There’ve already been numerous calls for home economics to return to schools. Some have argued for updating the subject with how much our society has progressed in other places.

Sounds like it could work!

Maybe if more platforms facilitate the conversation about bringing it back, it could just happen. When our generation is already fascinated with life hacks from TikTok and Pinterest, it kind of shows that we’re more than ready to learn similar principles in the classroom.

How about joining the conversation yourself? Change always starts with a little bit of talking.

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Source: Huffpost, NCBI