Comments on: Here’s a thought: bring back Home Ec

By: Old Town Cooking School | Eat & Drink | Hometown Pasadena |

Old Town Cooking School | Eat & Drink | Hometown Pasadena | — Wed, 25 May 2011 23:19:22 +0000

[...] Camp” that is also excellent for teens, or anyone who never learned the basics due to the dearth of Home Ec classes. My teens came home ready to blanch and sauté and brought samples of what they had prepared, from [...]

By: Audrey

Audrey — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 01:54:45 +0000

I think bringing Home Ec back into the classroom is a great idea. I took it way back in high school, and to this day there isn’t a moment I don’t put those skills into practice. As a matter of fact, since my daughter’s school doesn’t give the course I have started a Home Ec club for her and her friends to satisfy the NEED these girls have in wanting and needing to learn the BASICS.Plus, of course, it can be loads of fun! Carry on the fight to bring Home Ec back.

By: Bring Back Home Ec (and Shop Class) : TreeHugger

Bring Back Home Ec (and Shop Class) : TreeHugger — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 15:27:42 +0000

[...] Marion Nestle (via Apartment Therapy) quotes a paper by Harvard pediatrician David Ludwig and Tufts professor Alice Lichtenstein that suggests home economic classes be reintroduced to schools. Girls and boys should be taught the basic principles they will need to feed themselves and their families within the current food environment: a version of hunting and gathering for the 21st century. Through a combination of pragmatic instruction, field trips, and demonstrations, this curriculum would aim to transform meal preparation from an intimidating chore into a manageable and rewarding pursuit. [...]

By: Bring Back Home Ec (and Shop Class) | Green Living

Bring Back Home Ec (and Shop Class) | Green Living — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 14:31:34 +0000

By: Dr. Susan Rubin

Dr. Susan Rubin — Tue, 25 May 2010 14:05:27 +0000

Home ec, or FCS as they call it in my district, is great. In order for it to be taken seriously, we need to bump it up and fully integrate it into the core curriculum.

Math, Social Studies, English and Science could easily have aspects of this curriculum. We must raise the Food IQ of our country if we want to feed ourselves and save money. We spend $187 billion dollars on preventable food related chronic illness. Why not invest some of that into food based curricula?

By: Susan

Susan — Mon, 24 May 2010 19:22:37 +0000

Make it a true “home keepers” class. Mandatory, both boys and girls learn the basics of living without some taking care of them all the time: budgeting, meal planning, cooking, learning basic home repair (like fixing a leaky faucet or toilet), how to sew on buttons, mend and hem garments. A unit on reading nutrition labels! Now there’s an idea . . .

By: Stop Blogging and Cook » HOME EC? HECK, NO! FOOD ED.

Stop Blogging and Cook » HOME EC? HECK, NO! FOOD ED. — Sat, 22 May 2010 07:54:44 +0000

[...] HOME EC? Marion Nestle, always on top of food goings on in her blog Food Politics, reports about a editorial in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) suggesting a [...]

By: cat delett

cat delett — Sat, 22 May 2010 03:59:35 +0000

Oh yes, i completely agree. So many people I talk to cite difficulty of menu planning and/or inability to cook as a reason they don’t eat healthier. If we got back to teaching kids (both boys and girls) about menu planning, budgeting, cooking, and nutrition we’d be nurturing a much healthier next generation.

By: Jlynn

Jlynn — Fri, 21 May 2010 13:56:09 +0000

I agree with the importance of home economics for all children, but I think it needs to go much further than a class. What about re-thinking our school curriculum to make food and health part of each year of school. We need to begin with young children teaching them to make healthy choices (and providing those choices in schools). As the cultural changes have shifted, more two parent (or one parent) households working full time (40+) and the marketing of convenience foods we all need to do our part, schools being an important part of the process, for providing our children with the knowledge and encouragement to make healthy choices.

I briefly worked at a Montessori school and I remember how excited the children were to make fresh salsa with vegetables from a local farmers market. These types of learning experiences need to be incorporated into our public schools and made an important part of the curriculum at all age levels.

By: Christine

Christine — Fri, 21 May 2010 09:40:41 +0000

After years of campaigning by groups in the UK (including our Children’s Food Campaign), the UK government finally committed to compulsory practical cooking lessons for all pupils in secondary schools aged 11-14 (http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/pns/DisplayPN.cgi?pn_id=2008_0015). While they could have gone further, guaranteeing more teaching, and applying it to primary schools (age 5-11) too, we really welcomed this move. It’s too early to see what impacts the policy may have, but we’ll be watching carefully to ensure that the new Conservative-Liberal Government don’t let this commitment slip.