NORA WRITES:

I just discovered your blog and very much appreciate some of the thought-provoking articles and arguments on it.  The entry on home economics was a bit nostalgic for me as it was part of the elementary school curriculum starting in second grade at a Benedictine convent school for girls.  In our school it consisted of learning how to sew, embroider, and crochet for the first few years, and then cooking/baking classes in sixth and seventh grade.  Yes, we second grade girls were handling dangerous objects like needles and scissors without incident. Imagine that.  I believe the boys’ school down the street had their own version of the class involving carpentry and household repairs. 

I’m a bit mystified by Mr. Stewart’s comments and your agreement with them, because my own experience of Home Ec courses wasn’t at all like the subversive, anti-amateur, anti-home experience you describe.  You must have had the bad luck to fall into the hands of a particularly arrogant teacher.  I find it hard to believe that the general run of Home Ec teachers is (or was) of this stamp. 

My teachers never denigrated what I learned at home—if anything they reinforced what my mother taught me about cooking, baking, and the importance of cleanliness. For my more pampered classmates, Home Ec was their first experience cooking and sewing.  It also covered what would have been gaps in my knowledge of basic household skills.  Mom couldn’t sew. Had I relied solely on her for instruction in that area I too would be shelling out big bucks having work done professionally.  As it was, I became the only person in my family who could sew and ended up doing everyone’s mending and clothing alterations.  Yes, they still bring me work to do even though I’m 32 and have been out of the house for many years, believe it or not!  So I just wanted to put in a positive opinion about Home Ec.  I consider it a worthwhile and useful experience, and during my schooldays it was fun to be able to work with one’s hands for a while after a long day spent on academic subjects (the nuns were no slouches in that area either).

Laura writes:

Thank you for writing. I was generally referring to public school home economics, and Mr. Stewart mentioned the public school as well. Even that, I do not believe is an entirely bad thing though at my own public school as a teenager it was extremely dumbed-down. For cooking, we made variations on biscuit dough. Biscuits, as you know, are very simple to make.

Yes, serious teaching in the domestic arts is a good thing, especially when it comes with the explicit recognition that these are generally feminine arts. Knitting, crocheting, sewing, cooking are all good things to be taught in a school though they needn’t be taught in schools if they are taught at home. Mr. Stewart was referring to the gradual move away from home learning and toward the acquisition of domestic skills from experts, whether they be home economists, journalists or therapists, rather than from informal networks of women. In other words, the domestic arts were professionalized to the detriment of the authority of the un-certified. This professionalization made the average woman insecure, encouraged her to turn to commercially-prepared products and deprived her of any sense of mastery at home.

Most people – both men and women – seek a sense of mastery. This pride in work is one of the necessities of life.

Unfortunately, this mastery in domestic skills, which can so enrich everyday existence and serve as an economic boon to families, is rare today because it is not cultivated and it will never be cultivated seriously by the public school. A few half-hearted, dumbed-down co-ed classes in cooking and sewing, which is what the average public school offers, merely adds to the sense that domestic skills are boring and simple.

                                                                                — Comments —

Natassia writes:

I took some Home Ec classes in public school. I learned how to sew a pair of flannel boxer shorts and an ice cream-shaped pillow from patterns. That was fun. But when it came to cooking, the one thing that sticks in my mind is the day we were making scrambled eggs…in the microwave. The whole classroom smelled like intestinal gas. 

Why, oh, why would anyone cook eggs in a microwave?!

Laura writes:

Well, cooking eggs on the stove is very difficult.

Lydia Sherman writes:

You mentioned the tendency of transferring things normally learned and practiced at home, to the classroom of the public school. This is true. I experienced a class in the 60’s in public school called “Family Living,” in which they re-defined marriage and got the students to consider reasons for not marrying and not being homemakers. I originally went in to it because I thought it was about how to have a happy home life, and how to manage the money and clean house and in general, make stability for the family. The teacher began by ridiculing reasons for a girl to marry, one of them being security, and another being because you always wanted to be a wife and mother, then you were a weakling indeed. If you could not stand on your own, without marriage, he said, you were not very intelligent. He attacked our intelligence if we wanted to duplicate our parents pattern of marriage, home and family. 

I see other things formerly from the home and family, that the public schools adopt. Child care, called Child Development is one of them. Many young women go off to college to get degrees in Child Development, to be later employed in public schools. They put their own children in daycare and schools while they pursue careers in Child Development. It is okay apparently to look after children, as long as you do it professionally and get paid. The whole trend of teaching aspects of home life in schools, may ultimately have to do with the opportunity to market something, coming and going.

Nora writes:

We didn’t have microwaves in our school kitchen, but I did learn about the perils of microwaving eggs when I tried it at home!

I’m not convinced that professional teaching of a subject necessarily devalues what a person learns about that subject at home. As you said, people seek a sense of mastery. That is why a person learning any subject or skill will naturally try to glean information and help from all available sources, professional or amateur (provided the amateur in question is more advanced at the skill than he). This allows faster progress than if he relied solely on a teacher, whose time with him is counted in dollars and cents. Professional teaching can never be more than just one component in the complicated mix that makes up the average person’s education.

A young girl is unlikely to disregard her mother’s culinary advice in favor of her teacher’s just because the latter is certified. The proof of the pudding is in the eating. If she enjoys the taste of her mother’s cooking, you can be sure she will respect what her mother has to say about cooking! The modern ubiquity of ready-made foods has more to do with the woman’s wish to save time and labor than disrespect of the past brought on by professionalization.

People really only bother with licenses and certifications when legally required to do so or when we are dealing with strangers of whose skills we are uncertain. A license is just proof that the holder possesses a minimum level of skill. It is a pale substitute for real familiarity with the quality of someone’s work, which is why it will never supplant the latter. It is only really useful the first time you hire a stranger to do a job for you.

Laura writes:

Professional teaching in and of itself does not devalue a subject matter traditionally taught by the non-certified, but it can reduce craftsmanship to the banal acquisition of skills when it takes place in a setting that does not honor or respect those traditional skills in a holistic way or when professionalization is considered the ultimate goal of, say, learning to cook or learning to sew seriously. Your Benedictine school was not such a setting. These domestic arts are not mere skills. They are part of a sacred vocation.  In that sense, they are both art forms and skills. The ideal domestic worker is an artist and her creation is her home. The artist takes what materials he has and manipulates them, but the goal is not just to create something interesting, but to express a vision of love and beauty. Even Michaelangelo worked with the most banal of materials and ordinary techniques. All was imbued with imagination and vision. It may seem ridiculous to compare a humble home filled with love and simple beauty to the Sistine Chapel. But, they are the same in that they are both works of artistry and express first and foremost the human soul.

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