How home ec has evolved to address modern family needs
FROM DAME SCHOOL TO FOOD LABS BY JULIE K. YATES | PHOTOGRAPHY BY JENNIFER L. RUBENSTEIN | GRAPHIC BY CARYN SCHEVING
W
hen a visitor entered a typical Indiana junior high school in 1966, chances are they would notice a delicious aroma coming from a far corner of the building. If they followed that scent down the hall and into the room where it was wafting from, the guest might have viewed clusters of aproned teenaged girls in several mini-kitchens. As the noise from spoons clanging against metal mixing bowls mingled with chattering voices, the students likely checked time sheets and consulted purple-ink mimeographed recipes. And there was a high probability that the creation of that home economics food lab would have been a made-from-scratch cake or pie. Fifty years ago, devising class schedules might have been a little simpler for Indiana seventh and eighth grade guidance counselors than it is today. Every student took math, English, history and their other required courses—and if you were a boy, one of those required classes would have fallen into the industrial arts category while the girls enrolled in home economics.
These days, middle schools and high schools offer a myriad of choices, Foods One is no longer a required course, and the nutrition and wellness courses have been absorbed into the discipline of Family and Consumer Sciences (FCS)—a large umbrella including classes for everyone such as Interior Design, Fashion and Textile, Child Development, Parenting, Consumer Education, Interpersonal Relations and Preparation for College.
Early beginnings The roots of home economics began in the East, after the American Revolutionary War, when it became acceptable for girls to attend school. Dame schools, which taught skills needed to maintain a home, were often held in the kitchen of the woman teaching the class, but eventually became part of the public school system. Later, in the 1870s, young women enrolled in both private and public cooking schools that originated in Boston and New York City. At the same time, land grant colleges were being established in the West, and classes such as cookery and household arts were offered to women students.
Cooking Class at Emmerich Manual High School (Courtesy of Bass Photo Co. Collection, Indiana Historical Society)
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