General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: How the Fast Food Industry Destroyed "Home Ec" to Hook Americans on Processed Crap [View all]jmowreader
(50,557 posts)1. Home Ec costs a LOT to offer. It can't be a lecture class, it has to be a laboratory class, and the "lab" needs to have multiple home-style kitchens, lots of sewing machines and a really big classroom. (In the high school I attended, the only classroom that was bigger was for industrial arts and they have an 80,000-square-foot fully equipped metal shop.) Home Ec also runs up the utility bill, and the school district has to buy food for teaching purposes.
2. Because the classroom is so large, every time the school needs to offer a new class - computer science, say - the school board is going to wonder, really hard, if the kids can't just learn to cook at home.
3. And thanks to George W. Hoover's "all children left behind" initiative, there's no time to teach anything that isn't on the test. And last I checked, "how to make a pot roast" isn't on the test.