Schools Retool Focus of Home Economics : Cooking and sewing have given way to such course work as family relations, finances and nutrition. More boys are signing up too.
Something has happened to home economics class. It’s gone co-ed and commercial, and it’s no longer cluttered with things you might as well forget about when you walk out the schoolroom door.
Valley high school students are enrolling because the reward for doing good work in such a course these days is no longer just an appreciative “Yum, yum” from the teacher, but the prospect of a steady job after graduation.
In the case of Billy Cayton, a star pupil in that subject at James Monroe High School in North Hills, the result was a $24,000 scholarship to pay for professional studies at the California Culinary Academy in San Francisco this winter.
Such stories are not unusual. Without fanfare, local home economics courses have reached a ratio of male enrollment nearing 1 in 3, according to the Los Angeles Unified School District, and are becoming such effective job-training sites that the state Department of Education this year officially changed the name of the subject.
The new name, Home Economics Careers & Technology, reveals what’s really been going on in those classes, and America’s shift to a service-industry economy, according to Janice DeBenedetti, who is responsible for the state’s program. It isn’t just cooking and sewing any more, she explains: “It’s skills for living and earning a living.”
Around America, 5 million students are enrolled in such classes, she says.
No longer a matter for “study” during the week and maybe remembering someday when kids might have to boil an egg, classes now include topics students can use all the time--such as family relations, child development and guidance, financial planning, consumer education and nutrition.
At James Monroe High, home-ec students are already at work at the school’s on-site day-care center, which opened last week. “We see it as a way to keep teen mothers enrolled in school and also provide practical training to our students in operating a day-care center,” explained Elanore Schuster, a teacher at Monroe.
For several years, students in her classes also have been operating a catering service after school and on weekends.
Home ec has even become a theme-park topic. Burbank-based Walt Disney Corp. this week will open the Disney Institute at a location in Orlando, Fla. It’s a resort catering to kids and their families. Instead of just aerobics for all ages, there will be sessions on cooking, gardening, arts and something called “lifestyles.”
Coincidentally, DeBenedetti points out, Feb. 11-17 is National Future Homemakers of America Week. She serves as California coordinator for this national organization, which has 250,000 members and chapters on high school campuses in every state.
A New Jersey football player named Jeffrey Polyak is national president, even though only 20% of the members are male. That’s up from 10% in 1990.
The point of next week’s observance is to encourage students and the public to acquaint themselves with the activities of FHA, and check out the newly configured home-ec classes at junior highs and high schools.
The group’s official name is FHA/HERO, which reflects a merger in the 1970s with another program devoted to home economics-related occupations. FHA/HERO holds competitive events annually in Southern California and sends the winners to state and national contests.
The contests are about food, money and family relations. Just like life.
DETAILS
* HOMEMAKERS: Feb. 11-17 is National Future Homemakers of America week. Local high schools, many with FHA chapters, are changing the focus of home-economics studies to service-industry career training. Subscriptions to FHA’s magazine, Teen Times, cost $6 per year. Call (800) 234-4225. For FHA general information, call Susan DeHerrera at (914) 653-0359.
* COMING SOON: The Disney Institute, a resort catering to children and families interested in cooking, gardening, fitness and lifestyle programs opens in Orlando, Fla., on Friday. Call (800) 282-9282.
