If you attended school before the year 2000, there’s a good chance you took a home economics or home studies class—if you were a girl, that is. These classes, though often overlooked, taught essential life skills that are incredibly useful. Today, the idea of both men and women taking care of their home and family is more widely accepted.
However, home economics courses have largely disappeared, leaving many students without the opportunity to learn basic life skills. In a fast-paced world where parents often work long hours, many high school students return home to an empty house and are expected to cook, clean, and manage laundry on their own. But how many of them are actually taught how to do these things?
There’s growing support for reintroducing home economics into schools to teach students valuable life skills they won’t learn in math or history classes. These lessons, such as cooking healthy meals and managing household chores, could help kids become more independent, especially when transitioning to adulthood. A study in 2020 showed that 62.7 percent of high school graduates in the U.S. were enrolled in college. For many of these students, moving into a dorm room is their first experience of living on their own.
Equipping them with practical knowledge, like cooking and cleaning, would ease that transition. And the benefits don’t stop at the basics. Home economics could also cover skills like changing a tire, filing taxes, or performing simple repairs—skills many adults still struggle with today.
While academic subjects like history and mathematics are important, having a dedicated space in schools to teach real-world skills seems more necessary than ever. If schools don’t step up, the responsibility falls on parents to pass on these vital lessons to their kids.