In life, adulthood has a tendency of suddenly appearing with more demands and accountability, this is never really mentioned, it just happens, and usually around this time as many of us graduate and move on from university life. Now suddenly, we need to learn how to cook, how to turn up for employment and manage our money. University life can feel like the appetiser to the main course that is adult life.
But these days, are we prepared? In many ways yes as the majority of undergraduate students in the UK are in some kind of employment and often by necessity can rustle up the most basic meals, (mostly with a microwave) but in truth there are not many that have any kind of solid grounding or underpinning into what happens after university. Should this have been taught in school and is this what Home Economics used to stand for?
We think of this as simply learning the bare bones of cooking and returning home from school with rock hard cakes or half boiled eggs. This is not a new issue as since at least the 1980s the subject of preparing for life in one form or another, has been stripped and dumbed down to a point where in 2014 the subject of Home Economics was removed entirely from the UK national curriculum. (Guardian 2014). The resulting loss of core skills amongst school leavers is clear, which can be measured in increases of food waste, the consumption of unhealthy diets, financial naivety and a sense of panic as becoming accountable as an adult looms large.
Home Economics had a non-nosense approach to self-preservation in terms of food, health and wealth that subsequent attempts at citizenship such as PSHE could never match. The increasing reliance on online sources such as YouTube and Social Media for basic life skills has developed the ‘Cult of the Amateur’ (Keen 2008), revenue over veracity, and as anyone online would know, these days the accuracy of social media is questionable, at best. This then should be seen as the right time to bring back Home Economics in its full form, a robust classroom-based curriculum based on simple and proven aspects of healthy living, financial health and several decent recipes, Life skills for the next generation, and to ensure that everyone receives these skills, It should sit within the school core as a kind of Baccalaureate, topped up with all the necessary aspects of grown up life.
It’s time for the UK to see its responsibity to not shy away from this grounding so that future generations are better prepared for what will inevitably lie ahead.