Originally published 2020-05-31.
Should schools teach young people how to cook a cheap, healthy meal, read a payslip, set a budget and file a tax return? A growing number of teachers, nutrition experts and parents say yes. Their argument is simple: students can leave school able to solve equations and analyse poems, yet still struggle with the everyday tasks that decide whether adult life feels manageable or overwhelming.
The idea is often described as bringing back home economics. Supporters are clear, though, that they do not want the old version, which was mostly taught to girls as preparation for running a household. They want a modern, practical course for every student. Here is where that debate comes from, what the evidence says and what a good life skills class could look like.
Why the debate keeps coming back
In 2018 Marti Harvey, a lecturer at the University of Texas at Arlington, wrote a widely shared column in The Dallas Morning News arguing that home economics should return as a mandatory high school course. She proposed calling it "Skills for Life" and filling it with basic economics, budgeting, comparison shopping, cooking and time management.
Her case came from her own classroom. Each semester she spends a week running what she calls a math lab in a college reporting course, walking students through how property taxes affect rent, how interest rates change car and credit card payments and what a 5 percent raise really means for take-home pay. Many students, she wrote, are surprised by things older adults take for granted, such as the fact that owning a home means paying property tax every year. She called the gap "a failing of our educational system".
She also made a point that resonates with many families: parents cannot always fill the gap. Some lack the time, some never learned the skills themselves, and some find that their teenagers are not ready to listen until adult life is suddenly close.
A short history of home economics
Home economics grew out of a late 19th-century effort to bring science into everyday household life. At a series of conferences in Lake Placid, New York, educators debated what to call the new field and settled on "home economics" in 1899. Chemist Ellen Swallow Richards, one of its pioneers, founded the American Home Economics Association in 1909.
In the United States, federal laws such as the Smith-Lever Act of 1914 and the Smith-Hughes Act of 1917 helped fund vocational teaching, including homemaking. For decades the subject was a normal part of secondary school, but it was usually aimed at girls and built around the assumption that they would run homes while boys learned trades.
That gendered history is a big reason the subject fell out of favour. In 1994 the professional body renamed the field family and consumer sciences to show it covered far more than housework. Even so, enrolment fell: there were about 3.5 million secondary students in such courses in 2012, a 38 percent drop over a decade, although the association has since reported renewed growth. In England, the old GCSE was replaced in 2015 by Food Preparation and Nutrition, which focuses more on food than on money.
What the research says about cooking skills
The health argument for teaching food skills is serious. In a 2010 commentary in the journal JAMA, nutrition researchers Alice Lichtenstein and David Ludwig called for home economics to return, citing rising childhood obesity and poor diet quality among teenagers. They wrote that "instruction in basic food preparation and meal planning skills needs to be part of any long-term solution".
It is worth being precise here. That piece was an opinion article by experts, not a study, so it cannot prove on its own that people without cooking skills eat worse. Long-term research does point in the same direction, though. Project EAT, a University of Minnesota study that followed more than 1,300 young people from their teens into their late twenties, found that young adults who prepared food more often went on to eat more fruit and vegetables and less fast food and fewer sugary drinks around five years later.
Cooking at 15 to 18 showed few links with later diet, which suggests that skills taught at school matter most when young people then get regular chances to use them as they start living independently.
Money skills matter just as much
Cooking is only half of the case. Many young adults sign their first lease, take out their first loan or receive their first credit card offer with little idea of how interest, fees or tax withholding work. Mistakes made at that stage, such as missed payments or expensive short-term borrowing, can follow someone for years.
A life skills course can make these ideas concrete. Instead of abstract percentages, students can compare two phone contracts, calculate the real cost of buying something on credit and practise building a monthly budget from a realistic starting salary. These are exactly the kinds of exercises Harvey says surprise her students.
Time management belongs on the list as well. Learning how to plan a week, meet deadlines and balance work with rest is useful in every career, and it is rarely taught directly. You can find a few practical ideas in our guide to boosting your productivity.
Common objections, answered
"There is no room in the timetable." A modest course does not need to push aside maths, science or languages. Many of these skills reinforce them: budgeting is applied maths, and reading a contract is applied literacy.
"Parents should teach this at home." Ideally, yes. In practice, as Harvey pointed out, many parents cannot, and relying on families alone means children from stretched households start adult life furthest behind.
"It is a soft subject." Running a household budget, feeding yourself well on limited money and managing your time are difficult. Students who learn them early may face fewer stressful surprises later.
"It is old-fashioned and sexist." The old model often was. A modern version taught to every student, regardless of gender, is the opposite: it assumes everyone will need to look after themselves.
What a modern life skills class could include
- Cooking basics: planning a week of simple meals, food safety, comparing unit prices and cooking on a budget.
- Personal finance: reading a payslip, understanding tax, building a budget, saving, credit scores and the true cost of borrowing.
- Paperwork: reading a tenancy agreement or a bill, spotting deadlines and charges, and knowing where to get help.
- Home care: simple repairs, laundry, cleaning safely and knowing when to call a professional.
- Time and stress management: planning, prioritising and recognising when to ask for support.
Lessons work best when built around real tasks. A student might plan and cook a meal for four on a fixed budget, or check a sample bill for mistakes. Those small, concrete wins are what make the knowledge stick when it is needed for real.
Sources: Marti Harvey, The Dallas Morning News, 2018; Lichtenstein and Ludwig, "Bring Back Home Economics Education", JAMA, 2010; Laska et al., Project EAT food preparation study, Public Health Nutrition; Home economics, Wikipedia.
COMMENTS