Remembering Senior Homemaking

[sugarplumkitty]

I was responding to a friend considering changing jobs to one that paid less but had benefits her current job didn't have. It tweaked a memory for me.

I graduated from high school way back in 1973. All girls were required to take senior homemaking to graduate back then. I'm not sure if there was an equivalent course for the boys, but if there was it was probably shop or something.

Do any schools still have senior homemaking? The room was cool. It had rows of mini-kitchen modules each with a stove, dishwasher, sink and counter. We learned how to cook simple meals, how to plan a balanced diet, how to properly clean up and use those dishwashers. My mom had taught me incorrectly. She still loads her dishwasher with the eating parts of utensils up "so soap and water can get to them better." In school we were taught to put the handle up so when we unload the dishwasher, the clean eating ends weren't touched by human hands. We learned how to sew buttons and mend loose seams.

We learned the current percentages of our wages to assign to rent, utilities, food, clothes and entertainment. Never spend more than 1/3 of your take home pay on housing, she taught us. Hahaha! We'd be on the street if we stuck to that. That's not possible today. The dollar value of job benefits could be calculated as a percentage of our pay. I'm pretty sure it was also 1/3, but now I'm beginning to wonder if I'm confused about that. We learned how to write a check and balance a checkbook.

I'll never forget the day the planned parenthood lady came in and passed all the birth control gadgets around for us to feel. We all had trouble handling the condom, well most of us did. The others were probably pretending. Somehow the diaphram and IUD's were less icky. The lady was wearing dangly earrings we didn't pay much attention to until she told us they were IUD's! LOL This was a few years before the Dalkion Shield infections knocked the IUD off the top of the "best contraception" stack. It was also several years before AIDS surfaced, but there were pictures and dire warnings about syphilis and gonorrhea. If they warned about herpes, I don't remember.

Did you take senior homemaking? I'd love to know your memories from it if you did!

Comments

[alessandrastarr.livejournal.com]

At my high school there isn't any kind of homemaking class, senior or otherwise. But I wonder if a mid-western high school might still have something similar, my father's high school in Missouri still has ovens in one of it's classrooms, but I don't know if they are used.

[falls2climb.livejournal.com]

I took home ec in middle school and learned to sew a drawstring bag and cook something involving eggs and hamburger buns. I don't think it taught me anything very useful.

All freshmen in my school system take "teen living" for six weeks and learn some basic skills along those lines, although I don't think it specifically covers cooking. It's more of a sex ed/life skills class.

[aikoheiwa.livejournal.com]

I wish they had offered something that detailed back in highschool. The closest equivalent we had was home economics. I think you learned how to make an apron and bake bread and that was pretty much it. To me, it sounded like a waste of an hour when I could take something like Japanese or Spanish. It also wasn't required, it was considered an elective.

[gleefulfishy.livejournal.com]

Sex?! In my public highschool sex was never mentioned, officially. Actually in Catholic Middle School we had sex ed both 7th and 8th grade. We did have Senior Home Ec. We had the kitchens. We learned to follow a pattern and use a sewing machine. We did the check writing exercises. We might have had advice on how much of our income to use on what, but it was so far from reality at that time it was hard to grasp. I enjoyed the sewing most.

[sugarplumkitty.livejournal.com]

I guess at a Catholic school they'd avoid any mention of contraception. :)

[kitfoxx.livejournal.com]

We learned how to cook simple meals, how to plan a balanced diet, how to properly clean up and use those dishwashers. My mom had taught me incorrectly. She still loads her dishwasher with the eating parts of utensils up "so soap and water can get to them better." In school we were taught to put the handle up so when we unload the dishwasher, the clean eating ends weren't touched by human hands.

Quick, someone give Alan a crash course on how to load a dishwasher!

He always wants to put handle-side down. And he also wants to run it before it's completely full. Waste of water, soap, and electricity!

I think I took a 1-semester long home ec course. But I dont' think it was mandatory. It must not have been, because segregating between girls and boys wouldn't have been allowed, and there were only a few boys. I don't remember much about it. Not my bag of chips.

[sugarplumkitty.livejournal.com]

You could always use the phrase I use with Eric. Sweetly explain that it's important to you for hygenic reasons and, "Please humor me and do it my way!"

The skills come in handy whether you live by yourself or get married and run a house. I'm glad they were still teaching a variation of it when you were in school. :)

[honeyswtrose.livejournal.com]

We had the class.. boys and girls were required to take it..
Checkbook balancing, cooking, sewing, also some woodworking, fixing things, etc... And sex ed. But I don't remember them talking about Birth control.. just the diseases.

[sugarplumkitty.livejournal.com]

I guess my teacher & school were progressive!

[amusingmuse.livejournal.com]

The junior high I went to in Illinois Home Ec was mandatory. We made a simple apron, and I learned how to double boil. The sex ed part only consisted of pictures of the bacterias which caused the disease and I remember the teacher squirming. It was also the first year, they let boys take the class if they wanted, versus shop. We had one boy there. He was a grinning flirt with all the pretty girls. He got kicked over to shop during the sex ed part.

Then we moved to Missouri and the Junior High there had Home Ec, but it wasn't mandatory so I didn't take it.

[jedi-bunny.livejournal.com]

They called the class "consumer ed" and you take a test to get out of it. Since I had a full schedule and taking it meant dropping my history class (I was planning to be a history major at that point), the test was the only way to go. I actually scored the highest of anyone in my class and second highest in school history (I missed like 2 questions I think). It all seemed so common sense to me but then again, my mom had me balancing her checkbook in 3rd grade.

My school also offered a home ec class with the ovens and things and they taught cookng and baking and all the garbage I felt was useless. I took shop instead and learned how to take apart and fix a lawn mower engine and rebuild, from the ground up, a 1970 VW Squareback. Far more relevant to my daily exsistance :)

~hop~

[sugarplumkitty.livejournal.com]

lol, I would have taken something like that if it had been available! I always liked puttering around with Dad more than cleaning house.

[finickynarcane.livejournal.com]

I don't think it was senior homemaking but at some time I flunked sewing and was allowed to crochet the way I had already been doing it for years by then.

[sugarplumkitty.livejournal.com]

YOU? You flunked sewing???? That's hard to believe after being your elf and seeing your creations! :)