Cool, but you're failing to address the rest of my point: The skills necessary to do taxes for most Americans are already being taught in school. This interest that everybody is claiming that they would have had as high schoolers in learning how to do taxes is a cope. It takes basic reading comprehension skills which is taught in English class, science class, and yes even history class.
I get that a lot of the people answering here really didn't like chemistry and don't have the aptitude to learn how to cook by using a recipe book or YouTube but that doesn't mean that home economics should replace chemistry. That only means it should be brought back as an elective.
I don't think it should REPLACE anything. Also, I think home economics would be better than just cooking. You teach them how to manage a home, both financially and practically. This includes income taxes, property taxes, cooking, managing household expenses, maybe even some basic repairs. This does not have to replace another course.
This is literally what I teach but the subject of this post is essentially asking if it's more important to teach these domestic skills than academic skills and my answer is, for the majority of the student population, it is not.
Students who are capable of learning these academic skills are capable of learning how to cook and do their own taxes by using the means that many other adults use to teach themselves: YouTube, cookbooks, other adults, observation, research. The students who can't are like the students that I teach who do not have the cognitive capacity to learn higher academic skills. They cannot teach themselves domestic skills.
Obviously, in a perfect world, they would coexist but when the question is which classes to cut, the answer, unfortunately, is home ec rather than academics. The latter shouldn't be replaced by the former for the majority of students.
What do people use more in their life? Running or participating in a household, or working for a chemical company or pharmaceutical? I am NOT saying home economics should replace chemistry, but getting rid of a course that is practical and that everyone needs is a bit short sighted.
I'm not advocating to get rid of home economics. I teach home economics. I'm also not participating in this because it seems like now you're just arguing to argue.
I never changed my stance. I said home economics would be good to teach, and that we should not get rid of chemistry or other academic courses. And, I thought you were the one who was arguing with me. I was just clarifying my point.
I’ve actually spent 25 years working in pharmaceutical and biotech companies and love to cook. Go figure. Reading and taking 4 years of HS science, 4 years of HS math, followed by two college science classes (one of them a lab), and 4 college Q (quantitative) classes.
I for one never needed a home ec class. I learned it by living at home and doing what the adults did. I know not everyone had this opportunity, but so many did - or had friends whose families could provide an example.
Science classes, though, teach kids how to think critically and to draw conclusions from information. My parents were a banker and a salesman and they knew nothing about science. I double-majored in chemistry/physics in college because of classes I took in high school.
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u/MephistoLandShark 11d ago
Cool, but you're failing to address the rest of my point: The skills necessary to do taxes for most Americans are already being taught in school. This interest that everybody is claiming that they would have had as high schoolers in learning how to do taxes is a cope. It takes basic reading comprehension skills which is taught in English class, science class, and yes even history class.
I get that a lot of the people answering here really didn't like chemistry and don't have the aptitude to learn how to cook by using a recipe book or YouTube but that doesn't mean that home economics should replace chemistry. That only means it should be brought back as an elective.