Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's
Speaker 2: Chuck and it's us today. We've got our aprons on,
Speaker 2: we have our spectulism in hand. We've been spanking each
Speaker 2: other with them, and it's time to go to class
Speaker 2: the stuff you should know.
Speaker 3: Hey, everybody, just so you know, there was construction happening
Speaker 3: next door. So if you hear a saw or a
Speaker 3: hammer banging, it's not me.
Speaker 2: No, it's not Chuck.
Speaker 3: Sometimes you just got to live with the sounds of life.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean we recorded for a while and every
Speaker 2: time we recorded, a fire truck would go by, like
Speaker 2: soccer do you remember.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Yeah, in the old Buckhead office it was I
Speaker 3: think we were near a fire station.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but it was like the exact same time. It
Speaker 2: was really bizarre.
Speaker 3: It was the radio lab, guys pulling fire alarms all
Speaker 3: over it. Leaf.
Speaker 2: So, Chuck, we're talking about homec today. Did you ever
Speaker 2: take a home mech class?
Speaker 3: I sure did, buddy, how about you?
Speaker 2: I did. I have very vague recollections of it. I
Speaker 2: remember the room and everything, but I don't remember anything
Speaker 2: I did. It's also possible I'm conflating it with an
Speaker 2: episode of Saved by the Bell.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I took it. You know, we had the
Speaker 3: full kitchen situation in our high school back then, and
Speaker 3: I took it because I don't know, I think I
Speaker 3: needed an elective and you know, I knew their beekot
Speaker 3: girls in there. And yeah, maybe I had a friend
Speaker 3: or two that took it. Was probably my reasoning.
Speaker 2: I could see that. I think both of us are
Speaker 2: the types of dudes who would not have been like, OK,
Speaker 2: I'm a boy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, of course not there. And there were plenty
Speaker 3: of dudes in the class.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, because gen X is enlightened, that's right. The
Speaker 2: thing is, we were really in the minority, though all
Speaker 2: the dudes in your class were in the minority. That
Speaker 2: from what I read, that was pretty uncommon, even even
Speaker 2: at that time. And we were among like the last
Speaker 2: age group who could elect for homech. Yeah, pretty much
Speaker 2: across the country like this was a time. This was
Speaker 2: about the end of the time where you could find
Speaker 2: a home MECH classroom and most high schools are middle schools.
Speaker 2: But that is not the case anymore. Although it's still around,
Speaker 2: it's just not everywhere like it used to be.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and in fact, I can confirm when I went
Speaker 3: back to my high school a couple of years ago,
Speaker 3: when they had me back to talk to students as
Speaker 3: a you know, interesting professional, I remember that. Yeah, it
Speaker 3: was fun. I took a walk around and I even
Speaker 3: remember going by where the homech room was and it
Speaker 3: was definitely not the kitchen anymore.
Speaker 2: No, I remember you told me they filled in all
Speaker 2: the sinks with cement.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's called the cement class.
Speaker 2: So classic get really boring, really fast.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we should probably say homechis stands for home economics,
Speaker 3: and just in case that's foreign to your tongue.
Speaker 2: True, true, I understand that it's called homechir home economics
Speaker 2: in Australia, and I think maybe Canada and in the
Speaker 2: UK they call it food sciences. I think, yeah, it's
Speaker 2: all the same thing. And essentially what it is for
Speaker 2: those of you who don't know, it was a class
Speaker 2: in high school where you would learn basic life skills
Speaker 2: that had a lot to do with being at home.
Speaker 2: You would learn sewing, you would learn to bake a cake.
Speaker 2: As time wore on, you would learn to take care
Speaker 2: of a child, maybe learned to balance a checkbook, just
Speaker 2: basic life skills as a class in high school or
Speaker 2: middle school. And that is it turns out I didn't
Speaker 2: quite realize the extent of home ec one little slice
Speaker 2: of the whole home ec pie, which is delicious because
Speaker 2: it was made by home economists and there's a whole
Speaker 2: history to it and it's actually pretty feminists in nature too.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, as we'll see, there was a bit
Speaker 3: of a push pull at a certain time and which
Speaker 3: way both feminism would that have.
Speaker 2: Been the dose?
Speaker 3: The dose? Yeah, where you know, there were certain people
Speaker 3: saying like, no, this is you know, you shouldn't be
Speaker 3: teaching women to stay at home and stay in the kitchen,
Speaker 3: and other people were like, we're not teaching them, saying
Speaker 3: you have to do that, but we're saying, you know,
Speaker 3: there are viable careers that you can gain in you know,
Speaker 3: industrial engineering and statistics. And as we'll see, you know,
Speaker 3: plenty of science careers came out of home economics and
Speaker 3: food science because it is a science.
Speaker 2: Right, and that was actually one of the initial points
Speaker 2: of it. But if you were a homech proponent and
Speaker 2: you were arguing with a feminist, you might start by saying,
Speaker 2: let me give you a little picture of what life
Speaker 2: used to be like for the average woman in the
Speaker 2: United States before we came along, and you would start
Speaker 2: in about the nineteenth century, they run the turn of it,
Speaker 2: so they're still wearing tri cornered hats, but they were
Speaker 2: looking forward to trains. And if you were a farm
Speaker 2: woman at this time, you worked yourself to the bone.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean what we know as homeck was not
Speaker 3: early homech because early homech was like you might have
Speaker 3: seven or eight kids that all worked on the farm,
Speaker 3: and you might have farm hands that you also have
Speaker 3: to kind of care for and feed. So you're feeding
Speaker 3: these huge families from stuff that you're growing probably on
Speaker 3: your land and processing and canning and churning butter, and
Speaker 3: you're handmaking clothes and doing laundry by hand, and it's
Speaker 3: a lot.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And like you would say, that's not even home economics,
Speaker 2: that's just home terribleness, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: When home economics came along, it was based on this
Speaker 2: idea that, Okay, all of these people are working really hard.
Speaker 2: There has to be ways to improve this to make
Speaker 2: it more efficient.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I suspect it. I'm pretty sure we talked about it
Speaker 2: that this all grew out of tailorism, that obsession with
Speaker 2: getting things as efficient as possible. And I think that
Speaker 2: that kind of grew out of that same vein. And
Speaker 2: there were actually a few things that and it came
Speaker 2: together to make the fertile soil that home grew from.
Speaker 2: One of them, the big one was literacy started to
Speaker 2: spread in the mid nineteenth century. And so when literacy spreads,
Speaker 2: you got more books and home like domestic tips and
Speaker 2: householding was a whole genre of books, so were cookbooks.
Speaker 2: And then part and parcel of that was this kind
Speaker 2: of the very beginnings of this idea that maybe women
Speaker 2: can be educated too, but just in women.
Speaker 3: Stuff, Yeah, for sure. And you know, the books were
Speaker 3: important because previous to that, it was everything was sort
Speaker 3: of handed down from you know, parent to child as
Speaker 3: far as any kind of wisdom goes about how to
Speaker 3: do anything right. So if you had books and you
Speaker 3: had classes, you didn't depend on like your grandmother necessarily
Speaker 3: being good at, you know, baking a cake or something
Speaker 3: like that.
Speaker 2: Like but if your grandmother was a dipstick, right, yeah, exactly,
Speaker 2: So cooking schools also emerged, and this was important because
Speaker 2: your grandmother might also in addition to being a dipstick
Speaker 2: might not have been that great of a cook. Now
Speaker 2: there's a place you can go to learn to cook
Speaker 2: well and nutritiously. That was a big one too. And
Speaker 2: then also this was a new career path that a
Speaker 2: woman could take to become a cook and like say,
Speaker 2: a wealthy household, so they were training now people to
Speaker 2: work outside of the house doing domestic.
Speaker 3: Stuff, yeah, for sure. And then one of the biggest
Speaker 3: ones was the Morile Act of eighteen sixty two, and
Speaker 3: that's when land grant colleges were established, and all of
Speaker 3: a sudden there were schools that said, hey, maybe we
Speaker 3: should offer you know, it was kind of the beginnings
Speaker 3: of trade schools, like, you know, teach people how to
Speaker 3: work in agriculture and industry and things like that and
Speaker 3: not necessarily just sit around with your nose in the
Speaker 3: air of reading the classics exactly.
Speaker 2: And women were open or these colleges were open to
Speaker 2: women as well too. So these three things come together.
Speaker 2: And one of the other reasons that really made homemech
Speaker 2: kind of come to life start sprouting from that fertile
Speaker 2: soil was the transition that America was going through with industrialization.
Speaker 2: All of a sudden, you weren't on the farm with
Speaker 2: your mother and grandmother who were telling you how to
Speaker 2: do things, like you were in the city now surrounded
Speaker 2: by people you've not really ever met before, with a
Speaker 2: husband who now works in the factory rather than a farm,
Speaker 2: and you're like, I have no idea what I'm doing.
Speaker 2: And so Homech kind of came in to fill that
Speaker 2: break that had happened, that intergenerational passage of knowledge from
Speaker 2: mother to daughter. Homech said, Hey, forget mothers. We're going
Speaker 2: to tell you how to do this, and we're going
Speaker 2: to tell you how to do it better. They didn't
Speaker 2: really say forget mothers. That wasn't the sentiment. That was
Speaker 2: me being a smart alec.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you know, initially it was not in high school.
Speaker 3: It was a college level thing. And there's a PhD
Speaker 3: named Nancy Darling who kind of backs up this idea
Speaker 3: that it was a feminist movement to begin with with
Speaker 3: this quote she said, it developed that is from something radical,
Speaker 3: the idea that the traditional work of women is important, meaningful,
Speaker 3: and here's the key for me, economically significant. And it
Speaker 3: was economics. They didn't just call it that to make
Speaker 3: it seem fancy. The running of a household is big
Speaker 3: time economics, and if you're not good at that, as
Speaker 3: we'll see with younger generations, it can spell trouble for sure.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yeah, there's a whole wash out that's happened
Speaker 2: that will cover for sure. But one of the people
Speaker 2: that you have to tip your top hat to is
Speaker 2: Ellen Swallow Richards, who's probably the most important person in
Speaker 2: the history or the early history at least of home economics.
Speaker 2: Now let's just say it, the entire history of home economics.
Speaker 2: She was a pretty impressive sort. She studied chemistry. She
Speaker 2: got a bachelor's and a master's from Vassar and then
Speaker 2: became the first woman to get a degree from MIT,
Speaker 2: and then became the first woman instructor at MIT and
Speaker 2: set up a sanitary chemistry lab that was for women only.
Speaker 2: And this was not really domestic work. It was figuring
Speaker 2: out water quality and air quality tests like essentially the
Speaker 2: foundations of environmental protection and consumer protection too. That's what
Speaker 2: this lab was doing. And the reason why you associated
Speaker 2: with homec is because one of the reasons homech existed. Also,
Speaker 2: you said that it started at the college level was
Speaker 2: as a way for women, almost a back door a
Speaker 2: workaround a loophole for women to become scientists. It was
Speaker 2: okay as long as there was enough of a whiff
Speaker 2: of women's work like clean water, that's woman's work that
Speaker 2: academia could put up with it. That was one of
Speaker 2: the big ways homech started funneling women into education and
Speaker 2: into the sciences.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean she was trying to improve the United States,
Speaker 3: and she thought, and she was right on the money.
Speaker 3: She was like, if I'm going to try to improve
Speaker 3: you know, the United States and civilization, then I have
Speaker 3: to start at what she considered. And you know, I
Speaker 3: think most people agree is the basic unit, which is
Speaker 3: a family, the family unit. And if I can each
Speaker 3: if I can get each household one at a time
Speaker 3: to practice you know, more efficient practices, more sanitary practices,
Speaker 3: safer practices, you know where you're not, you know, burning
Speaker 3: kitchens down and things like that, then it'll you know,
Speaker 3: all boats will rise. And it started to become a movement.
Speaker 3: And you know, this is like the late eighteen hundreds,
Speaker 3: early nineteen hundreds.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and remember also there was a big emphasis on
Speaker 2: this work is important, Like this is unpaid labor, but
Speaker 2: it produces a lot of dividends. For any family, and
Speaker 2: hence building upward for civilization, for a nation, civilization all that. So,
Speaker 2: like you said, this is starting to become a movement.
Speaker 2: And they had a series of conferences called the Lake
Speaker 2: Plastid Conferences starting right at the turn of the century,
Speaker 2: and at one of these meetings they chose the term
Speaker 2: home economics, like you said, to basically point out not
Speaker 2: to kind of latch their field on economics, to point
Speaker 2: out that domestic work was a huge part of economics,
Speaker 2: and up to this point economists had basically just been
Speaker 2: looking at production, they weren't looking at the demand side.
Speaker 2: And one of the things HOMECH introduced was the idea
Speaker 2: of consumer sciences, like studying consumption as well as part
Speaker 2: of the larger economy, which is you can't do economics
Speaker 2: without that now, but that's what one of the things
Speaker 2: HOMECH introduced.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and they came up with the name homek at
Speaker 3: one of those conferences after debating domestic science and they said,
Speaker 3: now that that doesn't sound like it's studying consumerism. That's
Speaker 3: a big part of this. I think household arts was
Speaker 3: put forward and they said, no, that sounds too artsy,
Speaker 3: fartsy and not academic. Enough, so they landed on home
Speaker 3: economics and an ironic twist that kind of takes it
Speaker 3: back home because the words or economics comes from I
Speaker 3: love this word oiknoymia oikonomia. I inserted an extra either,
Speaker 3: which is ancient Greek for household management. So there you
Speaker 3: have it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they dropped the old timing mike at this point.
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure. And then in nineteen oh eight, at
Speaker 3: that same conference, the Lake Placid Conference, they founded the
Speaker 3: American Home Economics Association. Really got the ball rolling, and
Speaker 3: then shortly after, in nineteen seventeen, the Hughes Act started
Speaker 3: funding vocational education like shop class and homech and it
Speaker 3: was off to the races.
Speaker 2: Yep. So you want to take a break and come
Speaker 2: back and talk about how, like you said, home X
Speaker 2: starts to take off.
Speaker 3: Let's do it.
Speaker 1: Want to learn about a terrors sort and college arridactyl,
Speaker 1: how to take a perfect is gone?
Speaker 3: That's a little hunt the Lizzie Borderer.
Speaker 2: Word up, Jerry. Okay. So when we left off, homech
Speaker 2: was starting to take off, and by the nineteen twenties,
Speaker 2: the USDA, the Department of Agriculture, had created the Bureau
Speaker 2: of Home economics, and when you create a bureau dedicated
Speaker 2: to a new field, that's that's when the field has arrived.
Speaker 2: If you're a band and weird Al has done a
Speaker 2: cover of your song, that's how you know you've arrived.
Speaker 2: If you're a field of study and someone opens a
Speaker 2: bureau dedicated to it, that's how you know your field arrived.
Speaker 2: But it became the country's biggest employer of women's scientists,
Speaker 2: which is pretty significant at the time.
Speaker 3: That's right. Their mission, of course, was education, and it
Speaker 3: wasn't just you know, how to cook obviously, it was
Speaker 3: meal planning, it was budgeting. There was a lot of
Speaker 3: science behind it because they got into you know, nutritional
Speaker 3: values like in any you know, nutritional tag that you read,
Speaker 3: and in fact, any like clothing tag that you read.
Speaker 3: I'll go ahead and get ahead of that one. That
Speaker 3: all was born out of the science of this new
Speaker 3: bureau that was founded. They were testing mildew proofing for fabrics.
Speaker 3: They were servicing military service members, like you know, trying
Speaker 3: to come up with better things for the US military
Speaker 3: to eat, and of course school lunch programs all over
Speaker 3: the country were dependent on the science.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is where the square pizza was invented.
Speaker 3: I suspect they should have a monument to that.
Speaker 2: Well, one of the I agree one of the other
Speaker 2: things about that though, in addition to the square pizza,
Speaker 2: the square pizza is actually an excellent example of this pizza.
Speaker 2: It comes from Italy, and if you've ever seen an
Speaker 2: actual like Neapolitan pizza, it does not resemble the square pizza.
Speaker 2: The square pizza at lunch is the Midwestern americanized, much
Speaker 2: blander version of it, although I agree with you it's
Speaker 2: quite good. And this is where American food as we
Speaker 2: think of it today was founded. All the ethnic food
Speaker 2: got pushed out as the immigrants were kind of brought
Speaker 2: into the home ech world, and that bland Midwestern American
Speaker 2: food took over. That's where that came from.
Speaker 3: And this also coincided with the birth of radio that
Speaker 3: we seems like we've talked a lot about that lately.
Speaker 3: But because of that, of course you're going to have
Speaker 3: shows on the radio about this kind of thing. The
Speaker 3: Bureau of Home Economics in the twenties had a show
Speaker 3: called Housekeeper's Chat that ran for a couple of decades.
Speaker 3: Started in nineteen twenty six. Not Uncle Sam, but Aunt
Speaker 3: Sammy was the host of that one, or I guess
Speaker 3: not the host, but it featured her and she would
Speaker 3: have like household tips and recipes and stuff like that.
Speaker 3: A lot of the brands got in the game, General
Speaker 3: Mills and Betty Crocker Cooking School of the Air. You know,
Speaker 3: it's another radio show sponsored by General Mills. And again
Speaker 3: the Bureau was like helping to get all of these
Speaker 3: things launched on the airwaves.
Speaker 2: One of the other examples of what the Bureau of
Speaker 2: Home Economics was doing that had a huge sweeping impact
Speaker 2: in addition to founding like the mass produced food movement,
Speaker 2: was they came up with the poverty line. In fact,
Speaker 2: Molly or Shansky did. She was a statistician who studied
Speaker 2: how much a house spent to come up with a
Speaker 2: basic nutritious diet that could keep you alive. They multiplied
Speaker 2: that by three and they came up with the federal
Speaker 2: poverty line that's still in use today.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and if you've ever seen, you know, astronauts eating
Speaker 3: lasagna out of a what looks like a toothpaste tube
Speaker 3: or something like that, you can thank Home Economics and
Speaker 3: Science for that. Because a woman named Bee Finkelstein, great name,
Speaker 3: she was getting food together for the very first astronauts
Speaker 3: in the Mercury Project, which is pretty great, that's right.
Speaker 2: And then one of the other things that struck me
Speaker 2: too that I didn't realize was that a lot of
Speaker 2: those recipes that you find on like a food label.
Speaker 2: One of the most famous ones is Campbell's Cream and
Speaker 2: Mushroom soup labels have a cream bean casserole recipe, and
Speaker 2: that was created by a home economist who worked for Campbell's,
Speaker 2: Dorcas Riley, And she's a good example of what was
Speaker 2: happening at this time. Starting in the twenties thirty four
Speaker 2: and continuing on, these companies like General Mills and Campbell's
Speaker 2: were setting up home economics departments, and one of the
Speaker 2: things that these home economists were being paid to do
Speaker 2: was to figure out new uses for the products made
Speaker 2: by the companies they worked for so that people would
Speaker 2: buy more of that stuff. And then they put those
Speaker 2: recipes on the label.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean, if you love rice Krispy Treats, you
Speaker 3: can thank the home economics program and Matilligens and Mildred
Speaker 3: Day at Kellogg's there for that and Chex Mix. This
Speaker 3: wasn't a sort of an internal team. But chex Mix
Speaker 3: was actually a contest and it was in I believe
Speaker 3: the nineteen fifty when they just had a contest like
Speaker 3: what can you do with check Cereal? And someone submitted
Speaker 3: chex Mix, and like it's the same recipe basically that
Speaker 3: everyone enjoys today, Like all of these.
Speaker 2: Are did your family make chex mix around the holidays?
Speaker 3: But not a time that Emily's family really did though,
Speaker 3: so she still makes you know, that same recipe, that
Speaker 3: chex mix recipe.
Speaker 2: It must be so high. Oh then because my family
Speaker 2: did as well. Yeah, but that's a good example of
Speaker 2: how like these companies farmed out the task of coming
Speaker 2: up with stuff because homech had become so widespread, the
Speaker 2: average homemaker out there could do the same thing in
Speaker 2: a lot of ways that some of the homech workers
Speaker 2: working for the company could do too. I think that's
Speaker 2: pretty neat.
Speaker 3: Talk about efficiencies, like if you're baking a cake from scratch,
Speaker 3: or making pancakes or something like that, or a gravy
Speaker 3: from scratch. There were women in homech's homeck departments at
Speaker 3: companies saying like, hey, we can make this. You know,
Speaker 3: there's a lot to do, so what if it if
Speaker 3: this stuff was all kind of pre mixed in a
Speaker 3: box and you could sell them like well, I was
Speaker 3: about to say, like hotcakes, and they did. And you
Speaker 3: know that these were things that were real time savers
Speaker 3: in the kitchen.
Speaker 2: For sure, And that was the point remember of homech
Speaker 2: is saving time, being more efficient. And then as food
Speaker 2: companies were concerned making tons of money off of this
Speaker 2: stuff too, So that's kind of going on in the
Speaker 2: corporate world the government world. Simultaneously, there's that whole thread
Speaker 2: of homech being taught in high school in middle school,
Speaker 2: and there was a time in the twentieth century up
Speaker 2: into the eighties and nineties, and I'm sure beyond again.
Speaker 2: These these classes are still out there, but nothing like
Speaker 2: they used to be, where you could go into a
Speaker 2: high school or middle school and there was a simulated
Speaker 2: kitchen in one of the rooms with a bunch of
Speaker 2: different stoves and ovens and refrigerators, and people would be
Speaker 2: in there cooking and learning to sew, and maybe taking
Speaker 2: care of a fake baby and in some cases taking
Speaker 2: care of a real baby too, because this stuff got
Speaker 2: intense sometimes.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the baby thing. I don't remember our high school
Speaker 3: class ever, delving into that. I do remember the egg babies,
Speaker 3: like where you would I never had to take part,
Speaker 3: but I saw other kids in school carrying around the
Speaker 3: egg and yeah, sort of in the seventies and eighties,
Speaker 3: they would give you a raw egg, you know, in
Speaker 3: the shell, and because some people will be like what
Speaker 3: the heck is he even talking about, they would give
Speaker 3: you an egg. And the whole idea was you have
Speaker 3: to care for that egg without breaking it for a
Speaker 3: couple of weeks. You got to carry this thing around.
Speaker 3: It sounds easy just to not get that egg broken,
Speaker 3: but it's really not. You know, you have to really
Speaker 3: think ahead about everything. And that's the whole idea, is
Speaker 3: that when you have a baby, you can't just make
Speaker 3: decisions on the spur of the moment. You have to
Speaker 3: kind of pre plan everything. And the egg came along
Speaker 3: after they'd used real babies from orphanages.
Speaker 2: Yeah, apparently it's some of the colleges that were teaching
Speaker 2: home they would borrow babies from orphanages for the students
Speaker 2: to just basically practice on. And apparently there's a writer,
Speaker 2: a historian named Danielle Drellinger who wrote a book The
Speaker 2: Secret History of Home economics, And she said that for
Speaker 2: adoptive parents who would go to a foster home, they'd
Speaker 2: show up and be like, you got any one of
Speaker 2: them babies that's been in the home economic classic? Yeah, man,
Speaker 2: because the reasoning is, these babies spent some of their
Speaker 2: earliest days being cared for just with complete attention and
Speaker 2: care by women who were working in like the cutting
Speaker 2: edge of child rearing, so they were much more desirable
Speaker 2: than the non homech babies.
Speaker 3: It turns out, yeah, for sure. I mean before I
Speaker 3: even read that part of this, I was thinking in
Speaker 3: my head, like, oh man, you want that baby for sure?
Speaker 2: For sure. Apparently those eggs would get on custodian's nerves
Speaker 2: enough that they switched to flour or sugar, which also
Speaker 2: had the added benefit of heft. And I saw in
Speaker 2: a like some educational magazine I can't remember, but they
Speaker 2: would put pantyhose of different colors to simulate multicultural skin
Speaker 2: tones over the flower sugar, and that sometimes if you forgot,
Speaker 2: like your kid, whether it was an egg or a
Speaker 2: sack of flower or something in your locker, you might
Speaker 2: be forced to like write a paper on child abuse
Speaker 2: or something like that. So the whole point was to
Speaker 2: just teach high school kids you don't want to have
Speaker 2: a baby at this period in your life. Maybe ever,
Speaker 2: like if the class was hard enough, maybe they're like,
Speaker 2: I'm never having a kid, but certainly not through my
Speaker 2: teen years. That was the point.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's kind of funny. I think they kind of
Speaker 3: sold it to you as like, here, it'll teach you
Speaker 3: like how to kind of care for a baby and
Speaker 3: how much goes into that. But what they were really
Speaker 3: saying is police don't have sex kind of kind well,
Speaker 3: I mean one of them in the nineties they came
Speaker 3: along with a more of a like a baby simulator.
Speaker 3: It was called Baby Think it Over. I mean they've
Speaker 3: flat out seted it that point. Yeah, Like I think
Speaker 3: we all know what think it over means.
Speaker 2: Sure, And I don't know if it worked or not,
Speaker 2: but it was a great attempt at the very least
Speaker 2: for sure. So by the middle of the twentieth century,
Speaker 2: I think nineteen fifty nine, half of all American girls,
Speaker 2: half of all the girls in America were taking home
Speaker 2: mech courses in school. And then just suddenly it just
Speaker 2: dried up. It wasn't like a faucet got turned off
Speaker 2: or a light switch was turned. But it started to
Speaker 2: go downhill pretty fast in about the early sixties. And
Speaker 2: let's take a break and we'll come back and talk
Speaker 2: about where Homech went after.
Speaker 1: Well, the break, I want to learn about a terrors
Speaker 1: ort in college, horedactyl, how to take a bird, a
Speaker 1: rectal gink is gone, that's a little.
Speaker 3: Hunt, the Lizzie everything, joh.
Speaker 2: S word up, Jerry.
Speaker 3: All right, So Homeck is on the decline. And there's
Speaker 3: a bunch of reasons for this that kind of all
Speaker 3: kind of steamrolled together at a certain point. But one
Speaker 3: of the biggest ones was when the United States really
Speaker 3: got into standardized testing, which came along mostly with the
Speaker 3: No Child Left Behind Act, Because all of a sudden,
Speaker 3: a school's funding was tied to test scores. And if
Speaker 3: there aren't any Homech questions on these tests and the
Speaker 3: testing is tied to funding, then what's the point of
Speaker 3: even teaching that stuff. I don't agree with that, obviously,
Speaker 3: but that was sort of the thought, and so a
Speaker 3: lot of those classes started to just slowly go away.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and there was an article on father Lee written
Speaker 2: by a guy named Cameron LeBlanc, and he traced it
Speaker 2: back even Further, he traced the origin of where the
Speaker 2: emphasis on STEM came from the eighties and the Vocational
Speaker 2: and Technical Education Act that Ronald Reagan signed, where it said,
Speaker 2: cater's colleges, you're no longer responsible for figuring out what
Speaker 2: we want to teach our kids. We're going to hand
Speaker 2: this over to business and industry so they can tell
Speaker 2: us what they want us to teach, so that we
Speaker 2: can basically train workers. That was the point from that
Speaker 2: point on for school, train workers as much as you can.
Speaker 2: And then eventually universities got in on the act and
Speaker 2: they're like, let's also make these like pipelines to colleges,
Speaker 2: so like that's the point of high school is to
Speaker 2: get into college, and we're going to charge them out
Speaker 2: the yin yang. So standardization of testing was a huge
Speaker 2: part of it, but that was not the only part.
Speaker 2: Like you kind of touched on earlier, Betty Fridan's feminist mystique,
Speaker 2: which kicked off the second wave of feminism, as very
Speaker 2: often cited as a huge chilling effect or having a
Speaker 2: huge chilling effect on home mech classes being taught in
Speaker 2: high school.
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure, a lot of people started dropping those classes,
Speaker 3: saying it was, you know, sort of symbolic of a
Speaker 3: woman's confinement to the home in the kitchen. The Vocational
Speaker 3: Education Act of nineteen sixty three all of a sudden
Speaker 3: gutted or at least reduced funding that that Smith's Hughes
Speaker 3: Act had brought about. So it was, you know, shop
Speaker 3: class suffered kind of the same fate around the same
Speaker 3: time for the same reasons. We didn't have shop at
Speaker 3: my school. We had Industrial Arts, which I took, and
Speaker 3: I bet you anything, those have kind of lessened over
Speaker 3: the years as well. Now that I think about.
Speaker 2: It, is an industrial arts the same thing as shop.
Speaker 2: Is it different?
Speaker 3: No, shop is like like autoshop class.
Speaker 2: Oh no, I think that's different. I think shop is
Speaker 2: like drill presses and lathes and stuff like that.
Speaker 3: Well, it depends on your school. A lot of schools
Speaker 3: had autoshop class, yeah, like where they taught you had
Speaker 3: to change oil and work on your carburetor.
Speaker 2: For sure. My high school had that. My middle school
Speaker 2: had shop class in home.
Speaker 3: Mac what they call the autoshop class.
Speaker 2: I don't remember. I don't remember, but I saw it
Speaker 2: written somewhere as like automotive arts or something like that. Really, yeah,
Speaker 2: somebody said it so I get to repeat.
Speaker 3: It the art of changing oil exactly.
Speaker 2: But now I knew a couple of kids who were like,
Speaker 2: I'm going to be a mechanic, That's what i want
Speaker 2: to do after school. I'm not going to go to college,
Speaker 2: so it's great, I'm getting this education starting now in
Speaker 2: high school, Like it would give them a huge leg
Speaker 2: up to either becoming apprentices or going and taking like
Speaker 2: classes at a technical trade school. Right that went away,
Speaker 2: vocational education just really took a huge hit, and again
Speaker 2: high school became a pipeline for college. Homech still kind
Speaker 2: of stayed around. It saw the writing on the wall,
Speaker 2: but it rebranded itself as Family and Consumer Sciences, I
Speaker 2: think because homeck just had such a folksy, old timey
Speaker 2: name that seemed to reinforce gendered stereotypes. Family and Consumer
Speaker 2: Sciences is new, it's fresh, it's nineties, right, And they
Speaker 2: had a bigger emphasis on careers, helping people start careers
Speaker 2: outside the home, like interior design, nutrition, elder care, culinary arts,
Speaker 2: like you could become a chef, get a huge leg
Speaker 2: up taking high school classes. About that. So that's still
Speaker 2: around today. But one of the biggest problems that Family
Speaker 2: and consumer science classes still have that started around this time.
Speaker 2: Is finding qualified teachers to actually teach the family and
Speaker 2: consumer science classes that are still around in the US.
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure. I mean if you didn't have, you know,
Speaker 3: if these classes started to go away, then kids aren't
Speaker 3: going to be interested in that. They're not going to
Speaker 3: you know, develop those skills and take those classes in college.
Speaker 3: And so without universities training these teachers, you're just going
Speaker 3: to have a shortage of professionals teaching it at the
Speaker 3: high school level. And that you know, that's still going on.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and apparently the enrollment rates are very difficult to find.
Speaker 2: Olivia helped us with this, and she dug up a
Speaker 2: twenty thirteen report that said about three and a half
Speaker 2: million high school kids took family and consumer science classes
Speaker 2: classes in the twenty eleven a twenty twelve school year.
Speaker 2: And that still sounds kind of impressive to me. That
Speaker 2: was a forty percent drop from just the decade earlier,
Speaker 2: the aughts, the two thousands, and that they were still
Speaker 2: pretty much divided among gender lines sixty five percent girls
Speaker 2: and thirty five percent boys. So they're still out there,
Speaker 2: they're still around. They'd just taken such a massive hit,
Speaker 2: and yet there's a lot of people who are like, Okay,
Speaker 2: I get why HOMEAK, you know, took a massive hit.
Speaker 2: It needed to regroup. It's regrouped now. And we're also
Speaker 2: seeing the fallout from what happens when you don't teach
Speaker 2: middle and high school kids basic life skills. They grow
Speaker 2: up to be adults who don't know how to do
Speaker 2: basic life skills. And that seems to be happening before
Speaker 2: our very eyes.
Speaker 3: Yeah, especially you know when it comes to any kind
Speaker 3: of like home finance, like passing basic sort of home
Speaker 3: financial literacy or even financial literacy, it's really declining. I
Speaker 3: think there was a study from the World Economic Forum
Speaker 3: in twenty twenty four that found that the majority of
Speaker 3: Americans can't pass a test of financial literacy. So if
Speaker 3: you ask your average you know, recent high school graduate
Speaker 3: and even college graduate sometimes like, you know, tell me
Speaker 3: about interest rates, what do you know about inflation or
Speaker 3: investing or compound interest or home loans? You might get
Speaker 3: that gen z stare back in your face, and you know,
Speaker 3: this is the stuff that homek was teaching. You know,
Speaker 3: I don't remember so much learning sort of the nitty
Speaker 3: gritty of that stuff. But I certainly learned about, you know,
Speaker 3: banks and how to get a bank loan, and how
Speaker 3: to balance your checkbook and how to kind of keep
Speaker 3: up with personal finances.
Speaker 2: Exactly, or maybe even do learn how to do basic taxes,
Speaker 2: like a simple ten forty form. Again, life stuff. And
Speaker 2: in addition to finance stuff, they would learn things like,
Speaker 2: you know, how to tell if a chicken breast was underdone,
Speaker 2: or maybe a few recipes to cook. And if you
Speaker 2: don't teach people even basic stuff like how to cook,
Speaker 2: you can't really blame them for eating takeout constantly or
Speaker 2: eating nothing but prepackaged foods. Right, So some people say
Speaker 2: that this has led to the obesity epidemic that the
Speaker 2: United States is facing, at least in part. It's probably
Speaker 2: a little full blown to say, yep, that's what happened.
Speaker 2: We did away with homech and now that's the problem.
Speaker 2: The biggest problem is that's the food that's out there.
Speaker 2: But some people are saying, like, we're not. These people
Speaker 2: don't have any idea how to cook at all. The
Speaker 2: parents didn't take up the slack when the home mech
Speaker 2: classes went away, and so that's part of the problem
Speaker 2: that came from doing away with home mech.
Speaker 3: Yeah for sure. And there are people saying that we
Speaker 3: now have generations coming up that don't know how to
Speaker 3: adult properly, just sort of basic chores and you know,
Speaker 3: ironing and doing laundry and just sort of the things
Speaker 3: that you need to do to survive on your own.
Speaker 3: They found that younger generations just you know, they weren't
Speaker 3: taught that stuff as much, partially from home ech, partially
Speaker 3: because they weren't made to do chores like we were.
Speaker 3: There was a study from twenty fourteen from Braun Research
Speaker 3: that said eighty two percent of parents did chores as children,
Speaker 3: but only twenty eight percent have their children doing chores.
Speaker 3: And I think a lot of that is just I
Speaker 3: don't know, we had to do a lot of chores,
Speaker 3: and I think, like, I don't make Ruby do as
Speaker 3: many chores as I should, just because I remember what
Speaker 3: a drag chores were. Okay, But I'm also trying to
Speaker 3: think ahead of like, no, I need to teach her
Speaker 3: these life skills as well, So maybe try and mix
Speaker 3: some more of that stuff in would be a good idea.
Speaker 2: I was wondering where that what the cause was of
Speaker 2: that disconnect. Yeah, so is that as simple is that
Speaker 2: you just don't want to make your kid unhappy.
Speaker 3: I mean not that we're perfect fine with unhappiness. So yeah,
Speaker 3: it's definitely not bad.
Speaker 2: But that's what I'm saying, Like, and I'm not asking
Speaker 2: you to just speak for yourself but speak for parents today.
Speaker 3: I'm speaking for myself. No, it's very important that kids
Speaker 3: experience all the full range of emotions. So that's that's
Speaker 3: definitely not it. It's just I don't know. For me.
Speaker 3: I think it's just like chores are such a drag,
Speaker 3: and you know, and she's like, you know, nine and
Speaker 3: now ten years old, so I think chores will get
Speaker 3: a little more ramped up here in the tween and
Speaker 3: teen years.
Speaker 2: You should buy her a straw hat and some overalls
Speaker 2: for Christmas and be like, this is the year you
Speaker 2: get started. So one of the other things you might
Speaker 2: be saying is like there's an app for everything, Like
Speaker 2: like if you can't cook, it doesn't matter, get door
Speaker 2: dash or somebody's going to make food for you and
Speaker 2: we'll bring it to you just have to give them money.
Speaker 2: And it's that you just have to give them money thing.
Speaker 2: That's kind of a problem right now because wages haven't
Speaker 2: kept up, and debt has just continued to increase. In
Speaker 2: the second quarter of twenty twenty five, America had one
Speaker 2: point two to one trillion dollars of credit card debt.
Speaker 2: The average American had almost sixty five hundred dollars of
Speaker 2: credit card debt on their card at the time. So
Speaker 2: it's not like there's just some some easy solution, Like
Speaker 2: maybe there will be is stuff like that becomes cheaper,
Speaker 2: But right now there's just a whole grab bag of
Speaker 2: problems that you can trace back to if not coming
Speaker 2: from homeck, not being taught homech being taught could have
Speaker 2: solved them or could solve or prevent them in the future.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I guess a good thing about these
Speaker 3: days is you know, there's a YouTube tutorial. There's a
Speaker 3: thousand of them for every single task you could ever
Speaker 3: want to accomplish in life. Yep. So in that case,
Speaker 3: it's good to have an app for that, because I
Speaker 3: don't think necessarily younger generations are like, I don't know
Speaker 3: how to plug in an iron, So you know, I
Speaker 3: think they'll they'd look that stuff up on YouTube and
Speaker 3: teach themselves. But you know, it's also good to learn
Speaker 3: that in the classroom setting.
Speaker 2: You know, yeah, I'm really glad you said that, because
Speaker 2: this could so easily slide into well, when we were
Speaker 2: in school, we learned all this stuff and look at
Speaker 2: how great we turned out. It could just be people
Speaker 2: who are proponents of HOMECH not understanding where the country
Speaker 2: is going, where the culture is going, and it's going
Speaker 2: away from HOMECH in a different direction that will take
Speaker 2: care of itself. It's not like homech is the solution
Speaker 2: to every problem. So that's a really good argument against it.
Speaker 2: There's others too, like do we if we bring back
Speaker 2: like vocational education, does the US need jobs like that?
Speaker 2: And you can make an argument against that argument and
Speaker 2: that yeah, we do, especially hands on jobs like trade
Speaker 2: skills like plumbing and electricians. Jensen Wang, the CEO of Nvidia,
Speaker 2: said the next generation of millionaires are going to be
Speaker 2: plumbers and electricians because it's so hard to replace that
Speaker 2: with AI. So there's like argument one way or another,
Speaker 2: but it's you just have to be really careful not
Speaker 2: to slip into the back of my day things were
Speaker 2: better kind of mentality.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I mean, because that will and rightfully get
Speaker 3: smack backed in your face if you're like, well, how'd
Speaker 3: you learn to steam a shirt? You didn't take homech
Speaker 3: and this like TikTok bruh, like get out of my face. Yeah,
Speaker 3: we do things differently now and we don't have to
Speaker 3: do it the way you did it.
Speaker 2: That's right. Like I can't set a table properly in
Speaker 2: like the exact way it's supposed to be, but our parents'
Speaker 2: generation probably learned how to do that. It doesn't matter
Speaker 2: because the culture evolved in a way that didn't need
Speaker 2: that anymore.
Speaker 3: Yeah, just put the soup bowl down, cup your hands
Speaker 3: and go to town.
Speaker 2: There you go. Yeah, I don't think we can do
Speaker 2: any better than ending on that, Chuck.
Speaker 3: Who thank you.
Speaker 2: So if you want to learn more about homech go
Speaker 2: find a homech class and take it and then let
Speaker 2: us know what you think about it. If you take
Speaker 2: home mech, Now get in touch and tell us what's
Speaker 2: going on there, because we want to hear if you
Speaker 2: got your finger on the pulse of homec And since
Speaker 2: I mentioned pulse, that means it's time for listener mail.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we're like, what are you using for babies these days?
Speaker 3: And they're like, we're just using the babies that we've
Speaker 3: had bring them into school.
Speaker 2: They didn't get to us in time.
Speaker 3: This is a Roquettes thing. I think we ran our
Speaker 3: Rockettes episode as a select recently because tis the season,
Speaker 3: and we heard from Santa Claus. You, guys, hey just
Speaker 3: wanted I didn't know Santa was a listener, but it
Speaker 3: turns out he is just listened to the selects on
Speaker 3: the Rockettes. You did a wonderful job, or heard you
Speaker 3: say you hope a Roquette writes in which, by the way,
Speaker 3: did happen back then when we first released it. I
Speaker 3: may not be a Roquette, but I'm lucky enough to
Speaker 3: work very closely with these ladies six days a week.
Speaker 3: I've been Santa Claus in the Christmas Spectacular for the
Speaker 3: past four years. To say these women are the greatest
Speaker 3: stage athletes would be an understatement. Not only are they
Speaker 3: the best in their field, but even off stage, they
Speaker 3: are gracious, intelligent individuals, and many have other unique passions
Speaker 3: outside of dance. This year is quite special as it
Speaker 3: marks the one hundredth anniversary of the Roquets, not the
Speaker 3: Christmas Spectacular that'll be in twenty thirty three, but if
Speaker 3: you guys want to come see a show, let me know.
Speaker 3: I'll give you my Santa schedule and get you some tickets.
Speaker 3: My wife and I missus Claus a door Stuff you
Speaker 3: Should Know and we're at your last New York City
Speaker 3: Live show. Thanks for everything, and that is from Santa
Speaker 3: Claus Adam.
Speaker 2: That's sweet. Thank you, Santa Adam. That was a really
Speaker 2: great one. And thanks for the offer too. We're gonna
Speaker 2: have to take them up on it, Chuck.
Speaker 3: I've always wanted to see that show, so maybe maybe
Speaker 3: we'll do that one day.
Speaker 2: That's pretty great. Thanks again, Sanna. And before we sign off, Chuck,
Speaker 2: this episode comes out on UM's birthday, so I want
Speaker 2: to say happy birthday you MEI. What's your birthday the thirtieth?
Speaker 3: Oh? I thought it was the thirty first. No, I wonder.
Speaker 3: I'm always a daylight, but you're not a dollar short, Chuck.
Speaker 2: You always come.
Speaker 3: Through, all right. Well, have your birthday, Yumi.
Speaker 2: Thanks and if you want to get in touch with us,
Speaker 2: like Santa did, you can send us an email too
Speaker 2: at stuff Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 3: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts myheart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app Apple
Speaker 1: Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.