4 ms·

Is nutrition and cooking / domestic skills part of the American school curriculum or widely taught ?

by tudorw 9y ago

hycaria 9y ago
I don't know but it's not taught in my country.
drjesusphd 9y ago
No.
et-al 9y ago
"Home Economics" used to be a common course, along with "shop", but both have experienced a decline in lieu of other courses which helps boost one's high school (grades 9-12) résumé for university applications. If media literacy and home economics were part of the core curriculum, we'd easily see a decline in health-related issues from fast-food consumption and poor grocery shopping habits. Until, of course, Yum! Brands finds a way to partner with the schools and modifies the curriculum.
Broken_Hippo 9y ago
Not really. That's one of those things they've been dropping from the curriculum. Where it is taught, half the time it isn't mandatory and is often unhelpful. I personally had 9 weeks of combined sewing and cooking, that really taught me nothing. (My sister got a lowered grade for not following the recipe exactly). I was lucky - I had already been cooking for a few years by then because I liked it. Had that been my only introduction to cooking, though, I'd not be very functional as a new adult. My "financial" education happened in 8th grade - age 13, when you can't rent an apartment until 18 most times. This consisted of a car salesman teaching us about loans and interest and tax forms... giving us extra credit if our parents looked at a car. Even more credit if they bought one. That said, most high schools have some sort of child development classes as an optional class. If you are interested in stem classes or otherwise on a college-bound path, you might not be offered such classes or be able to fit them into your class schedule. High school cooking, if even offered, generally focused on job placement where I lived.
- logfromblammo 9y ago
  About the only thing I learned in the cooking part of my class in 8th grade--which had in a prior generation been called "home ec" and "shop" but was now "life skills" and "industrial arts"--was that everything I made myself tasted better than anything that came out of the school cafeteria's kitchen. The part about putting the fork on the left and the knife (blade facing the plate) and spoon on the right was useless filler. When they added in salad forks and dessert spoons, I really had to wonder how many rich people just got tired of screaming at their servants for putting the soup spoon where the dinner spoon should go. A practical class would have graded us on our use of chopsticks, instead of the correct placement of the asparagus-tickler for a 15-course banquet. They never taught us about peanut-butter burritos that require no cooking, water, or refrigeration--great for when you have no utilities turned on. They never mentioned the magical amino-acid balance of beans-rice-corn or ordinary potato, for when you can't afford actual meat. They certainly didn't say anything about the locked trash containers behind the grocery store or haggling over the coupon policy. They didn't go into any detail about how the remains of one meal can be used to stretch the next. That would have been useful stuff to learn for the bottom economic quintile we were to be dumped into after high-school graduation. My own kids don't even have it as an elective. Future food comes from a box or a vending machine. I suspect that the last master chefs will be programming DLC modules for all the auto-cook robots.
knicholes 9y ago
Here in Utah's public schools, we have to take TLC, which is cooking/sewing.

Is nutrition and cooking / domestic skills part of the American school curriculum or widely taught ?

by tudorw 9y ago

Is nutrition and cooking / domestic skills part of the American school curriculum or widely taught ?

hycaria 9y ago

I don't know but it's not taught in my country.

drjesusphd 9y ago

No.

et-al 9y ago

"Home Economics" used to be a common course, along with "shop", but both have experienced a decline in lieu of other courses which helps boost one's high school (grades 9-12) résumé for university applications. If media literacy and home economics were part of the core curriculum, we'd easily see a decline in health-related issues from fast-food consumption and poor grocery shopping habits. Until, of course, Yum! Brands finds a way to partner with the schools and modifies the curriculum.

Broken_Hippo 9y ago

Not really. That's one of those things they've been dropping from the curriculum. Where it is taught, half the time it isn't mandatory and is often unhelpful. I personally had 9 weeks of combined sewing and cooking, that really taught me nothing. (My sister got a lowered grade for not following the recipe exactly). I was lucky - I had already been cooking for a few years by then because I liked it. Had that been my only introduction to cooking, though, I'd not be very functional as a new adult. My "financial" education happened in 8th grade - age 13, when you can't rent an apartment until 18 most times. This consisted of a car salesman teaching us about loans and interest and tax forms... giving us extra credit if our parents looked at a car. Even more credit if they bought one. That said, most high schools have some sort of child development classes as an optional class. If you are interested in stem classes or otherwise on a college-bound path, you might not be offered such classes or be able to fit them into your class schedule. High school cooking, if even offered, generally focused on job placement where I lived.

logfromblammo 9y ago
About the only thing I learned in the cooking part of my class in 8th grade--which had in a prior generation been called "home ec" and "shop" but was now "life skills" and "industrial arts"--was that everything I made myself tasted better than anything that came out of the school cafeteria's kitchen. The part about putting the fork on the left and the knife (blade facing the plate) and spoon on the right was useless filler. When they added in salad forks and dessert spoons, I really had to wonder how many rich people just got tired of screaming at their servants for putting the soup spoon where the dinner spoon should go. A practical class would have graded us on our use of chopsticks, instead of the correct placement of the asparagus-tickler for a 15-course banquet. They never taught us about peanut-butter burritos that require no cooking, water, or refrigeration--great for when you have no utilities turned on. They never mentioned the magical amino-acid balance of beans-rice-corn or ordinary potato, for when you can't afford actual meat. They certainly didn't say anything about the locked trash containers behind the grocery store or haggling over the coupon policy. They didn't go into any detail about how the remains of one meal can be used to stretch the next. That would have been useful stuff to learn for the bottom economic quintile we were to be dumped into after high-school graduation. My own kids don't even have it as an elective. Future food comes from a box or a vending machine. I suspect that the last master chefs will be programming DLC modules for all the auto-cook robots.

knicholes 9y ago

Here in Utah's public schools, we have to take TLC, which is cooking/sewing.