My late high school math teacher... once taught a personal finance class to the remedial math students.... It was simple stuff, interest rates, balancing a checkbook, that kind of stuff. What half of home ec used to be, the other half being how to do household work so you can be frugal–prepare your own meals, sew/repair clothes, clean things, economize.Really? I never understood why they called the pillow and brownie class Home Economics. But, apparently there used to be a little personal finance component to it. Who knew?
Friday, March 07, 2008
Home Ec Had a Purpose!
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4 comments:
My home economic classes were taught by very unhappy women who spent hours trying to instill in me the importance of making smoothies, setting the table properly, and making decorative pillows.
The smoothies were ok though.
Well, you know, when you're in high school, it's easy to judge adults as unhappy. But, yes, I also made decorative pillows and did some cooking. There was no notion of personal or household finance, though. It was surprising to me that that used to be a part fo the same class.
Oh no...these were unequivocally unhappy adults. Probably because they were destined to teach children how to make smoothies, set the table properly, and make decorative pillows - only to have them say how silly it was many years later on a blog.
Yes, I too was surprised to learn that finance used to be a part of that class. THAT would have been useful. To this day though, I have not had to make any decorative pillows as a grown-up.
Well, that's about you. There are people out there who never use their High School language skills. Heck there are probably a few folks who've forgotten trigonometry. Operating a sewing kit is probably easier for me having made my decorative pillow, and a classmate very dramatically demonstrated the difference between putting an eighth of a teaspoon and an eighth of a cup of salt in our brownie mix, a lesson I've kept with me to this day.
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