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Originally Posted by Supple Cow
One reason I think these things ^ should be taught at home is because of what Lady Sage and Brew have already demonstrated - that the content of some life skills course depends largely on the values of the person designing it. Is some kid who is going to grow up to be a rich, important lawyer ever really going to need to know how to cook a bird? I bet that kid's parents don't think so. They are busy making sure that kid is in prep school and learning the classics, like all of Greek mythology and the Latin language. I believe knowing how to prepare taxes and cooking are important too, but I'm not sure they are essential in the day of the internet. I'm teaching myself how to do my own taxes this year and it's been a while since I left high school. I don't think my life has been significantly diminished by the fact that I didn't already know how to do it when I was 17.
Then you have to consider what else these things would mean in today's schools. If you had tried to teach that to me as a 15-year-old girl in high school, I would have screamed to high hell about the sexism inherent in that situation, because you can bet all the boys would be snickering and getting themselves sent to detention instead of learning to cook a bird, and all the well-behaved girls would be doing what has traditionally been known as her 'womanly duty' to cook a meal for man and family.
I thought that the point of taking away Home Ec was that it was reinforcing genger roles that we didn't want to adhere to anymore. Of course, my whole lifetime has existed in this world lacking Home Ec classes so I may be wrong about the reasons for it disappearing from schools. Still, that's what would have happened at my school. Even if the boys were forced to take the classes too, many of them would have found ways to get out of it. For instance, the football coach might have come to the administrators and gotten Home Ec scheduled at the end of the day when the boys usually had to leave for games. And for the ones who stayed, it would have been just another thing that they would be doing with a sideways glance at all the girls. I know we would have been hearing jokes like, "Hey, it doesn't matter if my chicken is dry, but you'd better be careful and learn this right or you'll never get a husband. I sure wouldn't marry you!" ...the kind of jokes that would put tremendous pressure on girls to behave within that traditional role again.
From what I know about the people I went to high school with, I think that would have gone further to stir the teenage sex pot than to give the teens valuable skills and a sense of self-reliance. It would just be the new way for a girl with low self-esteem to cater to boys in order to get their attention and affirmation. Just look at MTV. They'd find a way to make it cool, and 'cool' seems to mean hyper-sexualization for girls and jack-ass behavior for boys these days. I'm sure it's not just at my alma mater. Being a teenager was rough, from what I remember. It was hard enough to sort out all the different social pressures, let alone fight them and do all the best things to build self-worth the right way. In my opinion, home is a safer place to learn these things, because it would mean taking all the other boys and girls out of the equation.
(Jesus, if I ever have kids, I'm going to bone up on the right teaching skills and home school them.)
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A lot of this seems really cynical, as in over the top. But I was in home ec classes (less than 15 years ago, I don't
think they've disappeared yet) and they weren't like that at all. Now, perhaps it's because of a critical mass thing. While I have seen males be jackasses, they don't usually do it when they are vastly outnumbered by the females. Numbers of genders change the tone and interactions, in my experience.
Now I hear what you're saying, I just don't think that we should project what we've learned as adults onto fairly unsophisticated children. While it seems crass, the notion that males would interrogate gender roles to the extent that they would denigrate a woman's character or marriagability over it. I
do agree that many boys woul get out of it, so there would a structural component that would reproduce traditional gender roles, but unless someone just had it out for a particular female, I don't think you'd hear the kind of statements you're fearing on a general level.
Probably a lot of farting and jocking about, but on the whole by the time I was in home ec I was old enough to "like" girls and being able to cook, sew, and type not only gave me easy credits but easy access! And while that's probaby going to make some gender equalists cringe, I'm going to claim my motivation was purely hormonal than social/cheauvanist
And even though some of us snickered at the male cheerleaders, not 5 minutes later one of our group would say, yeah, but DUDE, seriously, I'd fucking dig it down there to be honest!