Notes from the Spring Creek Arts Guild

Yes, it seems the world has turned upside down for so many of us. From the big, worldwide stuff, all the way down to the nitty-gritties of everyday life, everything seems scrambled and jumbled. I have to wonder if we did a better job with the basics of everyday life, would we still have the big and huge problems, too?

Back when I was going to college to be a Home Economics teacher, we covered not only the stereotypical topics like cooking and sewing, but things like marriage and family relationships, child development, human nutrition and health, critical thinking skills, personal financial management, resource management, employability skills, entrepreneurship, basic home care and repair, color theory, textile science, time and task management….and that is just what I can remember off the top of my head. Do those sound like silly things upon which to spend public education dollars? Or does it sound like they may actually be important things to include in public school curriculum?

I have seen more and more that people are wishing we had some sort of basic “life skills” or “independent living” course required of all high school students. If you are my age or older, you may not know that Home Economics, now known as Family and Consumer Sciences, has all but disappeared from public schools. I can only assume that the people now calling for the creation of these handy independent living courses are younger people who grew up in a time when Home Economics & FCS had already gone by the wayside, so they do not know that we once had exactly what they are wishing for.

Do not misunderstand me, I am not pointing the finger at public education for screwing this up—it has been very much a group effort. What I mean is we have done it to ourselves. As far back as I can remember, the force of societal trends and public opinion has shaped education along with most things in our lives. As someone has told me, this is a basic problem with democracy—there is no over-arching wisdom or authority, only groupthink. Wikipedia defines groupthink as

“a psychological phenomenon that occurs within a group of people in which the desire for harmony or conformity in the group results in an irrational or dysfunctional decision-making outcome.” I think “irrational and dysfunctional” sounds very similar to the aforementioned “upside down” and “scrambled and jumbled.”

I have no real solutions to offer. Really I am just thinking out loud—wondering if we had some way to go back to training young people in some baseline standards and skills of everyday living, would that lead to more rational thought and behavior society-wide? Would it make common sense more common? Could Home Economics be resurrected to save the world? I really think that is an overstatement, but I think it would certainly be a step in the right direction. There are a number of correct steps we could take right now that would not involve resurrecting things that are already gone. I will write it on my calendar to address one or more of those next time. <SpringCreekArtsGuild@ gmail.com>