Home Ec/ Family and Consumer Sciences in Schools

[DonaCatalina]

A friend of mine frequently laments the lack of common sense life skills.
Many of the 4th and 5th grade kids are given $5 to go to McDonald's after school to get their dinner. By Thursday the parents no longer have money to give the kids, so they're scrounging off each other and the teachers.
Apparently is it too much for the parents to comprehend that a loaf of bread and a package of lunch meat is cheaper and will feed them all week.
Not that its much healthier, but its better than going hungry for two days until payday.

[Lady Renee Buchanan]

My mother didn't sew, thus nor did I.  In 7th grade, the girls had to take sewing, the boys, shop.  No choices. The sewing teacher was a monster.  If you didn't have a mother that sewed, you were treated worse than dirt.  She embarrassed me so many times, I used to beg my mother to let me stay home in the afternoon, because I hated that class so much.  It got to the point where my mother called the principal and chewed him up one side and down the other side, because the teacher made a nasty remark about my mom, not just about me.  The teacher left me alone for the rest of the year, and gave me A's, but I couldn't sew a thing.  It has taken me all this time to even want to pick up a needle again.  I've recently started sewing with a friend who is teaching me, but I think the bad memories keep cropping up, so I don't enjoy it as much as I should.

And in high school, for my senior year, I wanted to take auto shop.  I just got my license the end of my junior year and loved driving and wanted to know how to fix a car.  But the school wouldn't let me, "because that class is for boys only."  I had my choice of sewing (never, never, never) or art.  I chose art, which was filled with lots of "bad" kids, looking for an easy grade.  One day a few months after the class started, the teacher took me aside and said, "You have absolutely no talent.  But you turn in all your assignments, sit quietly and don't disrupt the class.  So I will give you A's."

And that is how I got A's in sewing and A's in art, and I stink in both!