Things we should have learned in school: Where did Shop and Home Economics Go?

While Home Economics was a popular class available throughout the 1900’s that taught students essential life skills, such as cooking, cleaning, household management and finance, it now rarely shows up in classrooms.

This decades-long shift toward preparing students to succeed in private industry has left multiple generations of high school graduates unprepared for life as an adult. In addition to home economics, practical skills like carpentry, plumbing, cooking, and sewing were taught at home and in schools.

We all pay the price for our lack of life skills, and we probably shouldn’t have to learn each thing. The number of online platforms like Amazon Flex, Dolly, DoorDash, and TaskRabbit that offer skilled services on-demand more than tripled between 2016 and 2018.

But you can only use these services if you can afford them. A recent search of Handy found that hanging up some pictures would require reserving a gig worker for 2 hours for $133.65. Anyone living paycheck to paycheck (over half of Americans) would have to think twice. So simple household tasks go undone.

While millennials are certainly confident in their skills in areas like technology and career growth, not many young people between 18-24 are not able to perform basic skills. The number of millennials confident in the following skills is surprisingly low:

• Assembling flat pack furniture – 25.77%

• Defrosting a freezer – 25.40%

• Cleaning the car – 17.69%

• Painting a shed – 21%

• Fixing a curtail rail – 27.42%

• Putting up shelves – 33.42%

• Changing a lightbulb – 15.66%

• Basic DIY skills – Only 51% of millennials can bleed a radiator or fix a blown fuse, while only 33% can descale an iron.

This is why we believe it’s important to share high quality, highly accessible information to our users. Follow our blog as we add to our series covering life skills we wish we would have been taught in school:

1. 🧹 Housekeeping

2. 🔧 Home Repair and Improvement Basics

3. 🚗 Car Ownership Basics

4. 💻 Technology Basics

5. 🚨 Emergency Readiness

6. 📈 Money Management

7. 😌 Self Awareness

8. 🪢 Wellness and Relationships