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Comment by codegrappler | Hacker News Reader

My wife used to teach these ‘useful’ classes. They used to call it home economics. Now they call it family and consumer science. Essentially the same things. How to cook, budget, raise a child, etc. Sadly many school districts are cutting these programs to make room for classes that help the students do better on standardized tests. It’s sad because there were a ton of kids who used to find their life’s passion in my wife’s classes.

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This isn't a 'new' trend. It has pretty much been happening since they couldn't simply teach women how to cook and boys how not to cut their fingers off in shop classes.

I am 42. I had less than 9 weeks of cooking. Part of that 'cooking' was cooking once a week, a cookie contest that almost got me in trouble because I didn't cook while home sick, and how to set a table for a formal setting (i've never used this). The once-a-week cooking was in a group setting. I had "financial education" in social studies class - taught by a car salesman friend of the teacher. We got extra credit if our parents went to look at used cars. I was in 8th grade: 13 years old at the time.

I had health class, which mostly taught us the parts of the body and sex ed over and over again. PE class at one point consisted of ping-pong for 6 weeks: I didn't learn anything that I could actually use in life - how to be do cardio, stretching, weight training, nope. Nothing like that.

Not once was I ever introduced to any sort of child development classes. You see, I took AP classes and had a full college prep schedule, so they didn't think these classes were important. Some others were so much better prepared than I was.

>taught by a car salesman friend of the teacher. We got extra credit if our parents went to look at used cars.

That seems super shady. Did anyone end up filing a complaint with the school board?

I'm not even sure if I told my parents, honestly - but I cringe when I look back on it (I was only 13, moved earlier in the year, and was already an outcast). I don't know how it was ever allowed.

The big problem with school districts is that they are so far down the chain of decentralized government that almost no enforcement exists to make sure the right decisions are being made. Almost every former teenager has a powertrip story involving a school official which is probably against some code or regulation; but the power imbalance between school employee and student makes it nearly impossible for those concerns to hold any weight. Students are also never informed of their rights except for a student handbook at the beginning of the year, and even then there's an implicit expectation that the teacher/principal/superintendent has the right to institute arbitrary rules at any point.

There are most likely illegal policies and activities taking place at every public school in the U.S., and it's not taken seriously because children cannot vote and many parents think the schools ought to be going hard on their kids anyways.

There's always the liability of knives, stoves, ovens, and hot oil, that never helps.

Although in retrospect it was perhaps a bit ridiculous that my cooking class allowed only a microwave, while I worked an open forge in metalworking.

... and now I'm just realizing the only fear I had of dangerous stuff like that in school was the soldering irons in the DT block. Never blinked once at being in the food tech rooms with those same people.

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