Student preparation for Life After High School by Spencer

Student preparation for Life After High School by Spencer - September 2025 Scholarship Essay

Have you ever experienced something and thought, “Why didn’t we learn about this in school?” Have you felt unprepared to perform the basic functions of adult life? That’s how many college students and high school students are feeling right now. Unfortunately, while school tries to prepare us to apply for college and pick a career path, they fail to teach us some of the most basic skills. Sure, we have classes like health and financial literacy (depending on the school district), but what about other skills? How do we cook? How do we clean? How do we use power tools and repair basic appliances? Some students aren’t even sure how to do laundry! Why doesn’t school teach these skills?

It turns out that schools used to have a class called “home economics.” In these classes, students would learn about food preparation and cooking, cleaning, basic sewing, budgeting, and more. These are skills that many students are lacking nowadays. A class such as home economics would relieve many students' worries about adulthood. Unfortunately, schools have limited budgets, and home economics is an expensive class to maintain. Between schools' very limited budgets and the growing emphasis on college preparation, home economics classes have been cut from many school programs across the United States in favor of more affordable college prep classes. While these classes are also important in preparing students for their future, we cannot be neglecting the basic skills that were once taught in our schools not too long ago. 

Now, don’t get me wrong, schools do offer classes that teach some of the skills formerly taught in home economics classes. Students can learn about budgeting in personal finance or business classes, and they can learn about cooking in culinary classes. Additionally, many schools are even starting to offer “Family and Consumer Sciences” classes, which teach many of the same subjects as home economics. However, the decision to teach these skills as separate classes, instead of introducing the fundamentals of each in one required course, contributes to the lack of knowledge students have in these areas. When you’re trying to cram in all of your graduation requirements, plus any electives related to your future career, fitting all of these separate budgeting, cooking, and basic skills classes into your schedule is extremely difficult. If a student has to choose between taking a culinary class to learn to cook or a finance class to learn budgeting, then that student is not getting all of the support and education they need from the school system. This is why we need to bring back home economics. 

While I have presented many reasons why home economics is an important class, there are many arguments against it. The primary argument against home economics is that “it’s not the school’s job to teach basic skills; it’s the parents' job.” While I do agree parents should be teaching their kids these basic skills, that’s not happening as much as it should be. More than ever, students have households where both parents work and aren’t able to spend as much time with their children. Then, when they do have time, many children are still at school for extracurriculars. I know many people who spend more time at school than they do at home, and that’s not going to stop anytime soon. Teaching these subjects in school will not only guarantee that students learn these essential skills, but it will also assist parents who are unable to teach their children all the necessary skills due to extenuating circumstances. Even with those things in mind, there are still people who will protest against home economics classes because they “distract from core classes.” I believe such claims could not be further from the truth. Home economics wouldn’t distract from core classes any more than other electives (required or otherwise). Learning basic life skills is not a distraction from education; it’s an enhancement of it. Alongside math, language arts, science, and social studies, home economics provides students with vital information that will benefit them for the rest of their lives. 

Truthfully, I can’t think of an elective class that complements core curriculum classes and achieves the goals of education better than home economics. While support for home economics classes among the general population may be slowly dwindling, the need for the skills taught in home economics is not. If education is truly meant to prepare students for life after high school, students should be taught the basic life skills needed to function after high school. A home economics class is the most convenient and efficient way for schools to achieve this goal. I hope that within the next 10 years, schools will begin to prioritize basic life skills, not instead of but alongside college and career readiness, in order to give students the most beneficial and well-rounded education possible.