From the Academy

The Homemaking Boondoggle

In the immortal line of Edgar A. Guest, “It takes a heap o’ livin’ to make a house a home.” The educationists, nevertheless, have a shortcut for us: give a year’s course in Homemaking in school, and it’s an idyll forever after. Formerly this discipline was called “home economics” —and, in the bad old days, merely “cooking and sewing”; now, however, the educationists aspire not merely to such technical skills, but also to “total homemaking”: instruction in “courtship and marriage,” “family living,” “personal relationships,” etc., etc.

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Russell Kirk

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The Homemaking Boondoggle

In the immortal line of Edgar A. Guest, “It takes a heap o’ livin’ to make a house a home.” The educationists, nevertheless, have a shortcut for us: give a year’s course in Homemaking in school, and it’s an idyll forever after. Formerly this discipline was called “home economics” —and, in the bad old days, merely “cooking and sewing”; now, however, the educationists aspire not merely to such technical skills, but also to “total homemaking”: instruction in “courtship and marriage,” “family living,” “personal relationships,” etc., etc.