Home Ec for Everyone!

I know. Title sucks. But the idea is right. If you like, let's call the course "Survival Skills" instead.

I actually got this idea from Anthony Bourdain's last book (right). Since getting the standard rich and famous contract with Kitchen Confidential, he has gone through a series of changes. Most recently he quit smoking and became a father. He even lives in the suburbs.

But one thing he wrote in his latest book, Medium Raw, really struck home. Everyone needs basic kitchen skills. Everyone needs to know how to use a knife, a skillet, and throw together an edible, even (dare I say it) nutritional meal. Black or white, male or female, it doesn't matter.

It also occurred to me there are a few other things everyone ought to know before they leave high school. Some basic financial skills, for one thing. What to do when your car craps out. How to hang a picture. Yet for the last few decades a whole generation of people has left high schools without these skills.

And the results are predictable. We were all ready fodder for the Wall Street sharpies. We willingly went to the slaughter pens of McDonald's, WalMart and TGI McFunsters. And now that jobs are hard to come by, now that we really need survival skills, we don't have any.

So take out economics, the course most schools have that is supposed to teach you how to balance a checkbook but actually winds up talking about macro-economic subjects most people have no use of.

And add a course like this.

1. Getting a Place — How to understand a rental contract. The basics of mortgages. What stuff do you need as opposed to what you want? The basic costs of basically everything.
2. Building a Kitchen — The common things every kitchen needs. Knives and how to sharpen them. The basic pots and pans. Utensils. What is done at each kitchen station. The kitchen triangle.
3. Cleanliness — How much cleaning must you do to stay safe? How do you clean those knives without killing yourself? How do get in after a meal and get out in 10 minutes. For fun, time them. 
4. Nutrition — The latest guidelines and how to meet them. The difference between "real" food and "imitation food-like product." How to read a nutrition label, and the tricks manufacturers play with them.
5. Basic Kitchen Skills — This is the heart of the course. Knife skills. How to make an omelot. How to saute. Really basic baking (mixes aren't cheating) — a quiz on baking ratios. Stews, braises, soups, and the differences among them. A little grilling. At the end of this portion of the course, the class takes over the school kitchen one night and (under the supervision of kitchen staff and teacher), plans and makes a meal for their families, together. This also teaches how to work together. 
6. Personal Economics — What stuff costs. How to balance a checkbook. Understanding consumer credit. In other words, how to buy money and everything else that's important, as well as track it.

What did I leave out? Cleaning laundry? Maybe. The use of basic tooks for home repair? Sounds great. (And as to where you can get teachers for these courses, you might start with hotel and food management. That's where Marc Harding, left, a home economics teacher in Northern Ireland, got his start.)

This is the best way I can think of to fight the demand side of the food equation, the way people don't know what they're eating and become morbidly obese without even knowing they're doing it, then pretend "it's my metabolism" or "I'm big boned." (No, you just don't know how to eat.) That's a vital public policy purpose that can, over time, dramatically lower our national health care costs by reducing the diseases of obesity, like diabetes, to only those who consciously decide to ignore what they learned in school.

This is also a great way to protect against another decade like the one just past, where the financial industry got everyone in over their heads and then climbed into the pool after them. It was mass insanity masquerading as economic growth, and it's a trick that can't be repeated, because our national balance sheet won't allow it.

Citizenship isn't just knowledge of Thomas Jefferson or Ronald Reagan. Citizenship is a collection of life skills, things it's assumed you know how to do, at the very least so you can value them. Our parents acquired these skills from their parents, because they had to in order to live. We didn't, and we didn't give them to our kids either.

You know the rest.

So if we're to get out of the collective hole we've gotten into, it starts with the kids. Equip them with the skills they need to get through life in the 21st century, and don't let anyone leave the education system until they have survival skills.

Who's with me?