Demise of learning hands-on skills
Sometimes buried in the stories of pandemic sewing is a comment to the effect that at one time such handicraft was typically taught in schools in home economics classes.
In the past half-century, home economics in higher education was has been downsized, dismantled and in some cases met its demise for a variety of reasons. New arenas of work opportunity and concern were available following the second wave of feminism and in the post-war years marketers capitalized on consumerism as a new patriotic duty.
Home economics had long connected local consumption and production and global ecology, but as education scholar Maresi Nerad argues, post-secondary university departments traditionally dominated by women including home economics “were gradually eliminated when administrators no longer found them useful.”