Exam Preview: Home Economics There is more to home economics than the challenge of making a decent semolina. Actually, it is the most socially relevant Leaving Cert subject, argues Terry Prone
Home economics has always been way down the pecking order of Leaving Cert subjects - even though almost 20,000 students will be examined in the subject today. To impress, the subjects to take have always been ones like physics and chemistry or an unusual language, whereas home economics has always had the ring of hopeless domesticity about it.
To be good at chemistry meant you might get a highly-paid job making Viagra, whereas home economics meant you could stay home and undertake tasks like hemming handkerchiefs and making truly nutritious soups.
Prejudicial, this view, to be sure. Not only that, but dated and ignorant prejudice. In fact, of all of the subjects now on offer in the Leaving Cert, home economics is the most interesting and socially relevant.
Having read some of the recent exam papers, I'm thinking of taking it up as a mature student. The social section alone is a thought-provoker, militating against both waffle and straight regurgitation of ingested data. Take this multi-layered question for example:
"Crime and delinquency are an increasing social problem in Irish society."
Not sure they need "social" in tht sentence, but let's not get picky.
"Analyse the factors that contribute to this social problem."
This is a doddle. Bit of Liveline-type-old-fart-theorising and we're away.
"Discuss the effects of crime and delinquency on (i) the individual, (ii) the family and (iii) society."
No problem. The first two are taken care of by the theft of my wallet and his computer from the kitchen last Saturday while we were one room away. The third is the need for those 2,000 extra guards. Sure, we're flying.
"Give a detailed account of (a) the Juvenile Liaison Officer scheme and (b) the Probation Service."
Oh, don't you just hate that emboldened and underlined "and". That's an "and" without possibility of parole
If, discouraged, you skip to the next question, it's so fascinating as to distract from later possibilities. It notes that legislation has helped to ensure the modern workplace is safer (they don't say than what, but the reader automatically fills in "than in the bad old days") and that workers are not exploited, going on to invite the student to provide two examples of employment-related legislation and to state how each contributes to ensuring equity for workers.
So far, so rote. But then it goes on to demand an account of the reasons why people work, of the factors that influence our attitude to work and the demands encountered by dual-career families. So many fascinating issues, so little time.
The home economics exam papers from recent years are a deadly means of exposing the ignorance of one's peers. One small section of one question stumped all of the parents of teenagers I put it to. This one: "Plan a set of menus for one day for a teenager who has anaemia."
Liver, a few older people said confidently, their confidence ebbing as they realised that an awful lot of creativity was needed if a full day's menu was to be planned around the culinary possibilities of one slithery organ.
One father of five floundered for a long time before settling for spinach.
It was full of iron, he insisted, and lack of iron was what anaemia was all about. Nevertheless, he too was stumped by the requirement to fill a putative teenage anaemic for an entire day.
Because the home economics questions are so rooted in reality, they tend to hit personal "hot buttons".
So a demand to "give an account of the functions of the family" immediately evoked Rita Mae Brown's great statement that the family had been invented to serve as the transmission belt of pathology.
While the papers feature occasional throw-back questions like the invitation to make a sweet dish based on milk for lunch, which immediately evoke the smell and slimy taste of semolina, tapioca and a bunch of worthy palefaced puke-inducers of that (m)ilk, the general thrust, particularly of the higher grade, is towards addressing issues of context, whether social, environmental, economic or simple survival.
If every student exited second level having studied this subject, the health, safety and civic sensibility of the nation would go up several notches.