Cooking? Baking? Who does that?

[Iggy]

I think it also has a lot to do with prepackaged and premade foods. If they can buy scrambled eggs prepackaged, why should they learn to do it the "hard way"? Most foods come in some prepared way, heat and eat if you will.

My grandparents had a "residential home for mentally ill adults" for years when I was a kid. I remember my grandmother telling me how hard it was to find help. They even had women with children who we're clueless in the kitchen. One woman in her 40s didn't know how to boil water.... And this was 20-30 years ago. When asked how she and her grown children had gotten by, she said she always bought food with instructions on the label or they ate out.

It was sad really. Thankfully my grandmother and family taught me how to cook. While this is ultimately the parent's job to teach their child basic skills for life (like cooking), IMHO they should teach cooking basics to all high schoolers. Maybe for some it would be redundant, but the knowledge would be invaluable to some (especially those with parents just as clueless as their kids).

[xoxoxoBruce]

There's a picture in my high school yearbook ('62) of me washing pots and pans in Chef's Club. Of course we weren't chefin by any means but did some basics like brownies and stuff. We did however pick up measuring ingredients and mixing at the right temperature and in the right order. Broke a few eggs too.

[Griff]

Home economics is a thing of the past now that schools are preparing kids for welfare. I was bitching about this at work the other day, those classes were meant to rescue the kids whose parents didn't or couldn't do those things. Many districts eliminated useful classes to focus on their common core statistics, the mission of teaching basic survival skills was lost. My kids cook, bake, and sew and have their academic areas. It shouldn't be either or. We might be losing our edge though, Pete loaned out a sewing machine last week so now we only have two in the house.