By Payton McCracken

The obesity rate has grown tremendously in the past decade, and the number of children, teens, and young adults, also known as Generation Z, don’t know how to fully care for themselves, or do common household chores like cook healthy meals, clean, pay bills, and manage money.

By adding home economics courses back into high school and middle school curriculums, we can help Gen Z become successful members of society, who are able to teach these skills to future generations.

According to Alexandra Sifferlin from TIME Health, “From 1967-2009, there’s been a 30% increase in people eating fast food.” Many people from Gen X and Gen Y grew up on either microwave meals or not very healthy meals. What “healthy” actually means has changed a lot from what Generation X  learned and what we now know to be true.

Therefore, many people are not able to teach their kids how to eat well, or even how to cook, so they resort to fast food chains to feed their families. Fast food is neither healthy or nutritious, consequently adding to the United States childhood obesity epidemic.

Furthermore, “In a society when both men and women are preparing for careers, basic skills like cooking are often neglected. However, a home economics class can prepare anyone to prepare healthy and nutritious meals for themselves and their family no matter their schedule.”

In other words, by having a home economics class, kids would know how to eat right and the obesity rate would go down. The number of people with obesity is alarming; 35% of adults are obese and almost 32% of kids are obese or overweight. Although learning to eat healthy may not be the whole solution, it would be a big step in the right direction.

Additionally, “An overwhelming majority of teens—87%—admit they don’t know much about personal finance,” according to a new study by ING Direct. This means that the majority of Generation Z doesn’t know how to pay bills, save money, or even spend it responsibly. By learning how to save money early in life, we can help ensure minimal debt later in life. Studies show that about 80% of Americans have debt; in order to lower this percentage, we should teach kids how to manage money.

Although some may argue that parents should teach their kids how to do household tasks, what they fail to see is that some parents don’t have the skills themselves to teach their kids, or just don’t have time. Many parents work and travel a lot, and have little to no time with their families. Studies have shown that 25% of adults say they don’t eat healthy and don’t know how to. That translates to 1 out of 4 children not being taught how to eat properly, leading to an increased chance of being or becoming obese or overweight.

Fortunately, “A standardized home economics class would ensure that all graduating high schoolers would enter the working world knowing the most efficient home economic skills.” Yes, we may learn how to do math and write well in school, but imagine not knowing how to eat right or how to pay a bill: daily life would be a lot harder. What matters the most is the application of real life skills. You can’t live off of math skills, but you can live off of the skills you would learn in home economics.

In order to reduce the amount of children with obesity, or children who don’t know how to cook, clean, pay bills, and/or save money, we need to teach kids these skills. We cannot blame them for being overweight or not knowing how to do household necessities if they were never properly taught. If we want Generation Z to be successful, then we need the school board to add home economics back into high school and middle school curriculums.

Seventh grade ELA students in Allie Dennis’ English Language arts class at SMS wrote proposal articles in the form of a opinion editorials. They conducted research on topics of their choice.