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The fall and rise of home economics education: newly available home economics archives at The Women's Library *
Author(s) -
Murphy Gillian
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
international journal of consumer studies
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.775
H-Index - 71
eISSN - 1470-6431
pISSN - 1470-6423
DOI - 10.1111/j.1470-6431.2011.01021.x
Subject(s) - family and consumer science , successor cardinal , economics education , curriculum , subject (documents) , function (biology) , sociology , economics , economic growth , higher education , library science , pedagogy , psychology , mathematics education , mathematical analysis , mathematics , evolutionary biology , computer science , biology
This paper highlights some of the archives held at The Women's Library relating to home economics. It concentrates on the archives of the Institute of Home Economics, its successor and predecessor. It considers strengths in the collections, in particular home economics education. Although the profession ultimately failed to secure home economics as a foundation subject in the National Curriculum in 1987, it appears that food education is more important than ever, especially when we are reminded about childhood obesity in the daily news. The paper concludes that formal home economics teaching did fulfil the vitally important function of teaching young people how to feed themselves properly, and that food does provide an important part of children's education.