role for home economists as facilitators of or at any rate participants in something like an enlightened experience of the educational environment seems obvious.
The very vocabulary of debates about good and bad homemaking or for that matter good and bad performance in the home or in the world at large has shifted, so that ways of reaching meaning at the beginning and ending of the 20th century have become dramatically opposed. In many respects, technology and current events have overtaken ideas and experience. This point is made by Hertzler in a discussion of the meaning of convenience foods:
Convenience foods reflect the state of the art in food
science. In the '20s convenience meant canned tomatoes; in
the '40s, frozen juice and vegetables; and in the '80s,
"heat and serve" or eating out. In the early 1900s home
economists were teaching food and nutrition principles as
they related to new innovations in the home electricity and
indoor plumbing. The same concern is evident in t
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