Thursday, February 27, 2014

home economics vs. hoe economics


wikipedia | Euthenics /jˈθɛnɪks/ is the study of the improvement of human functioning and well-being by improvement of living conditions.[1] Affecting the "improvement" through altering external factors such as education and the controllable environment, including the prevention and removal of contagious disease and parasites, environmentalism, education regarding employment, home economics, sanitation, and housing.[2]

Rose Field notes of the definition in a May 23, 1926 New York Times article, "the simplest being efficient living."[3] A right to environment.[4]

The Flynn effect has been often cited as an example of Euthenics. Another example is the steady increase in body size in industrialized countries since the beginning of the 20th century.
Euthenics is not normally interpreted to have anything to do with changing the composition of the human gene pool by definition, although everything that affects society has some effect on who reproduces and who does not.

According to Vassar's chronology entry for March 17, 1924, "the faculty recognized euthenics as a satisfactory field for sequential study (major). A Division of Euthenics was authorized to offer a multidisciplinary program [radical at the time] focusing the techniques and disciplines of the arts, sciences and social sciences on the life experiences and relationships of women. Students in euthenics could take courses in horticulture, food chemistry, sociology and statistics, education, child study, economics, economic geography, physiology, hygiene, public health, psychology and domestic architecture and furniture. With the new division came the first major in child study at an American liberal arts college."[10]

For example, a typical major in child study in euthenics includes introductory psychology, laboratory psychology, applied psychology, child study and social psychology in the Department of Psychology; the three courses offered in the Department of Child Study; beginning economics, programs of social reorganization and the family in Economics; and in the Department of Physiology, human physiology, child hygiene, principles of public health.[11]

The Vassar Summer Institute of Euthenics accepted its first students in June 1926. Created to supplement the controversial euthenics major which began February 21, 1925, it was also located in the new Minnie Cumnock Blodgett Hall of Euthenics (York & Sawyer, architects; ground broke October 25, 1925). Some Vassar faculty members (perhaps emotionally upset with being displaced on campus to make way, or otherwise politically motivated) contentiously "believed the entire concept of euthenics was vague and counter-productive to women's progress."[12]

Having overcome a lukewarm reception, Vassar College officially opened its Minnie Cumnock Blodgett Hall of Euthenics in 1929.[9] Dr. Ruth Wheeler (Physiology and Nutrition - VC '99) took over as director of euthenics studies in 1924. Wheeler remained director until Mary Shattuck Fisher Langmuir (VC '20) succeeded her in 1944, until 1951.[12]

The college continued for the 1934-35 academic year its successful cooperative housing experiment in three residence halls. Intended to help students meet their college costs by working in their residences. For example, in Main, students earned $40 a year by doing relatively light work such as cleaning their rooms.[13]

29 comments:

woodensplinter said...

I know that you took the time and made the efforts required to teach your children how to garden, cook, clean, sew, repair, maintain - and I recall perhaps even forage and subsist? What do you recommend for these children who barely know how to wash their own asses and have never been taught how to take care of themselves and of others?

Nakajima Kikka said...

Hoe economics is the only viable path open to a society that functions entirely on debt.

CNu said...

My mother and grandmothers would have strenuously begged to differ...,

CNu said...

I wish I could find the scene from Less than Zero where Julian is turned out for his drug debts...,

Nakajima Kikka said...

Of course. American society wasn't entirely fueled by debt back then; other options were available. Your mother and grandmother also most probably believed in some kind of "Final Day of Reckoning", when all accounts would be settled.

Of course, as enlightened, sophisticated men of the early 21st century, we both know for a fact that the Devil does not exist.

CNu said...

They knew and spoke rather bluntly about the difference between folks whose prayers counted for anything, and folks whose prayers "never left the room". As for the "Final Day of Reckoning" - I never ever heard any such thing from either one of them. The certain conviction that potato heads must inevitably wind up on poleaxes is an innovation of their demon spawn whom they both characterized as having a mean streak and no particular affection for "these humans"...,

Vic78 said...

So this means they stop funding climate change denials?

John Kurman said...

Malcom P. McLean (intermodal freight). Got to put him up there with Charles Parsons, or Richard Trevithick and Oliver Evans (high pressure steam engines). Hell to be in maritime industries now, though. Prison on water.

Tom said...

Whoa there! Now you're getting into people's religious values!

CNu said...

This priceless moment alone http://youtu.be/WaAJYm1S1fI?t=2m43s made it all worthwhile. Thank you for that!

Vic78 said...

http://youtu.be/K2v-8ctq5x4

Vic78 said...

Don't they believe in oil making leprechauns underground or something?

umbrarchist said...

What I find curious is the lack of turbine cars beginning in the 60s. There was even a movie about them with Doug McClure.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058296/

And then turbine cars were banned from the Indy 500 after one almost won in 1968. Turbines do not vibrate themselves to death like piston engines.

umbrarchist said...

"Almost a third of the world’s wealth is now created by
international trade."

We have a problem with the word WEALTH. Cash flow is not wealth. But we behave as the the economy is Cash Flow. It is economic activity. Suppose every American had his home paid for. How much could we reduce cash flow without reducing quality of life? But this cash flow transfers wealth upward in the payment of interest and wealth is lost in the depreciation of all f the junk. How much of the stuff off that container ships lasts more than 5 years?

CNu said...

cash flow transfers wealth upward in the payment of interest and wealth is lost in the depreciation of all of the junk.Intellectually and Empirically Crucial Comment of the Year!!!! The first principle and paramount practical concern of the nascent young banker (Tapeworm 101) - is to learn how to identify free cash flows in a borrower's P&L.

BigDonOne said...

Full power can be applied almost instantly with piston engines (and electrics). Turbines take several seconds to ramp up. Wasn't a big deal at Indy because they run near full power continuously.....

BigDonOne said...

The *Goal* is to maximize happiness and fulfillment, not necessarily to be wealthy, viz. all these bankers recently committing suicide---> http://business.financialpost.com/2014/02/21/why-high-finance-workers-commit-suicide/

Acquire only the 'junk' you need to accomplish the goal, the rest of it is just a continuous maintenance headache. BD has a 'stately pleasure dome' you wouldn't believe.....

Vic78 said...

There isn't a standard for happiness and fulfillment. People find happiness in different ways. Is this American culture really fulfilling?

BigDonOne said...

@Vic --- America: flooding with millions of illegal aliens doing anything to get in. Only a few citizens leaving (pissed off at no longer being able to easily shelter earnings). How better to assess cultural (or any other kind of) American fulfillment?


rotflmaoCentral Africa? Islamistan? Beijing(cough,cough)China? One-sq.ft.per-person-Japan? 30-lashes for spitting-on-street-Singapore? Gimme-yer-gunsAustralia/Canada/UK?


Folks with enough bread to live anywhere they want (Bill Gates, Tiger Woods, Warren Buffett, dot.com zillionaires), how many of them don't live in the USA? Park Avenue penthouses, NYC where the action is....where they are closest to 'their-own-kind...'

Vic78 said...

It'll take 3 planet earths for the rest of the world to be fulfilled like the US. I really don't know how to measure fulfillment; I don't care too much for money being the measurement. What good is wealth when you can't drink the water?

BigDonOne said...

MonicaLewinskification "... Beyoncé could not be a better role model for my girls," [The First Fuzzlim] said, according to US Weekly. .......

BigDonOne said...

MonicaLewinskification "... Beyoncé could not be a better role model for my girls," [The Firsst Fuzzzlim] said, according to US Weekly. .......http://www.usmagazine.com/celebrity-news/news/president-barack-obama-beyonce-could-not-be-a-better-role-model-for-my-girls-2012189

BigDonOne said...

No higher-profile media is ever going to acknowledge the non-PC truth. That includes New York Times, Wikipedia, and Google, all of whose content is heavily censored to hide, delete or soft-pedal anything [OMG] "offensive" no matter how real, truthful, correct -- e.g., you have to go to [Subrealsim-censored website] to get serious coverage of massive rampant black-on-white violence......

Nakajima Kikka said...

My point is that your mother and grandmother, and mine, lived in a very different society. In the society we live in now, where economic life is completely dependent on debt-fueled consumption, where most institutions that supported individual well-being and family life have been shredded, where the old religion becomes less and less relevant to people's daily lives all the time, but no other religion is able to step up to replace it, where LIfe Itself seems to have no meaning beyond mass consumption, hoe economics is the inevitable outcome. American schools don't do home economics any more.

Resisting hoe economics, personally or as a family, at this point requires withdrawal into a subculture whose members mutually support each other in such resistance.

umbrarchist said...

And that explains why they were banned from Indy? And there have been turbine driven electrics. The turbine used to produce the electricity for the electric motors.

umbrarchist said...

One of the curious things about the technological junk of the last 50 years is most people don't know enough to evaluate it. So psychologists are hired to do the marketing to tell us what happiness is. LOL

CNu said...

Resistance requires will power and self-sufficiency

Nakajima Kikka said...

It requires will power. It doesn't require self-sufficiency, but it does require that you bring something useful to the table of whatever subculture you want to become part of. The subculture as a whole, though, needs to be reasonably self-sufficient, though.

Such as a stable, functioning religious organization that has stood the test of time, for example.

CNu said...

Ah how the rich and privileged had fallen. Rip loved facilitating beautiful young Julian's fall into the bowels of hell.

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