Repository: UIHistories Project: Dedication - Home Economics - Challenge of Home Economics [PAGE 15]

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THE CHALLENGE FOR HOME ECONOMICS IN THE HOME

Pauline Park Wilson Knapp Dr. Pauline Park Wilson Knapp is director of the Merrill-Palmer School, Detroit, Michigan. Her bachelor's degree in home economics is from the University of Kentucky and her master's degree and doctorate in psychology from Teachers College, Columbia University. She was dean of women at the University of Alabama 1945-1946 and dean of home economics at the University of Georgia 1946~1952. She is the author of many publications and articles on the education of college women. The following is a digest of the talk given by Pauline Park Wilson Knapp, on Thursday, April 4, 1957, at the dedication symposium of Bcvier Hall and the Child Development Laboratory. The dedication of Bcvier Hall and the Child Development Laboratory marks not only this period of growth in the School of Home Economics at the University of Illinois, but gives tangible evidence of the effectiveness of the field of home economics as an ongoing part of higher education and of the belief on the part of those who made these buildings possible in the importance of the field to the people of the state. The major goal of home economics is to provide the kind of education that makes possible a better way of life for individuals and for families. In achieving this goal, home economics relates the subject matter from the many fields which do contribute to a better understanding of how individuals can find for themselves the kind of life that is enriching and satisfying through their life within the family and through extension into the broader community living. Education in the field of home economics cannot ever be standardized since it must be so integrated with the changing scene that it offers the kind of education which is individualized within the home to meet the particular needs of that family. With its basic objective — the home — the field of home economics is then primarily concerned with three major foci around which all subject matter, whether from the social sciences, arts, humanities, or biological or physical sciences, is related. The first focus, and the most important, is the individual who lives, grows up and learns his way of life within the family. The teaching of home economics must place its emphasis upon those individuals who are in families today and who will ultimately form families for themselves. It is their understanding and acceptance of themselves, what they 15