DOCUMENT RESUME

ED 087 911 CE 001 003

AUTHOR Holzkamper, Chariot, Ed.TITLE Insights: Proceedings of the Conference on Consumer

and Homemaking Education (Anaheim, California,November 9-10, 1970).

INSTITUTION California Community Colleges, Sacramentc. Office ofthe Chancellor.; California State Dept. of Education,Sacramento. Bureau of Homemaking Education.

PUB DATE Nov 70NOTE 44p.

EDRS PRICE MF-$0.75 HC-$1.85DESCRIPTORS Change Agents; *Changing Attitudes; *Conference

Reports; Conferences; *Consumer Education;Educational Innovation; Educational Programs;*Homemaking Education; Individualized Instruction;Program Development; Program Improvement; SchoolCommunity Relationship; *Speeches; WomensEducation

IDENTIFIERS *California

ABSTRACT"Insights" presents the texts of the major addresses,

panel reactions, and proceedings of the first State-wide conferenceon consumer and home-making education, entitled "The Challenge ofChange." A theme that emerged was the need for greater cooperationbetween classroom and community in teaching students not only aboutthe systems that guide their lives but also how to utilize thesesystems at their functional level. A second theme was that of themeaning to teachers of-massive, accelerating, overwhelming change asa force, rather than an abstraction. A third theme was the challengepresented to the creat:Lve teacher by the growing sensitivity tcmultiple life-styles, cultures, and values that exist in everyclassroom and community. Other topics were the impact of change, thewoman's place, individualized instruction, the dual role cf women,the emerging consumer, involving community agencies and people, themarket place (about deceptive advertising), and becoming a changeagent. (SA)

Proceedings of the Conference on Consumerrn Homemak :ng Education,

U S DEPARTM,mT OF NEALTI4,EDUCATIOTI A ,NELFARENATIONAL iRST ITUTE OF

EDUCATIONTHIS DOCUMEH1 HAS BEEN REPRODIKED EXACTLY AS RECEIVED FROMTHE PERSON ON ORGANIZATION ORIGIN

ATINTI POINTS Of VIEW OR OPINIONSSI:.1k D UO NOT MEct.SSARiLY REPRE

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ContentsRetrospect ... An Introduction 1

More Humane Human Beings 2

Thoughts of the Responding Panel 6

The Impact of Change 9

A Woman's Place 10

Individualize Instruction! 14

How Do You Handle Machismo? 16

Coping 16

Discussions and Multi-Forums 18.19

The Dual Role 20

You Undergird 23

You Have It 23

The Emergency Consumer 24

Action! 29

Cooperation 29

Involving Community Agencies and People 30

Resources for Consumer Education 33

Being Relevant 33

The Marketplace 34

Becoming a Change Agent 38

The passage of the Vocational Education Amend-ments of 1968 brought new opportunities to home eco-nomics programs in the public schools of our nation. Theexpanded program gives increased emphasis to meet-ing the contemporary needs of youth and adults withparticular attention to the consumer aspects of all partsof home economics instructional programs. Special con-sideration is also focused on providing programs forpersons in economically depressed areas and areas withhigh rates of unemployment.

The Consumer and Homemaking Education Conte-ence, "The Challenge of Change," was planned to assi,,tteachers to understand the potential of the new legisla-tion; present new concepts in several of the areas of

home economics; identify more effective means of serv-ing the contemporary needs of youth and adults; andshare new methods and materials for the developmentof timely Consumer and Homemaking Educationprograms.

The conference was a giant step toward the revitaliza-tion of California programs. The Challenge of Change.vas highlighted in numerous ways leading to an opti-qu. )1 involvement of conference participants. This pub-lication will refresh our memories and help us refocusour energies on the task that awaits.

Wesley P. SmithState Director ofVocational Education

Presented ByBureau of Homemaking EducationDepartment of EducationState of California

In Cooperation WithOffice of the ChancellorCalifornia Community Colleges

Prepared ByChariot Hol2kamperEditorial and Production Supervision

Dick BierschArt Director

retrospect

"Insights" presents the major ad-dresses, panel reactions, and proceed-ings of the first state-wide conferenceon Consumer and Homemaking Ed-ucation, held November 9.10, 1970,in Anaheim. The conference wascalled "The Challenge of Change."

Hopefully, this publication will ex-tend to those who could not attendthe meeting an understanding of theideas proposed and the projects dem-onstrated and discussed. For the1,000 persons who were in atten-dance, the highlighted proceedingsare offered as a catalyst for continuedprofessional growth.

Several recurring themes ap-peared throughout the conference,not by design, but perhaps from theurgency of the times in which we live.Speaker after speaker underscoredthe need of the classroom and thecommunity to merge in teaching stu-dents not only about the systems thatguide our lives, but how to utilizethese systems at their functional level

as community resources. A secondtheme to emerge was that of themeaning to teachers of massive, ac-celerating, overwhelming change asa force, rather than an abstraction.A third current in the conference wasthe growing sensitivity to multiply life-styles, cultures, and values that existin every classroom and community tochallenge the creative teacher.

"Insights" shares the events of theconference as brief pictorial glimpsesand printed words: it cannot antici-pate the !earnings. The future will pro-vide those insights.

BEST COPY AVAILABq

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Dr. Ashley MontaguAnthropologistPrinceton University

The subject I am going to speak on is, indeed, per-haps the most challenging before us. Apropos of it,there is a piece of history which is very relevant to whatI am going to talk about and which I must convey to you.

It was in New York at the Bronx Zoo some years ago,where a much valued chimpanzee escaped the confinesthereof and, since he was a very amiable and gentleand intelligent creature, a casual search was institutedfor him. After four days, he was found in the stacks ofthe New York City Library. In his left hand he was hold-ing a copy of the Bible and in his right hand he was hold-ing a copy of i.)arwin's "Origin of Species." When askedfor an explanation of this, he meekly replied, "Well, Iwas merely trying to discover whether I am my broth-er's keeper or my keeper's brother."

As educators, it seems to me this is the dilemma inwhich not only chimpanzees find themselves, but themost relevant of dilemmas which we must resolve. As aresult of the misunderstanding of what we are on thisearth for, we have brought ourselves very near the edgeof doom.

Let me say at once that I think the only philosophi-cally tenably position for a pessimist in time of crisisis optimism. Or as we used to say in Vienna during thefirst World War when asked about the situation on theWestern front, "The situation is hopeless, but notserious." A sense of humor is very desirable in lookingupon the human condition because it offers us a per-spective not only upon our fellow human beings, butupon ourselves. And without it, life would become atragedy for most of us who see deeply enough into thenature of the human condition.

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The American family is, from my standpoint as ananthropologist who has made human beings his prin-cipal study, an institution for the systematic produc-tion of mental illness in each of its members. That,essentially, is the American family, It does this inno-cently enough and with all the well-meaning in theworld. But meaning well is not enough.

As a people we have chosen to follow the life oftechnology to such an extent we are about to technolo-gize ourselves out of existence. There was a greatAmerican human being who said, "Things are in thesaddle and ride mankind." That was Ralph WaldoEmerson. We have become enamoured of things tosuch an extent that we make things out of humanbeings.

Every baby has the potentiality for becoming a hu-man being and the family is the institution designed toturn him into a human being. Instead of which we haveprogressively turned our human beings into people. Wehave very few human beings left.

Just as we mistake instruction for education, we mis-take the term "perst..a" for human being, The very factthat there are numbers of persons animated by thenecessity to breathe does not make them humanbeings. What has happened in most cases to thesepersons is that they have been rendered into tragedies. . . living tragedies . . . and living tragedies is, in thisconnection, what this potentially human being was cap-able of becoming and what he has been caused tobecome by his family, by his society.

Hence, the family stands at the very core and centerof society. What is done in it is what will be done insociety and, in an inter-active feedback relationship,

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IIUMCIA BeingsTHE KEYNOTE ADDRESSTHE FAMILY: THE CHALLENGE OF CHANGE

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"As a result of the misunderstanding of what we are on this earth for, we have broughtourselves very near the edge of doom."

they will reciprocally feed upon each other. The valuesa society most worships are the values which will besiphoned through the family to the children and in whichthey will be conditioned.

In America, the supreme value is Success. Everyonemust be a success. This means a success by the mea-sure of external validations and in terms of the numberof such validations that you can accumulate from thevary earliest days of your life. In this way, people knowthat you are a success. Hence, in the family, you winthe approval of your father if you behave in a mannerdesigned to make a success of yourself and you win thelove of your mother if you do what she believes will begood for you. Mothers communicate to their childrenthat love is something you bargain for; it is conditionalon your good behavior. "I will love you if you are good.If you are bad or do what you want to do and it is in-compatible with what I want you to do, I won't loveyou." In other words, we bargain for love.

A child, faced with the dilemma, either will do whathe wants and risk losing love and approval, or he willrepress what he wants to do and retain those things.This is known as conditional love. The one thing in theworld that should be completely unconditional lovewe make conditional because it is part of the marketingculture in which we are conditioned. You bargain foreverything. You buy and sell.

The only reason a parent exists, from a biologicalpoint of view, from a social point of view, from a psy-chological point of view from any point of view youcan consider is to humanize this creature, this child,through the agency of love.

What we have discovered about love is very simple.Behavioral scientists, anthropologists, physiologists,biochemists, all of them without having the faintestidea that they were just working for me to bring thismessage to you have contributed their disparatefindings so that I can now show you love in an x-ray.I can hold it in my hand; it is not an abstraction. Forexample, I can take 100 x-rays, 50 of children fiveyears of age who haven't been loved and 50 who have,

mix them up, and give them to you saying, "You don'tknow anything about reading x-rays, but look at theseand find something in some that isn't in the othersand then separate them." You will get nearly 100 per-cent correct answers. What you will see in the bonesof these children who have been unloved is a network. . . criss-crossing parts of the bone which 'end it it'sgreat strength . . . which is reduced in the unlovedchildren. They have lines, very radial opaque lines, ofretarded growth at the ends of their bones. Justimagine what happens in the brain. I can tell you. Ourchildren who haven't been adequately loved have dif-ferent kinds of brains, different kinds of nervous sys-tems, different kinds of biochemical systems . . . allof which is important.

They are not as good learners, for example, as chil-dren who have been adequately loved. They oftenbecome problem children. Why? Because if you frus-trate the most important of their needs then you pro-duce in them behavior which compels your attentionto their need for love. This is what we call being bad,evil, naughty, delinquent, unlovable. This is the childwho stands most in need of our love. He has been themost failed. The only way you can ever recover him tosome semblance of the humanity to which he wasoriginally oriented is by giving him that love.

We all know about (ove. Ain't love "gland"? Afterall, we marry for love even though we are unable todistinguish it from sex and identify it with sex. We"fall in love" which is our way of describing it . . .

descending from a higher to a lower plane. The great-est authorities on love are right here in California, inHollywood. Sermons are preached on love. God is love.Everyone knows that. Well, I suggest to you that Loveis God.

So we know a great deal about love. Next to democ-racy it is the second most often used word. The factis that we know very little about love because an enor-mous number of people have been unloved to death.There is a great deal of unloving love behind the showof love. Those words, "unloving love," were used by

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Aeschylus, the Greek dramatist, 2,300 years ago. Itwas a problem even then . . , a great absence of lovebehind the show of love.

How did we get this way? Well, we got this waysimply by enlarging our numbers to such dimensionsthat we ceased to be involved with each other. If youwere to go today and live among people who were likeour ancestors over the last three million years theeskimos, for example, or the Australian aborigines, orthe pygmies you would find them living in very tinygroups where everyone knows everyone else, every-one is involved with everyone else, and everyone loveseveryone else.

I use the word "love" without defining it. I do notagree with Socrates who said we must define our termsat the beginning of an inquiry. I believe we can definethem only at the end because definitions can only bemeaningful at the end of an inquiry. Then I will tell youwhat love is and suggest to you, by giving you thatdescription, what you ought to do. For you see, nomatter who made you into what you have become, thatdoesn't for a moment relieve you of making yourselfover into what you ought to be. And there's the rub.What ought we to be and do?

To return to our hunting, food-gathering population.If you are a small population, you know everyone andbecause life is very precarious, you eat whenever youcan. You share everything to such an extent that if I

"A school should be a place where the bestdevelopment of a healthy human being . . .

. . . are taught to the child."

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have brought in the animal I have killed, I take theleast part of that animal and I take it last. I share itwtih everyone else first and with the older people be-cause they are the least able. I never do anything with-out thinking of the consequences of my conduct notonly to my fellow human beings, but to my fellow ani-mals with whom I am deeply involved and with myfellow inanimate nature, the rocks and woods andpools. I don't treat them falsely. I don't read a bookthat says "multiply and increase and subdue theearth . . " because I believe I am part of the earth,not superior to it.

So how did we become so disoperative, so un-healthy? Our hunting, food-gathering people are healthyby the measure that they live cooperatively. They areable to love, able to work, and able to play. We can'tlove . . . we love as we must, not as we ought. Wedon't work . . . we labor and many are engaged in laborthat they don't like. And certainly, we can't play . . .

just look at the way we play games. Baseball and foot-ball, for example.

Most people are unaware that man is only a 150 -pound non-linear servo-mechanism that can be whollyreproduced by unskilled labor. How did we get to thisstage where, by indulging in this unskilled labor, wehave proliferated from these tiny populations into aworld with 3.7 billion people and at the end of thiscentury, an expected population of 7 billion people?

values that have been verified for theone who is able to love, to work, and to play

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We got this way by the discovery of agriculture. It en-abled us, for the first time, to stay put in one placeand grow as much food as we warted. From this wewere able to supply as many people as we wanted.Those with the greatest amounts of land gained thegreatest amounts of power. Power is very corrupting andwhere do you go from that? To more power. You takethe power of other pecple. You raid them and thenyou collect your people and lands and you have urban-ization. You have the city, where for the first time youcan pass another person and not know who he is andfeel completely disengaged, uninvolved, and uncon-cerned.

What we have to realize is that we got off on thewrong foot. Man became atomized, fragmented, andfocused on becoming a success. This nation differsfrom other lands and other periods in that it enjoys themaximum opportunities for going- down this wrongroad to disaster. Americans have taken up success asa good thing and have been taught in their familiesthat "you must become a success because if you don't,what will you be?" And you dare not mention it, for noone is ever that other thing. So you must get A's inschool so that you can go to a good college where youwill get the appropriate degree. You may even go on tohigher degrees and die intellectually and spirituallyby degrees.

This is what we do to children in our families and inthe structures we create, namely, the schools. A schoolshould be a place where the best values that have beenverified for the development of a healthy human being. . . one who is able to love, to work, and to play . .

are taught to the child. If he is not taught these, hewill not learn how to be a humane human being.

Interesting word, humane. Whoever uses the word,humane? It is like the word, character. Who cares abouta person's character as long as he has personality. Asa chorus girl friend of mine once charmingly put it,"Personality let's you get by with fess intelligencethan would otherwise be necessary."

The errors being committed by the parents shouldbe corrected in the schools by those who stand in theplace of the parents. What is a teacher if not an ex-tended parent . . . a member of the extended family?What is the method he should be teaching by? Themethod of love. You can only teach anyone by lovingthem. It doesn't matter what the subjects are that youteach, the greatest gift a teacher can make to a studentis his character through the medium of love. What wehave learned about love we have learned in the labora-tory studying fetuses, babies, and children who havebeen loved and unloved and comparing them. Fromthis we have teased out the following description oflove:

Love is behavior designed to confersurvival benefits in a creativelyenlarging manner upon another.

Quantity in life . . . the living of a long time . . . isnot important. It is the quality that we put into thequantity. Without quality, it does not matter how long-enduring the quantity is, it is likely to be more dis-astrous because most people in our culture tend togrow older without growing up.

Love is the communication to the other that you areprofoundly involved in their welfare; that you are deeplyinterested in the fulfillment of their unique potential-ities; that you will never commit the supreme treasonof letting them down when they are in the most needof you; that you are standing by to give them all thesupport and sustenance and stimulation they requirefor their growth, increasing dimension, and increasingability to be the kind of human being that you are beingto them.

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This doesn't mean that you give people a completelyundisciplined kind of freedom.This can only be thoughtof by people who do not understand the meaning offreedom or love, because love has a firmness that isas strong and enduring as anything could possibly be.When you say, "No," the child who has been adequatelyloved understands this is well meant for his welfare,even though he may experience it as a frustration.Frustration is very necessary because a child has todevelop abilities which will enable him or her to be amature human being who can postpone immediate sat-isfactions for long-term goals. Every human being hasto learn this. The adequately loved child will acceptyour "No" as healthily as your "Yes." There is nogreater responsibility than freedom . . . the freedomto be free and allow others their freedom.

We are in a precarious state. We are unable to lovebecause we have never learned to love. My appeal toyou is, as teachers, you are the unacknowledged legis-lators of the world. You can't do everything, but youmust do something if the species is to survive. Whatyou must do is turn yourselves into loving human be-ings that you are capable of being. You cannot producechange unless you are, yourself, a loving person. Theonly way another learns is by what you do.

And so, dearly beloved brethren, having completedthis sermon, let me end on a light note and tell you astory that should illuminate for you what you oughtto do.

Some 50 years ago, there were, at Cambridge Uni-versity, two undergraduates who had just taken theirBA degrees, which they properly celebrated that eve-ning. They vowed to each other that wherever theymight be, they would meet 30 years hence. They did.One, in the interim, had become an admiral in thenavy and the other had become a missionary in theNew Hebrides. Like most Englishmen, both were ec-centric and both were fanciers of talking birds. Themissionary brought back his favorite talking bird andpresented it to his nautical friend. He gratefully re-ceived it and introduced it into the cage in which hisnautical bird was already perched. Whereupon themissionary bird took one long look and exclaimed,"What must we do to be saved?" And the nautical birdreplied, "Pump like hell, boys, or we'll all go down."

"Love is behavior designed to confersurvival benefits in a creativelyenlarging manner upon another."

thoughts of the responding panel...

BRUCE LYMBURN: My mind was blown! I was reallyhappy that he was as spontaneous as he was becauseI thought he really communicated well. I thought hisstatement about being human in a classroom was im-portant. I am at the point now in my classroom wherethere is an unwritten agenda of the teacher saying,"Trust me" and my saying, "But look what you havedone to me . . why should I trust you . . I want togo out and do things on my own learn on my own."This seemed to be what Dr. Montagu was saying, too.I am realizing in asking myself the question, "Why amI here?" that I am on this planet with all of you, thatI am not mindless, that I have many choices in fife,and that l have many things to do. I am interested inthe business of living and experiencing as much as Ican. I think the challenge to homemaking and voca-tional education (it should be called "life education")is to slow down and understand. It is to question andto cherish each other and what is happening in theworld and to celebrate that. I think school should bea conscious celebration of being alive and understand-ing things.DR. SAM WALLACE: I am awed by the responsibilitythat we have in the school system to do the thingssuggested here by Dr. Montagu. My responsibility ispersonnel in a large high school system and I thoughtas I listened to Dr. Montagu, "How can we in personnelor those who have charge of teacher selection find thekind of people he suggests?" In our brief conversationwith him, I asked that question. I don't think he hadtime to give a complete answer, but he did say theyshould be chosen for their capacity to love. I am con-cerned about this as I have observed teachers in theclassroom. We are losing this "capacity to love" or beconcerned because of our interest in subject matterand concern for developing skills. We are losing thatquality that makes a teacher memorable to a studentas someone who influenced their life.DR. SAMPLES: I am burning t3 say that I thinkteachers can express love in many ways. This abilityto give the student responsibility for his own learning,with the teacher offering resources and guidance andideas and support and freedom for the student tomake mistakes . . . this is one way of expressing lovefor the student, Dr. Montagu said another thing thatrather excited me, because I hadn't thought of it thatway. He said that the "teacher can transcend thestructure." I think this really applies to us in Consumerand Homemaking Education. We can get out of thatclassroom. We can work with community agencies andwith what is going on in the world. The business ofliving takes place in the classroom, that is true, butthe real business of living goes on outside the class-room. I'd like to share one other thought, too. We getso busy that sometimes we forget that a teacher, in a40 minute period, has many opportunities to have asignificant effect on a student. The understanding winkor the pat on the back, any understanding of behavior. . . it just takes a second, but those seconds aresignificant.

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VIRNA CANSON: I have two words to describe thespeech by Dr. Montagu. They are "Right on, BrotherMontagu." What I am trying to say is that Dr. Montagugot to the heart of the ingredient which Dr. MartinLuther King identified. It is the ingredient of love ...this ingredient that says, "Reach out." It is true thathe did not tell us how to identify the unloving . . .

those afraid to love. I think it might be possible byobserving who identifies the unlovable and for whatreasons. Are there those who are unloved without evenopening their mouths? Are they those whose hair islonger or who look different? Are they unlovable? I livewith the image of my father who taught school inOklahoma for 52 years. As I think back now andremember the many young people I heard him tellcould become president of the United States . . . theywere ragged and barefoot and came to school witha cold biscuit and a cold sausage . . . the teacher,in my mind, is my father. He was a man of greatempathy who looked above those outward appearancesthat might be termed "unlovable." Dr. Montagu saidthe single individual is an important ingredient. Thekind of work I do...legislative work for the NAACP...makes me particularly sensitive to the way teachersare structured and institutionalized and how creativeteachers have to deal with administrators. Dr. Montagurecognized that a single individual can get fired, but heplaced the burden on what one person can do . . .

one creative, loving person in the classroom ... to be-gin a change and to have it spread as "bread cast uponthe water."MARY ANN SCHOELL: Dr. Montagu has a great linein his little tongue-in-cheek book, "Up the Ivy," inwhich he says, "It is better to remain silent at therisk of being taken for a jackass than to open yourmouth and remove all doubt." Having opened mine,I will now put my foot in it. I am absolutely convincednow that we must stop teaching. I don't mean resign.I mean we must use our classrooms as environmentsfor learning and growing and we must grow to thepoint where we are ready to let students write theirown program of learning. I am trying it in three ofmy classes. It is absolutely exciting! . . . it is utterlyexhausting! . . . and I am trying to put together thecourage to try it in two other classes. The supposedlyvalid reason for not letting this happen at more schoolseven at the secondary level is that "the students arenot ready ... they do not know how to handle theirfreedom." This is true in some cases, but how willthey every learn unless they stumble and fall. I amegotistical enough to think, "What better place to fallthan in my room." We do divide it down into individualstructure .. . individual subject matter . . but it mustnot be so structured that it structures out the student.For those of you among us who are administrators,you must help us break out the walls of the classroom.We must get our students other places and let themsee how others live. If we do not, we are too myopic.I think this is terribly important, this and loving theunlovable student who is the most difficult to love.

Panel ChairmenMrs. Donald P. KrotzChairman of Joint CommitteeOn Vocational Education

Panelists Virna Canson and Dr. Sam Wallace.

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THE PANELISTS

Bruce LymburnStudent MemberState Board of Education(Newport Harbor High School)Mary Ann SchoellTeacherSan Dieguito High School

Dr. Sam WallaceAssistant SuperintendentKern Joint Union High School DistrictVirna CansonState Advisory Council onVocational EducationDr. Merna SamplesChairman, Home Economics DepartmentCalifornia State College at Long Beach

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I came upon a quotation the other day that seemed tobe speaking directly to the times in which we are living andto this Conference as well. It was written by CharlesDickens, and I think it is possible that you may recognizeit: "It was the best of times; it was the worst of times. Itwas the age of wisdom; it was the age of foolishness." Washe not describing today? For surely we live in the best oftimes in many, many ways, and yet, the tension, turmoiland the stress sometimes make it appear the worst oftimes. We search almost frantically for a way to relatehumans and society in a harmonious manner in a troubledworld.

Our opportunities as consumer and homemaking edu-cation teachers have never been greater nor have the chal-lenges been so imposing as those we face today. Assomeone said recently, "No success in life can compen-sate for failure in the home."

We selected "The Challenge of Change" as the themeof this Conference in the belief that the most crucial prob-lem facing us as teachers and as American citizens ischange ... that all of the other social, educational, politi-cal and economic problems grow from the root cause ofmassiv, , accelerating, overwhelming change. This changeis shifting our values, it's overturning our institutions, andit's tearing at our heritage.

Hopefully . . . during this conference . . . we will cometo understand that change is not an abstraction, but oneof the most powerful and least understood forces which isat large in our world today. It is a reality and we as edu-cators are in the center of its roaring current.

Seldom does the subject of change capture generalinterest . . . much less reach the best-seller list of whatAmericans are reading. Such a book, however, has reachedthat pinnacle. It is being widely discussed today in boardrooms, in classrooms, and in living rooms. It is AlvinToffler's book, "Future Shock."

In it, Toff ler prepares the reader by stating: "If thelast 50,000 years of man's existence were divided intolifetimes of 62 years each, there have been 800 suchlifetimes. Of these, fully 650 were spent in caves. Onlyduring the past 70 lifetimes has it been possible for mento communicate with each other through writing. Onlyduring the past six lifetimes did masses of men ever seethe printed word. Only during the past four has it beenpossible to measure time with any precision. Only in thelast two haS anyone anywhere used an electric motor. Andthe overwhelming majority of all the material goods weuse in daily life today have been developed in this the800th lifetime."

C. P. Snow, the novelist and scientist, writes that "untilthis century, social change was so slow that it would passunnoticed in one person's lifetime. This is no longer so.The rate of change has increased so much that our imagi-nation cannot keep up."

Discovery. Application. Impact on society. This is thechain reaction of change. It is now a sharply rising curveof acceleration in human social development. This thrustcan no longer, by any stretch of the imagination, be con-sidered "normal." Our institutions cannot respond fastenough and its impact is shaking them. This is certainlytrue of education!

M. Catherine Welsh, ChiefBureau of Homemaking Education

State Department of Education

But accelerated change is only half the story. The otherhalf . . . the really important half of the story . . . is whatthe speed-up does to the individual. We are being bom-barded with information flow and new situations of un-manageable proportions things, people, places, events,competing ideologies.

In the two days before us, we can merely "scratch thesurface" of change as it affects us as individuals and asteachers of Consumer and Homemaking Education. Yetit is truly a challenge that we can carry back to our class-rooms and community projects. If this Conference does itsjob well, it will be helpful in putting change into contextfor us and of helping us determine priorities.

What are some of the changes we are grappling withand to which this Conference plans to address itself?

One is the family. We have seen in our lifetime the800th lifetime the end of the "extended family" of pre-industrial times and the emergence of the present-day"nuclear family" of parents and children. But what aboutthe future of the family in the post-industrial, techno-logical 'age? We are told by some that the family is doomed

. that it will be a temporary relationship at best. Otherscontend,. with equal vigor, that the very turbulence of ourtimes will lead to stronger families . . . that the familywill serve as "portable roots" in anchoring one against thehurricane of change.

We are confident that our keynote speaker this morningwill provide us with some stimulating and provocativeinsights concerning the role of the family in the yearsahead.

Another change we see taking place today is the emer-gence cf a new self-image for the American woman. Freedfrom the drudgery of housework and unplanned child-bearing, the young woman of today is rapidly movinginto a dual role of homemaker and wage earner. What willthis dual role do to the institution of marriage? To theconcept of parenthood? And, as a matter of fact, to themale role in family life?

We see about us today the proliferation of sub-cultures.These sub-cultures offer a variety of distinct life-styles thatspell mote potential freedom for the individual and lessconformity to group pressure. We know, from our dailyexperiences with students, that they are anxious to ex-periment with a variety of life-styles until they find onethat offers them the potential for personal fulfillment.Our role, as teachers, is to equip these young people withthe tools they need for this decision-making.

We are seeing the long overdue "rise of expectations"among the disadvantaged in our communities. Minorityand low-income citizens are demanding jobs with dignity;personal respect; decent housing; good schools; and goodmedical services. In essence, a more rewarding life. Asteachers of Consumer and Homemaking Education, wehave the knowledge and skills of direct relevance to thismovement among the disadvantaged. The socio-economicneeds of families . . . of all families will be examined atthis Conference.

The impact of change affects the things we buy andhow we buy them. We are told that this generation is see-ing the "end of permanence" and that we are entering intothe "throw-away" era edible coatings, biodegradable,and a host of other new terms, most of which I can't evenpronounce. We will change homes, furnishings, clothingall things at an extremely high rate of turnover. It isimportant, therefore, that we grasp the meaning of intelli-gent consumerism and that we develop sound teachingmethols to cope with man's relationship to products ...to things.

Change is affecting our relationships with people andinstitutions as well. At no time in history have we felt theneed for interdependence as we do today. The humanservices in all communities are destined to grow at a phe-nomenal rate during the coming decade and we, as teach-ers, must know the community resources available for usto live interdependently.

As so the family and its future role . . . the socioeconomic needs of all families ... the dual role of women. . . the emerging interest in consumer affairs . . . thelinkage between community resources and people . .these are topics that we will discuss during the next twodays.

9

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I

laceWhether I like it or not, I have been classified as

"Women's Lib." I don't know what you think aboutWomen's Lib, but that is the first thing I want to getstraight with you. You better not put down Women's Lib,because you have a lot to do with it.

I prefer to call it the Women's Movement, revivedafter 50 years. You see, it really started with the suffra-gettes who got for you and me the right to vote. Whenthose women in 1920 carried banners it was a lot moredramatic than carrying banners today when it has be-come the order of the day. It took a great deal of couragefor Abigail Adams to tell her husband that if they werenot thinking of women when they were planning thiscountry and its future, they could forget it. Women'sLib has been around for a long time. It is only the conno-tation that has been given it by a group of women whodramatized it before the television cameras that makesit seem strange. Newsmen came to me and asked whatthe Women's Bureau thought. Before that, they didn'task what the Women's Bureau thought. As a matter offact, they didn't ask what women thought at all. It wasbeing decided for them.

Today, as I share a few ideas about the woman's rolein our society, I recall the young man on this morning'spanel who said that he couldn't speak from a homeeconomics background because it wasn't for men. Thatis the first thing I want to address. This has to end!Young men are a part of families and an important part.Children need fathers who do more than earn money tokeep the wives and children at home. You need only lookat the insurance figures on deaths of men 35 to 45 yearsof age during the past three years to determine whetherhe should be a dead martyr or a live husband and fatherfor children.

This has nothing to do with what you think Women'sLib is. The dual role for men and women is a vital neces-sity. I would remind you that in every emergency in thiscountry, women have done things the weaker sex wasnot supposed to be able to do. As soon as the emergencywas over, we said that "woman's place is in the home."Thus, we have notions that are not based on fact, buton myths and stereotypes.

You as teachers are being called upon to take a closeview of the role of women and families in the seventies.Maybe we will take a look at the number of women visit-ing psychiatrists, confined in mental hospitals, andusing drugs and alcohol. Maybe we will take a look atthe women who have been well prepared in school, buthave never had the opportunity to use that preparation. . . women who feel that regardless of a good husband,good home and healthy children, there is still somethinglacking. They are feeling the lack of recognition of theirabilities.

When we begin talking about the kind of love thatmust permeate our activity, I think we must distinguish

"I am suggesting that the very units of studyyou now have can be extended beyond asemester or year so that a youngster can`specialize' in something that will provide adecent job upon graduation."

11

Elizabeth Duncan KoontzDirector, Women's BureauU. S. Department of Labor

between the various kinds of love and add to it the kindthat means respect for the individualism of another.

We must realize that a large percentage of women arenot working for "pin money" anymore. They are not work-ing for a new piano so the kids can take music lessonsor a new refrigerator, but they are working to provide acollege education for their children. As you might sus-pect, a large group of the working women are 45 to 54.They are coming back to work in large numbers . .

many are widowed who find their pensions do not coverthe costs of living . . . many are educating other mem-bers of their family . . . and many are helping keep eld-erly parents. Women are a part of society and have tobear those responsibilities.

What does this mean in terms of jobs and opportuni-ties? There are traditional areas of work for womenteaching is the one with which I am most familiar thatwill require re-training. When the NEA publishes the factthat we have more teachers than we need, I challengethat as long as classes are 30 and 35 students in size.As long as we have to make excuses for not giving indi-vidual instruction . .. as long as we have to alibi for notgiving to children in trouble ... we don't have too manyteachers. Perhaps we have too many teachers trained incertain subject areas and that is where re-trainingcomes in for attention.

We women have been allowed to become teachers,provided we do not want to get into the "solid" subjectsand provided we don't want to get into administration.As a matter of fact, I think you ought to do somethingabout the fact that so many women have been removedfrom administrative positions by fiat of boards. We needgood administrators, period. Not men or women ... weneed good administrators. Our society is due more than"he was the best we could find" which means thatwomen were not even considered.

I am not talking about male and female, I am talkingabout high quality personnel. It wouldn't hurt my feel-ings a bit if there were men home economists, but thatwon't happen as long as people raise their eyebrows atmen who can sew well. It is changing, however, with theyoung men .. . guys with their infants strapped on theirbacks in the supermarkets, doing the family marketing.There are changes taking place and perhaps it will beour young people who will help us break away from theseroles of "women's work" and "men's work" that aregetting in the way of so much.

These narrow roles also carry over into employment.Two hundred universities in this country are being suedtoday for their admissions practices, recruitment, andscholarship awards. As much as we hate the term"quota" when we talk about race, we allow it when itcomes to women. Medical schools deny that they dis-criminate based on race or religion or national origin,but they never say a word about sex. The facts are thatthey do. There is a quota system in effect based on thefact that you don't invest that much training in youngwomen because they are going to get married and havebabies. I see no reason why women can't ba both doc-tors and married, especially since our society needsdoctors so badly. Why can't these changes in roledefinition take place because we need the skills ratherthan because society needs at a particular time andthen, when it has passed, the women are let go?

Today, as home economists, you are looking at newchallenges. Let me offer you this challenge. Why notextend home economics down into the elementarylevel so that it becomes a natural thing for both boysand girls. Remove the stigma of cooking so that boys(who know that the best chefs in the world are males)can cook without raised eyebrows and so that, as men,they can cook without having to have barbecue pits toexpress their desire to cook. Let us encourage children

to "do their own thing" according to their talents and,hopefully, get over the hangups people have about oc-cupations and interests. Too, it will help us to havepeople gainfully employed in the kinds of jobs that aresatisfying to them.

Unless we 'are willing to remove discrimination,period, then we will be forever battling the superficialand artificial and wasting our time, talent, and re-sources on these matters when there are so many moreserious ones to consider. For example, as we extend thelives of persons, we need male nurses. Yet even thosemen who served in the medical corps of the Army willnot even consider nursing as an occupation when theyreturn to civilian life. They know that if they were to gointo nursing, we would suspect they were not quitemasculine. Nevertheless, your elderly parents are goingto suffer the lack of trained personnel to attend theirneeds. Your fathers and grandfathers, uncles, brothers,are not going to have the service of male nurses whocould make them feel comfortable and help them whenthey need personal handling . . . all because of thisthing we have about "men's work" and "women'swork."

Your American Home Economics Association hasundertaken a contract with the U.S. Labor Department todo something we recognize as most needed. That is,to develop "career ladders" and "lattices" based onwhat you work with in home economics. The jobsdeveloped will be entry level, but I ask you to considerwhat you can do to make home economics more occu-pation-oriented. There are, today, nearly two millionwomen working in the household employment area.With the exception of one state, there is no state thatcovers these women with minimum wage requirements.There are some places where they get two dollars anhour and other places where workers receive as littleas thirty cents an hour. These are oftentimes womenwho are supporting families alone; many of then. aregirls who dropped out of high school when they becameunwed mothers and their schools would not acceptthem back or provide supplemental education. In theend, the public pays for all of this through welfare forthese families. We offer the girls nothing else. Or thepublic pays for it in penal institutions, since a largenumber of the women in detention centers are therefor prostitution because they have no means of gainfulemployment. They have no skills, little education, andthey usually have children. Thirty to ninety days forprostitution (where it is the seller who pays and thebuyer goes scot free) doesn't allow you much time totrain a person for gainful employment. What can wedo about all of this in our schools? I am not talkingabout making women into household employeesespecially minority women but I am talking abouttaking another look at the opportunities we provide forgirls and boys during the school years. I am asking youto not only improve the quality of America's homemakersand prepare girls to go on for professional training inhome economics, but develop career ladders that allowoptions. I am suggesting that the very units of studyyou now have can be extended beyond a semester oryear so that a youngster can "specialize" in somethingthat will provide a decent job upon graduation.

It is not a matter of pushing young women into jobsthey don't want, it is a matter of giving them choices.For the girls who do not do well in school, but havebrains and enjoy home economics, let's consider help-ing them gain a speciality in cooking or cleaning, help-ing them develop a business of food service- catering,specialized cleaning, home nursing, shopping for theelderly or child care services in their home.

Let's talk about child care. Those of you who taughtwhen your children were little probably found a lady

"As much as we hate the term 'quota' whenwe talk about race, we allow it when it comesto women."

12

close by your home who took care of your children asyou continued to teach. Perhaps you had a child carecenter since you could afford the private care. Whatabout those who can't afford child care centers?

They have had 0E0, CAP agency child care . . .

Social Security provides for child care on a matchingbasis of 75 percent from the federal government and25 percent from your state, but we do not find manytakers. Something, however, will have to be done be-cause otherwise we are going to have people dependentupon public assistance all because there is nowhere toleave their children while they are working. If we don'twant to take care of these women who stay at home totake care of their children, then we are going to have tostop talking about the working mother and how it fos-ters delinquency among the poor.

We have a lot of manpower programs that providechild care while the woman is in training, but the mo-ment the training ends there is no more child care.And if there is none available when you take a job, youcan't go to work. Maybe this helps you understand whypeople take training and then don't go to work.

You as home economists have a major contributionto make. There are many, many of these servicesneeded today and you offer the kind of training neces-sary at the first level of these jobs. I am asking you tojoin up with business administration and train some ofthose bright young people in home economics to be-come the managers of businesses that grow out of thoseunits you teach. Expand those units to be occupation-oriented even more than you have in the past. If it is atall possible in line with what you have heard this morn-ing, if there is a kid in there that has the skill and talentfor sewing, please teach her so that she can make a liv-ing at it. She does not have to learn everything aboutevery unit, she can learn about them later, or learn abit less about cooking, or home decoration, or infantcare. She really needs a way to earn money as the 16-to-19- year -old woman in our society has very little pro-vided her in the way of job training. This is especiallytrue for the girls whose families urge them to leaveschool at 16 so they can help bring money in . . . andthere are kids who hear that almost every day.

Take another look at what your field can lead to andthink seriously about where you can place your energiesand power to extend opportunities not only toward pro-fessionalism in home economics, but toward the work-a-day world where the demand is so great and where,unless we remove the stigma of low pay and low statusjobs, we will have done an injustice to ourselves andpeople. There is no such thing as work that does notdeserve dignity. We do not give it dignity when wedon't allow the people in it to feel they are of worth andto earn accordingly.

I have a lot of confidence in you and I hope you willbe helping the Bureau. Let us help you ...

"Maybe we will take a look at the number ofwomen visiting psychiatrists, confined tomental hospitals, and using drugs andalcohol."

:_:or-

Instruct'There are nearly 50,000 home economics teachers in

the United States. These teachers talk to virtually everyadolescent girl in the country and to quite a few of theboys. They talk to some adults, too. To show the latentpower of home economics teachers, if every one of usthoroughly taught one specific idea to each of our stu-dents say, for example, the simple truth that one doesnot always get a better product by paying the higherprice we could change the world. In this case wecould change the whole marketing system. If each of usreally taught it, that is. A moment ago I said that homeeconomics teachers talked to every girl in the country.I didn't say "taught" every girl because I'm not at allsure many of us cause real learning. If each of us reallytaught that basic consumer concept, it would mean thateach student learned it. If each student learned it,that would mean that each student would behave dif-ferently. She or he would ignore puffery and snobappeal in the ads . . . would search out unbiased testsfor quality would ask "than what?" when told thata product is "lighter" or "brighter" or "smoother" or"smarter." Home economics teachers are powerful,although they seldom use that power in a conscious way.

Since home economics teachers usually work withadolescents, they have a number of interesting profes-sional problems. These kids are energetic, volatile,easily bored, often suspicious, usually critical, some-times wise (sometimes in ways their teachers aren't),and are our only hope for the future. What goes on inyour classroom has to be relevant to both the student'spresent needs and concerns as well as her future lifeas a homemaker and wage earner.

To make classrooms relevant to both a student'spresent life and future life, the teacher hass-to be alertto each individual person. You must be aware, interested,concerned, and value your relationship with that person.

Yes, 1 say with each separate, unique, special, indi-vidual kid. How would you like it if, when you telephonedyour doctor for an appointment, the conversation wentlike this: "Hello, Mrs. Miller. Yes, of course, I remem-ber you. You say you have a health problem? Well, you'relucky since we are starting a class soon for 43-year-olds.We'll be concentrating on the common cold and asso-ciated respiratory diseases. You don't have a cold?Weil, you have had colds and you doubtlessly will againso you will find this a very informative class. You have

14

s.

a broken leg? What a shame . . . we set broken boneslast month! No, I really can't see you individually. Wedoctors just don't have time to work with individuals.We have to group our patients in order to reach themall. No, you can't go to another doctor. You live in myhealth district."

That's a fanciful example. No one really expectsschools to teach kids exactly what they need to knowwhen they want to know it. Schools are set up on theassumption that all 6-year-olds should learn to read, all12-year-old girls should learn to sely, and all 17-year-oldsshould learn American history. If the student is busylearning something else when the teacher says learn tosew, we say she has failed.

Some time ago, we noticed that kids were not allalike. When they were given certain tests, their scoreswere widely different. Those at the top were said to havea high I.Q. We separated them into a group and treatedthem differently; we separated out the bottom group andcalled them "special" or the "opportunity class"; wedivided the middles, too, into groups. Mrs. Sally Sew-ingteacher has five sections of seventh graders alllearning to sew. Some sections learn fast, other slower.In every section, there are some girls who adore theclass, some who hate it, some whose efforts merelywaste the cloth they cut, some who "forget" to bringthe cloth and pattern week after week (their motherscan't spare the money).

Across the hall, Mrs. Cora Cookingteacher has sevensections who are making baked custard. Yesterday theycopied the recipe and listened to the teacher tell themabout milk and eggs. Today they are mixing the ingre-dients and putting them in to bake. Tomorrow they willset the table properly and sit down in "families" of fourand cat the custard. In each of the seven groups, thereare some girls who do all the cooking for their ownfamilies preparing seven evening meals a week in anaverage time of 35 minutes, some who hate baked cus-tard, and some whose mothers never allow them nearthe kitchen.

If you look, watch, listen, read, and become aware,you will see differences among the girls that will meanmore to you than I.Q. differences. You can group kidsfor more efficient learning, but you have to diagnosetheir needs and group those with common educationalneeds.

"If every one of us thoroughly taught onespecific idea to each of our students say,for example, the simple truth that one doesnot always get a better product by payingthe higher price we could change theworld."

If you study the total society and its sub-groups, youwill see real problems that home economics can attack.I would like you to think about three different sub-groupsof students and the life styles to which they look for-ward. There are many more than three, but the threegroups I'd like to talk about are the so-called hippies,the children of the urban ghettos, and those from the"hard hat" families of the suburbs.

First, let's look at the hippies. Here is a group ofyoung people that home economists have ignored. Theignoring has been mutual. The "now generation" dis-dains the establishment and orderly societyand mostof us are eminently respectable. Yet the greatest interestin nutrition that I have seen outside of professionalnutrition circles belongs to my surfing friends and my"dropout" friends. They thirst for knowledge aboutfoods, they distrust the additives in foods, and theyscorn the processed results of the food industry. Theyfall for all kinds of fad diets and many of them are fail-ing themselves and their future children at the verything they care about, good nutrition, because we can-not adapt our message to them. We can't achieve theirrespect. They want to make stone ground whole wheatbread from scratch. They are interested in wild foods,mushrooms, vegetables, and how to stalk the wildasparagus. In the area of clothing, they disdain bras-sieres, but they care very much about looking correctwithin their own group. They give serious thought anddiscussion to clothing as a form of communication andas an art form for self-expression. They are brisklydropping out of what we think of as normal family life.What are we teaching them that is useful for communalfamily life? Are we teaching methods of conception con-trol ... how to arrive at group decisions . .. how toreally stretch a dollar? Are we so bound up in the 1970sthat we can't teach them the old-fashioned art of livingoff the land on a subsistence level? It isn't that we can't.It is that we don't want to because we don't approveof them.

There's the telephone again: "Hello? Yes, this is Dr.Jones. You are pregnant, your baby is due any day, andyou are suddenly bleeding? Who? Oh, you're one of thosehippie kids living out there in that commune! No, I

don't want to help you. Yes, I'm ar obstetrician, but Iwon't treat you because I don't approve of your valuesystem."

Is that the way a professional acts? I think that's theway a good many home economists have acted. Howmany of you have even seen the Whole Earth catalog?What do we know that they need to know? Lots. Besidesnutrition, decision making, subsistence living, clothingas an expression of dissent and belonging, they needto learn about child development, male and female rolerelationships, the role of values and how they developand change, how to choose and care for textile fabrics,

"Let's look at the hippies. Here is a groupof young people that home economists haveignored. The ignoring has been mutual."

15

Dr. Marjorie EastHead, Home Economics Education

Pennsylvania State College

the prevention of disease. They can teach us a lot, butthe exchange of teaching and learning would certainlybenefit them. Some of their values would change andsome of ours would, too.

The second sub-group I would like for us to examinetoday is what I will name the "ghetto poor." The childrenof ghetto families have very little money. This is factnumber one. They come from families which don't knowhow to cope in our increasingly complicated society.This is fact number two. They often have pretty shakyself-concepts. This is fact number three.

These kids live in a world of crises. Fathers or fa-ther substitutes come and go. Mothers are desperate,frightened. The law patrols and controls more tightlyin their neighborhoods than in the middle class areas.Yet crime does pay for some. The presumably honestbusiness world takes advantage of them and the "poorpay more." Health care is bad; it costs money andthere aren't enough doctors in the ghettos, anyway.Housing is bad; it is also expensive. It takes capital tomove to a home in the suburbs and it takes a certainself-confidence to move away from the friends andrelatives who understand ... from the local store thatgives credit. l don't have to elaborate. You have read theliterature.

What do we do? I assume you are at least aware ofthese students. Are you interested in them? Do yourelish the chances they give you to work with them?The opportunities to prove and improve your profes-sitnal competence? It seems to me that one of the mostimportant things we can teach these youngsters is howto cope. To cope with the everyday crises and the weeklycrises and the monthly crises. But coping is a compli-cated skill. It involves many sub-skills. They are manage-ment skills and they can be taught. Each of you think ofthe part of consumer education with which you are mostcomfortable. Within that subject area, think of one wayyou could teach each of these skills ... how to setreasonable short-term goals ... how to plan the use oftime ... how to predict regularities and probabilities ...how to substitute one resource for another ... how tofollow directions adequately ... how to find informationwhen it is needed.

You have heard me emphasize the "how to" words.Now let's examine how to teach a skill, any skill, whetherit be a physical or mental skill. The learner must want tolearn it, be motivated, see some reason for it, see somepersonal pay-off. The learner must see examples of it,see it in action, see models of that behavior. The learnermust examine the skill in detail, in its parts. Sometimesit helps to have a verbal explanation of the parts . . .

"See how my hand moves here" or "Notice that I amestimating here, but there I knew what would happen."A demonstration is a planned, explained performanceof a skill or of a small part of a skill.-The learner musttry to perform a skill, evaluate his performance, thentry it again. This is practice. Trying a new skill over andover, evaluating the performance each time. Then thelearner must use the skill and reinforce his learningregularly.

Now let's go back again and look at the sub-skillswhich make up coping. Think of the ways in which youmight teach ghetto students how to cope ... how to setreasonable short-term goals . .. how to plan the use oftime ... how to predict regularities and probabilities ...how to substitute one resource for another . . . how toread directions adequately . . . how to find informationwhen it is needed . . . not merely to find informationwhen it is needed, but "how to" find information.

Middle America is a new category we are hearingmuch about these days. Part of middle America is an-other group we call "hard hats." They are men whomake their living by their brains and their brawn

construction workers, as one example.These men and their families are not all alike any

more than all hippies or all ghetto families are alike. Butmany of them share a life style characterized by whatyou will recognize as old-fashioned American virtues.They believe, in hard work as legal tender and if a man(or a kid in school) works hard, he will eventually suc-ceed. They and their wives are individuals who make iton their own, who disdain the concept of social respon-sibility, who figure that if a person is poor it is his ownfault. They distrust intellectuals and they spoof, ridi-cule, avoid, OF ignore abstract thought. They don't muchwant their children to go to college, but if they do, theyhope they won't be contaminated by any new ideas. Theyhope only that they will come out with an increasedcompetence to earn money. These people lead a decentlife in the suburbs with comfortable houses filled withnew appliances, a car or two, and clothes enough. Theyare in debt to the installment company, but they have asm-all bank account and they live barely within theirincomes.

They are proper rule followers. The men may be gusty,lusty, and drunk on occasion, for they often have anarrow view of masculinity and try hard to live up to it.The women have a narrow view of what a woman is likeand try to force themselves into that sexpot-homemaker-mother mold. Their child-rearing practices are authori-tarian and punitive, based on the assumption thatparents know best. They are plenty worried by thechanges in the world and they try hard to live morecarefully by the rules, the rules they learned as children.

Alas, the rules are no longer useful. Parents oftendon't know best. Masculine and feminine roles are notwhat they were. Individual thrift doesn't work when youget four percent interest at the bank and inflation addssix percent per year to the cost of living.

What can home economics teach the children fromthese families? What they need is acculturation into theworld of today. I would start with sex roles, go to con-ception control, then to child development and childrearing practices. I would emphasize all the way the newworld we are into, the values that are appropriate, thenew habits and mores and attitudes that will make itpossible for us to live together through the coming yearsand for mankind to survive into the next century.

I am really serious as I tell you that home economicshad better get with it. Of course you don't know every-thing. Who does? So how long has it been since you readan issue of The Journal of Marriage and the Family? OrThe American Sociological Review, or, for that matter,The Journal of Home Economics? There is a whole newbody of literature by people called "futurists." I am notscolding you, I am telling you "how to." You can learnalong with your students. You can rez.d together. Youcan invite people to class who live in tomorrow's world.You can find someone who believes in women's lib todebate someone who doesn't. You can ask an architectto talk with you about the possibilities ahead for factory-built, mass-produced houses.

You will use these examples of the future to developthe really important partsof the lessons, the discussionof change and how it affects people, and how one canlearn to face, accept, fight, and cause change. You canface forward, rather than backward, nostalgically tryingto perfect family life to match the ideal of some pasttime. If you face backwards, you are backing into thefuture.

Today's message is individualize. Help each kid learnwhat she or he needs to know. The hippie, the hard-hat,the ghetto child. Can you be aware? Interested? Con-cerned? Value your contribution? Then you are, indeed,a professional home economist.

16

A

How D YouHandle

°china.?.hr

Irene TovarCoordinatorChicano Community CenterSan Fernando Valley State College

Mary HenryExecutive DirectorAvalon-Carver Community CenterLos Angeles

Coping."

" 'One of the things that you must do is teachthese kids how to cope with crises . .' As if theirsurvival has not depended upon their ability to copewith crises thus far. You have to realize that. Thereason their parents have survived is that there isno crisis in a ghetto community. Bad schools, nojobs, poor housing are a life style, not a crisis. Whatis a crisis to you is just a life style to them."

"You know, we have many stable homes. Wedon't have a lot of money, but there is a stabilitywithin our families."

". . . How many of you know how we deal withdisease in our culture? It is not handled the sameway you handle it ... there are psychological thingsthat you must not discourage. Yerba buena. Whatis the importance of yerba buena in cooking and asmedication? Ask the Chicano girls you teach to tellyou about it."

I would like to offer another perspectivethat of theChicano student and family.

I was surprised to hear Dr. East's remarks about segre-gation in the past in Los Angeles. We are still a segregatedcommunity with segregated schools, because we are notreally talking to each other as human beings. We are notunderstanding each other.

In the past, the Chicano student looked upon the girlwho majored in Homemaking Education in high school asthe girl who was likely to drop out of school. It was viewedas a maintenance program until she dropped out. When Iwas attending San Fernando High School, HomemakingEducation brought negative reactions due to this and thefact that Chicano girls were not being taught things rele-vant to their homes. They were being taught about bakedpotatoes and custard . . . things that were not cooked inour homes. We used other staples ... harina, frijoles ...and we talked about making tortillas.

I remember that the kitchens in our schools were muchmore modern than those at home. We could not afford

those fancy ovens and so, when girls cooked with them, itwas irrelevant when they went home.

For the girls who are still majoring in home economics(and I am trying to get girls not to major in home eco-nomics, but to go on to college or two-year colleges . . .to think in terms of a profession), let me share somethoughts with you.

It is important for you as teachers to become aware ofChicano family style and strut.Zure, which includes theextended family. It is important for you to understand howwe deal with child-rearing which may be very differentfrom the style that you, as Anglos, are trying to teach us.You know, we have many stable homes. We don't have alot of money, but there is a stability within our families.

In terms of health care and prevention of disease, howmany of you know how we deal with disease in our culture?It is not handled the same way you handle it ... there arepsychological things that you must not discourage. Yerbabuena. What is the importance of yerba buena in cookingand as medication? Ask the Chicano girls you teach to tellyou about it.

The role of the male and female in Chicano culture pre-sents questions. How do you handle machismo? Is the roleof the girl changing . how much is myth and how muchis reality? Again, I want you to ask the girls in your classes.I don't want to give you the answers. How do we deal withsex? That's a touchy thing because it deals with morals.How do we deal with contraception? I believe these thingsare important and I hope that you will sit down and listen.

It is important for you to tell students "how to," but itis just as important for you to learn "how to" from yourstudents. Respect their feelings, their values, their cul-ture and learn "how to" be more effective with what yourstudents are bringing with them into the classroom.

I think there are perhaps a number of interpretations tothe lives of youngsters who live in urban ghettos, mostespecially as they relate to the teaching of home econom-ics. In all sincerity, I fail to see what help instruction inhome economics has been to any youngster in a ghettoschool.

Perhaps the curriculum is developed for ghctto childrenwhme teachers think they are teaching the children of the"hard hats." Or perhaps the curriculum and concernshown for them is indictive of some of their teachers vin-dictiveness against change. For whatever reason, I ques-tion the relevance of present home economics instructionfor many of our children.

I would like to react to one or two points that were madeby the speaker. "One of the things that you must do isteach these kids how to cope with crises . . ." As if theirsurvival has not depended upon their ability to cope withcrises thus far. You have to realize that. The reason theirparents have survived is that there is no crisis in a ghettocommunity. Bad schools, no jobs, poor housing are a lifestyle, not a crisis. What is a crisis to you is just a life stylewith them.

Another thing you are supposed to teach them is howto "replace one resource for another." We have been re-placing resources for 400 years. We have been replacingfood which we grow in our yards for that which we cannotafford in supermarkets; we have replaced the supermarketfor the corner store only because we have had to; we havereplaced some high-powered {earnings on consumer edu-cation with experience that has taught us that if we goin with the neighbor next door to buy five pounds of sugar,it's cheaper. And that's the way you do it ... you pool what-ever resources you have with someone down the streetso that you can survive. We have been substituting re-sources for many, many years.

One of the things you must understand about ghettofamilies is that they are not so unknowledgable about whatis happening in this country in terms of consumer educa-tion or consumer fraud or anything else. They are totally

aware, but are unable to effect a change. That is where youfind them at this point. Mothers know that clothes aremarked up and that food is inferior anc that housing issub-standard. It isn't a matter of substituting resources,it is a matter of finding a substitute for a system that hasheld them where they are and resources are not im-portant, other than finding people with guts enough toeffect a change.

Our youngsters are motivated, but not according to thestandards of motivation that you as teachers or workers inthe field of home economics have set for yourselves oryour families. When we start talking to a mother in a ghettoabout the limited money that she has to spend on food,that mother is knowledgable about the amount of moneySenator Eastland gets in farm subsidy. When we start talk-ing about ccnsumer education, that mother in a ghettoand her children that follow her are now totally aware ofthe national priorities that do not include poor people andtheir problems.

would hope that those of you who have some input tomake into children from ghetto homes realize that the bestthing you can give them is understanding. The best thingthat you can give their parents is respect for the fact thatthey have managed to survive thus far.

I certainly hope that on another occasion we can touchbase with each other. There is an awful lot you shouldknow about ghetto families. There is an awful lot that weneed to understand about people whom we intend to help.If we look and listen and believe what they are saying,half the battle is won in this country, What we have toestablish is a brand new belief and a brand new ear to .

listen to a brand new voice that is on the scene.Listen to the mother when she says, "Rather than de-

velop your curriculum as handed down by someone withgrandiose middle-class standards about consumer educa-tion and home economics, why don't you listen to us fora change?"

I think it is important for us to call attention to the factthat there are a lot of needs, but possibly those who aremost in need are those who are here today.

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Seventeengiven in 30-minute and 60-minute time periods during ahalf-day of the conference,permitting each participant tochoose those of direct rele-vance to her teaching needs.Films, Part F, VEA-fundedprojects, discussions, anddemonstrations were pre-sented by 14 school districts,six community colleges, andtwo state colleges.

Each of the four assemblies of the first day's pro-ceedings were followed bydiscussion groups 32 in all

that asked the question,"How can I relate this to mystudents, my department, myschool, my community?"

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All of us are bringing to where we are here and nowall kinds of life experiences. When I talk to you and youlisten to me, we put into our personal computers all thekinds of experiences we have had in the past.

As each of you listens from this context and fromthe context of "How can we best interpret the method-ology, the philosophy, the !earnings and concepts ofConsumer and Homemaking Education to those womenand men who need to know about it . . ." rememberthat my examples are from my experience, but they canbe directly translated to anyone's experience.

You are here to plan for the future and you are inter-ested in creating curriculum and methodology for help-ing your students. Thus, it seems to me the very firstquestions to be asked are: What do you hope to accom-plish? Why did you choose the field you are in and howcan you hope to transmit that to your students?

I think it would be interesting to find out what theinterest are of you here in this room. Would you raiseyour hands in answer to these questions? How many ofyou are really most interested in teaching your studentsto lead more stable and less distressed lives? (Okay.)How many are interested in teaching your students tobe more honest and less manipulative as women?(Okay.) How many are interested in teaching your stu-dents to be more relaxed and less aggressive? (Fewer.

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20

Very interesting.) How many are interested in teachingyour students to be more know ledgea ble about facts andmore productive in earning a living? (Almost all.) Howmany of ,ou are interested in teaching your studentsto reach for a career instead of a job? Or and here'swhere we really get down to the nitty-gritty, I suspecthow to be happy at home anc.: competent in managinghome functions?

Well, I see you have dual goals. Are there any othersthat I haven't mentioned that should be added to thislist? (Member of audience: "I think it has been pointedout that there is work to be done for both the maleand female . . . there's not women's work and men'swork.") Did you all hear that? That one of the goals isto teach and gain acceptance for the fact that there iswork to be done and it is for both men and women .. .it is not sex designated. Any other goals? (Member ofaudience: "To be a creative homemaker.") Another?(Member of audience: "To teach girls that marriage isnot the end goal in life.") Yes? (Member of audience:"Self-realization so that as human beings each one isa unique person.") Any other goals? (Member of audi-ence: "To develop skills in seeking gainful employ-ment.") Fine. I hope you will continue to add to this listwhen you go into your discussion groups since I shouldthink your discussions would be based on your goalsfor your students.

Now, I ask you to join me in looking ahead.It is true that today approximately eight out of every

10 young woman can look forward to working at somepoint during their lives. Six out of every 10 will work atseveral times during their lives, dropping out of thelabor market when they marry or have children, thenre-entering again at later periods. The highest rate ofwomen re-entering the job market is after the age of 45.This tells you something about the expectation level ofwomen at work. Someone in the audience mentionedthat marriage should not be the end goal of a girl's life.Do you know that in the United States, we have thehighest average in the world of women who marry?Over 90 percent of all women get married at least once.Do you know that urail quite recently nearly all ablebodied men in this country worked most of their adultlives. I say "until recently" because one of the inter-esting trends I see in the young generation is that someof the men have decided they will not work if they canfind some other way of surviving. It has been an inter-esting aspect to observe what I believe are radicalchanges in the expectations some of the young have ascompared to the expectations we have of them. Do youknow that one out of every three women who works hasyoung children still in the school years?

Looking ahead, we can see rather clearly a numberof other facets to the mosiac of our society. For ex-ample, there will be fewer and fewer jobs for unskilledmen or women. And women have been, to date, theprimary source of unskilled labor. I think that, in look-ing ahead, attitudes about work are changing as weaccept the concept of a pluralistic society. Pluralisticsociety says to me that we accept as equally valuabledifferent patterns or different ways of accomplishingthe same goal or that there may be different goals. Ifit is true that big business and big industry and schoolsystems and other kinds of large institutions in oursociety are now accepting the idea that it is just asvaluable to do it this way as that way, then I think weare faced with some changeable behavior patterns onour part as well. And I say "our part" because all of usin this room are here today because we have made itthrough the system. We are going to see, I believe, anew generation who will create new life styles and newsystems. One of the larger question marks of our timeis how the effect of their behavior will affect us and how

we will respond. It does demand the kind of flexibilitythat few of us were taught. We are approaching a timewhen those of us who learned how to do sometningthrough energy, drive, forcefulness, devotion, hardwork, dedication, and all those other puritan ethic-typethings are to be asked to be flexible and accept change.

I propose to you that these new standards are goingto effect very quickly the requirements for motheringand fathering. Today, mothering and fathering tasks areso inter-related that we cannot describe one without theother and we cannot teach girls how to be mothersunless we teach them what mothers and fathers do. Sothere is always the question of flexibility. I recognizedthis halfway through the raising of my children ... thatthe essential question is, "Is this stand necessary? Is ita wise stand?" I learned this not only from my childrenwho taught me that my judgment was not always cor-rect, but in Chemistry 10 when I was a Home Economicsmajor at UCLA and was taught that the atom could notbe cracked because it was the smallest unit of nature.Twenty years later, when I went back to school, I sat,by chance, in the same room and there was a whole newchart on the wall. We had learned in 20 years so manynew things that were so radically different from what Iwas taught as truth that I realized I could no longeraccept any statement as one not to be challenged andexamined.

In looking forward, it seems to me that we are goingto have more time that is discretionary. All of us, menand women, boys and girls, will have more free timeand more opportunity to choose how we will spend thattime. There will be a shorter work week which will causesome people grave concern and more facilities to pro-vide free time such as shopping by television and so on.

And, I think that last. but surely not least, we canlook ahead to the effect of the whole women's liberationmovement. I believe that the attitude changing that istaking place today at such a rapid rate has people con-sidering issues now they did not even dare talk about inwhispers five years ago. The entrance of women into thedecision-making areas of our society will create wholenew sets of relationships between women and men,women and women, men and men . . . and in the institu-tions that we create. Women of all social and economicbrackets will make more conscious choices and I couldmake that same statement to a group in Watts, orVenice, or East Los Angeles. They would understand mebecause the demand for freedom to be oneself . . . thepotential for growth and the desire for it . . . areuniversal.

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Rosalind LoringDirector, Daytime Programs and Special Projects

University ExtensionUniversity of California, Los Angeles

I spend a great deal of my time planning educationfor mature women. I am convinced as a result of mywork that there are skills and attitudes which are des-perately needed if we are going to work effectively tomeet changes that are happening to us now or willhappen in the near future. Change is the only constant.We must develop skills and attitudes to deal withchange.

We need to teach boys and girls in Consumer andHomemaking Education skills in problem-solving andgoal-setting. We must teach them the steps in problem-solving which we really know since there are methodsby which one can approach problems in an intelligentand efficient manner. We need to be able to include inthat teaching how to master a method without feelingthat, somehow, we have succumbed to the system. Re-member, your students probably have built in thempretty firmly by now a resistance to doing anything thatlooks like "agreeing" with the system. They want to bethe forces for change and that is fine as long as wehave taught them skills that will produce change in amanner beneficial to themselves and their communities.

I think we need to teach our students the ability toaccept complexity. The American people have believedfor far too long that there was a single answer to solvea problem. The complexity of problems facing any youngwoman or man today dealing with dual roles has to bea search for alternate patterns. We must include in anyof these issues the ability to think freshly and crea-tively about problems. We must look for new kinds ofsolutions.

I don't know how you function when you are caughtin the grip of an irresolvable problem, but I find myselfthinking, "How did I define my problem?" If I canrecognize how I defined it, then I can begin to spin outand look for a fresh solution.

Among other things, let me mention one thing thatis close to my heart. It is the recognition of my own andyour personal values. After the recognition of values, tounderstand how these coincide or conflict with thevalues held by society. What we must see, I feel, is thewhole range or continuum of values.

None of us is born knowing these things, however,I do believe we must recognize that the problems weface at the moment are so tough that we must searchfor alternatives, recognizing that we may not have thebest one and that we may have to go back and searchagain next week, next month, next year. Consumer andHomemaking Education, more than any other subject,has the potential to teach and to guide, to demonstrate

21

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(you are fortunate to have tangibles to work with), andto counsel. Of all the topics, I think dual roles workswell in your curriculum because your students are at aPoint now in their fives where they are being expectedat a young age to assume family and home and com-munity responsibilities.

The consequence of dual roles . . . I prefer to say"multiple roles" . . . is equality. I cannot fill the rolesof wife, mother, and wage earner without the need to beequal in the decision-making. The notion of duality hasexplicit within it the notion of equality. What it meansthen, is that of all the tools we need, probably empathy,sympathetic understanding, and insight about the otherperson's needs and problems are the best tools.

I suggest that students may face very difficult deci-sions about duality and equality. Will they be able toaccomplish their personal goals as well as their groupgoals in a dual role? Will a girl who is married, has achild, and goes out to work , . . will she be able to solvethe goals of the tasks at work equally as well as thoseat home? The same should be true of her husband. Howmuch will our young ones be able to interchange theirroles? There was a marvelous article in a recent editionof The Wall Street Journal about a 23-year-old graduatestudent who ironed his wife's dresses and was havinga very difficult time because of the fullness in thesleeves. He said that when he married he recognized,"If my wife was to be happy, she would not be stayingat home all the time. As a result, she goes out to workand I have more time at home than she does, so I dothe family ironing." This is a realistic assessment of lifepatterning which may go on without our ever introducingor encouraging it. All we can do is to introduce the toolsand understanding and acceptance of the fact that thereis a wide range in the roles of man and woman.

How much can our students resist group pressures?In an increasing populous society, they aren't goingto live the kinds of lives we have lived. We can't evengive guidance about this. We can only tell them thatit is ahead.

How much are they going to be able to deal withhostility? As I drove here today, we were talking aboutthe hostility that occurs in many families even todaywhen a woman attempts a dual role. The hostility oftendoesn't come from the mate, but from the family andeven the surrounding neighborhood.

The dual role in the past has always meant two jobsfor a woman. My interpretation of the dual role is thatit is a duality of competence and an acceptance ofone's own strengths. I pose to you that accepting howstrong you really are is one of the most difficult thingsto do. It is an acceptance of the fact that if women havestrength and competence, they can free men to bethemselves. Of all the benefits I see coming out of thismovement toward duality, that is the largest. It is thatwomen will not hang on men for their psychological,physical, emotional, and economic strengths, but thatwomen will develop it in themselves and make it pos-sible for men to make choices in more honest, individualways.

The major task is to gain acceptance for buys aswell as girls into every homemaking curriculum. Thenthe challenge is for us to be understanding of others aswell as ourselves. The challenge is for you to be able toplan a curriculum for boys which will be suitable andrelevant to them. I do believe that unless we educatethe boys along with the girls, we are really going to missthe whole notion of duality.

The challenge is to work along a whole continuum andit is to convince the girls, the boys, the parents, and theadministrators that the roles are never finally defined . . .

that each one of us is engaged in a process of redefin-ing our roles all of our lives.

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Mary DoolittleDirector, Women's Job CorpsLos Angeles Center

The Job Corps Center for women is one of the povertyprograms initiated by the government under the Eco-nomic Opportunity Act some six years ago.

This is a program for young women between theages of 16 and 21 who for one reason or another havenot been able to finish school, have not gained a skillfor a job, have no job or have not had one for six monthsoefore coming to Job Corps. The Los Angeles Centeris a residential program where there are 325 youngladies living in an old hotel building right at Eleventhand Broadway. One of our girls described it as a "funkyold building, but with great vibes."

In talking about dual roles for women, we are in suchagreement ... I wondered if you would be interested inhaving Bobbee and me discuss the needs of youngwomen coming from her particular background and howshe sees the needs ... how she was or wasn't prepared. . . and how we can prepare others in the future.

Bobbee, tell us about yourself . . your name, whereyou came from, and what you were doing before youcame to Job Corps.

Bobbee Richardson: I am Bobbee Richardson and Iam originally from Los Angeles. I went to high schoolin Fresno, Calif., and I am an enrollee at the Women'sJob Corps Center. I am studying psychology at LosAngeles City College and my past is . . . well, everyonein the Center knows that I used to be a problem, but nowI am a young lady and I am struggling to make it. I un-derstand all the conflicts of the dual role. This is some-thing that is quite hip now, you know. I have lived in andout of disagreements and I have learned to better my-self through these things. I have really found it hard.

Right now, I would like to make a comment on whatMrs. Ledesma said. To me, she is being somewhat gen-eral and the facts she brought out do not pertain towhat is happening today. She is more sensitive . . . living

Jerry LedesmaCoordinatorEast Los Angeles Community Trainingand Leadership Project

I would like to react to Mrs. Loring's remarks, thespeech after lunch of Elizabeth Duncan Koontz, and thisconference in general. I can only react . . and I thinkthat is why I am here ... I am supposed to be the brownface. Chicanos are becoming fashionable, so here I am.

I am trying to figure out as I walk around and listenand sit here among you where we plug in. Where doesthe Chicano fit into this whole mileau? I wally can't seethat we do. I react emotionally and I consider it an asset.My first reaction here was "all of these white faces andall of this light-colored hair, light-colored eyes . . ."Knowing that this program and its funds are supposedto be spent to provide help for black and brown peoplemakes me wonder where those people are. They couldgive you the kind of input that you are asking for. I amguessing now, but I would imagine that 99 percent ofthe people in this room have at least four years of col-lege so that the kind of expertise you are asking forand came to this conference to receive is within your-selves. You have the knowledge, you have the resources,you have the education, you have access to assistancethat could be used to implement educational programsin the barrios and ghettos. You have it. So why are wehere? I think the answer is that you don't know how toimplement those programs ... that you don't know howto put to use the knowledge you've gained from theconferences, the seminars, the in-service training, theworkshops, the sensitivity training.

23

You litidergirdin the black ghetto, I know a lot about what she said ...but I cannot relate what she is saying to what is happen-ing now. Times have changed and we have more re-sponsibilities to face. What I am saying is that at onetime I was married (still am, separated, but married)and I found it was hard for me to live off a small salaryand support both my husband and myself. I was taughtin home economics to make my husband a happy home.I really don't understand what this is. I really don't! Isit just to iron his shirts or cook his meals or what? Withmy husband I found that a happy home was when I wasout working.

When we were driving here today, Mrs. Doolittleasked me what I learned in homemaking and how doesit pertain to my life now? Well, the answer is that I

can't see it .. . I really can't.Mary Doolittle: About this wage earner and home-

maker duality . .. this dual role . it seems to me thatone of the things we need to look at is community re-sources so young people are prepared. Have you ex-plored with them, if they are going to be married andhave children, family planning as one example? Are youreally preparing them? I don't care if they are fromso-called disadvantaged economic areas and ethnicbackgrounds or whether they are from the white middle-class, every one of these kids needs your help. It's thehippies of the white middle class that we've failed now,right? We need to put it all together. I would hope andwish so much that in your homemaking department (andin Job Corps we have real flexibility of curriculum ... Ican put anything in that homemaking department that Iwant) you have counselors or teachers with enough timeso that when a problem comes up and a girl is going outinto the community, you help her face the realities oflife. You undergird. That's what I would like to see inHomemaking Education.

You Have III am trying to tie my remarks into the overall theme

of the conference and the remarks Mrs. Loring made,but I keep wondering how we as black and brown peoplefit in and can help you make some changes.

You must understand that the people in disadvan-taged areas are not concerned with the male-femalerole or the dual role of women. They are concernedabout employment and eating. I am concerned aboutthe duality of our communities and about your being ina position to have some effect on these communitiesand their most viable people, the kids.

If you are truly concerned about the disadvantaged,how many of you would be willing to give up your jobso that those who don't have the money can maybe getsome of that money? If you are unwilling to do that, howmany would be willing to split your salary with a com-munity aide .. . a New Careerist that everyone is talkingabout these days. A community aide can actually helpyou be more effective in the classroom and can give yousome of the answers that you are seeking here.

I wonder why the planners of this conference didn'thave those of you from certain school districts interactwith residents of the areas in which you are working?I think that it may be more effective in terms of yourlearning how to do your job better to interact with par-ents of students or residents from your own areas.

These are the questions that go through my mind asI participate in this conference.

1

The average consumer in the United States currentlyenjoys the highest standard of livirg in the worldmore food, clothing, bathtubs, automobiles, householdappliances, toothpaste and mouthwash everything isbigger or better or more plentiful than elsewhere. Byand large, Americans take their material well-being forgranted and when they reflect about it, ::redit it toAmerican progress or materialism, native ingenuity orimported skills, industrious labor or the risk-takingentrepreneur, abundant natural resources or Yankeethrift, free enterprise or antitrust laws, mass productionand the assembly line or craftsmanship and the instinctfor tinkering.

The consumer has been called "king." He has beentold he is sovereign and that he has only to let businessknow what his little heart desires. If the consumerguides the economy so as to produce the goods andservices he wants, what then is the nature of the con-sumer's cry for truth-in-labeling and truth-in-lending.and Senate testimony that many drugs are overpro-moted, overpriced and overprescribed?

Let us look at a model of the free competitive marketwhere the consumer is cast in the role of king. The sceneis that of the marketplace where the energies of privateenterprise are at work. We find tie consumer on stageand ready to carry out his role as king.

M. Janice HoganAssistant Professor

Home Economics DepartmentArizona State University

powerful organization better known as the "govern-ment" to intercede in the marketplace. This movementhas been termed "consumerism" and is not about to goaway. The consumerism which is present today is chal-lenging the marketplace rule of "let the buyer beware"and by suggesting "let the seller be responsible." Theautomobile safety bill is a shining example of what canhappen if voluntary, cooperative efforts by the industryare not taken. Does the name Ralph Nader ring a bell?Would the truth-in-packaging bill introduced by SenatorPhillip Hart (Michigan) have mustered any real strengthif the food industry had acted several years ago to im-prove labeling and packaging standards? The recordshows that Senator Paul Douglas of Illinois sired thetruth-in-lending bill in 1960 and fought for it in eachsession of Congress until his re-election defeat in 1966.Senator William Proxmire of Wisconsin took up the fightand with the help of Representative Leonor Sullivan ofMissouri and other consumer-minded legislators,passed the Consumer Credit Protection Act of 1968.How do your legislators stand on consumer protection?

We need to get involved with the issues, know thepower channels and let our students see it as it is. Weneed to write for copies of the hearings, learn who isintroducing needed legislation in California and get adialogue going.

The Eivierciiii9 ConsumerAction begins as the cast of consumers register their

decisions by purchasing or refusing to purchase thegoods and services available. If the consumer demandsmore of a certain scarce commodity or service, the pricesystem supposedly reflects the increased demand inthe form of higher prices. The higher price triggers asignal for the retailer to notify the producer to increasesupplies and when increased, the prices decline andstablize. if demand for the goods or services declines,then production is presumably curtailed. We canmentally see employees hauling on and off stage goodsand services as they watch the reactions of consumers.

We must assume that each of the characters cast inthe role of king is reaching his decision of what to buybased on full knowledge and rational or reasoned choice. . . for the economic model is based on the consumerhaving full information and knowledge.

The simplicity of this concept is appealing. It is alsodeceptive. You and I know that some consumers per-form their roles inadequately. They sign on the dottedline without reading the contract . . . or even double-checking the figures for error in arithmetic. The increasein shoplifting and abuse of credit privileges, plus thecontinued increase in personal bankruptcies, serve toremind us that prices in the marketplace may reflectsome lack of consumer ethics and consumer ignorance.And we are not naive enough to believe that our dollarvotes in the marketplace are as democratic as theyappear to be. Some enterprisers attempt to controlprices. Many sellers attempt to influence consumer de-mand by aggressive selling and by not giving the con-sumer the information necessary for making the bestchoice. "Let the buyer beware" is still the rule of themarketplace.

The consumer has at times felt that the producer wasnot listening to him and has called on a larger, more

The American marketplace is filled with more goodsand more kinds of services than any other in the world.In an age when mass production literally spews the stuffout, the job of shopping is no child's play. The goal ofbusiness has been to provide goods and services to theconsumer at a profit. Products and services havereached extremes of luxuriousness and complexity . . .they are available to satisfy the smallest whims ofmankind.

The extreme value placed on production is reflectedin the pressure on families to consume at a quantita-tively high level. This pressure is fostered by theproducer of goods, who must not only produce the goodsbut also produce the demand for the goods lest hisproducts go unused and unsold. Hence, we have beenshown how to use an increasing amount of goods . . .

more appliances . . . more automobiles . . . more cos-metics. Consumers may not feel strong desire for all ofthe goods and services they buy. The importance at-tached to production of goods is due not to the impor-tance of the goods themselves, but to the employmentsuch production provides. A high value is placed on fullemployment . .. our society is work-oriented and everyfamily must be economically productive to be sociallyaccepted. In order for there to be enough jobs, goodsmust be consumed so they can be produced profitably.The particular burden on today's consumer may beviewed as his duty to purchase goods. He must purchasegoods, he is told, in order to keep the economy going.This has given the consumer a new role in the economy.

Demand for consumer goods based on artificiallycreated wants is the topic for many debates. Arnold J.Toynbee proposes that the demand for consumer goodsstems from our needs ... from our wants ... and from"bogus wants" created by Madison Avenue advertisers.John Kenneth Galbraith propagates the same view and

25

proceeds to link want-creation with debt-creation, indi-cating that we are buying goods we do not need withmoney we do not have. He feels that we have devotedtoo large a share of our resources to consumer goodsand thus, by default, have caused slums, understaffedschools and hospitals, and have given lip service to airand water pollution and other public services which can-not be controlled by any individual consumer, but onlyby large groups of persons foricied into some govern-mental or voluntary unit.

Let's turn to the stage for debt creation. Data fromthe 1967 Survey of Consumer Finances suggests thatthe new generation is no better informed about the costof credit than the rest of the adult population. They tendto underestimate the cost of automobile installmentcredit when questioned about a hypothetical borrowingsituation. When asked where to shop for credit, theytend to think of financing at the store or may just givea puzzled look . . "Whoever heard of shopping forcredit?" It is up to consumer educators to be certain thatthey know that the buyer comparison shops for moneyas he can comparison shop for cars. There are indica-tions from the Survey of Consumer Finances data thatthe new generation (18.24 year olds) seem wary of con-sumer credit and well aware of the dangers of misusingit. This may be a result of their observations of the ex-periences of their own and other families in using it.However, the proportion of young families actually usinginstallment credit has increased. In 1967, 69 percent ofthe families with heads age 18.24 had such debts. Theincreasing number of consumer bankruptcies and therelatively young age of many of the bankrupts (medianage is around 30) indicates that there are some casual.ties among the younger users of credit.

We have had the cash society . . . then the checksociety . . . and are in the credit card era. This paymentmedium of exchange will be obsolete in the future. Wemight call the new system the "push button economy"or the "electronic credit system."

Instead of paving for groceries at the supermarketcheck-out counter by cash or by credit card as somePhoenix, Ariz., markets are promoting, the consumerof the near future will simply hand the store clerk aunique "funds identification card" which she or he canalone use. This card will be similar to a credit card ex-cept that it will be machine-readable, non-forgeable andwill bear a special customer identification number like asocial security number. The clerk, before ringing up theamount of the purchase will insert this identificationcard into an electronic apparatus which "reads" thecard and establishes immediately and automatically anelectronic communication to the customer's bank ac-count and the store's bank account. At this point, thebanks' own electronic systems are activated, looking upelectronically in computerized central information filesthe deposit or credit balance of both the customer andthe store.

Meanwhile, the clerk at the point of sale keys theamount of the transaction into the system by activatingspecial keys on the terminal device much the same waythat sales are rung up today on cash registers. Thesedata are instantaneously transmitted to the customer'sbank, where a check is made to see whether the cus-tomer ha- sufficient cash or credit balances to cover thetransaction. Assuming everything verifies, the com-puter at the customer's bank deducts the transactionamount from the: customer's account, electronicallytransfers the funds to the store's bank where anothercomputer credits the store's account and sends a signalback to the terminal device to indicate the completion 01the transaction. From start to finish, perhaps five to 10seconds might have elapsed.

This simple feat might then be repeated a few min-

26

"The increasing number of consumer bank-ruptcies and the relatively young age ofmany of the bankrupts (median age isaround 30) indicates that there are somecasualties among the younger users ofcredit."

4;1

.1

utes later by the same consumer at a department storeor even at home over a "Touch-Tone" telephoneequipped with a special card-reading feature.

I am not aware that any consumer has asked for the"Electronic Credit System," but business is adoptingthe system and consumers will use it. What implicationsdoes this have for your students? What kind of consumercompetencies are needed to operate in this kind ofsystem?

Since consumers come in all ages, income levels, de-grees of relevant education and experience, and are bothmale and female, our consumer education programshould reflect these unique differences. Consumers arebeautiful people with multiple goals and standards,plus a belief system of what is important to them asindividuals.

Consumers have resources, too often in unequalamounts as the social revolution is dramatically demon-strating. On one hand we have the large affluent societyof rather sophisticated consumers who control the majorshare of the nation's spending dollar. They have morehuman resources than ever before thanks to the in-creased level of education and exposure to space andouter space. And they have material resources. The mostobvious characteristic of the affluent society is its abun-dance. The new middle class generation (18-24 year

"The American marketplace is filled withmore goods and more kinds of services thanany other in the world. In an age when massproduction literally spews the stuff out, thejob of shopping is no child's play."

L_

(

amill11111mr_

olds) are highly optimistic about their future financialsituations and level of living. As a result of their youth-ful enthusiasm, young adults have planned to have astandard package of durable goods, clothing, food prod-ucts and services in their home. Seventy-six percentexpect their first home after marriage to have air-condi-tioning, 79 percent expect a washer, 45 percent expecta dryer, and 38 percent expect to have a dishwasher.

Another result of economic prosperity has been thatthe new middle class generation grew up with substantialamounts of money which they were free to spend as theypleased. They may not, however, have learned much inthe process that will be relevant to the management oftheir financial affairs as adults. A survey by Rand YouthPoll revealed that in the U.S. in 1969, boys between 16and 19 averaged a weekly income of $19.15 and girlsin the same group averaged weekly incomes of $20.35.They allotted money for items such as records, radios,tapes, etc. Girls spent $1.85 on hair products per week.Teenage purchases are largely for discretionary itemssince their families provide the basic necessities. Whilethese discretionary purchases may provide some train-ing in the selection of merchandise, they seem unlikelyto provide much motivation for learning to make supe-rior purchases. One study in Texas reported that whilemost teenagers recognized that one should shop around

27

for the best price on a desired item, most admitted thatonce they had made their choice of a product, theytended to insist on the item they preferred, regardlessof relative prices. These people are the "haves." Also the"haves" are rejecting the standard package of goodsand services . . . choosing old VW buses over a Corvette... denims and levis over Catalina ...

We also have the "have nots." Michael Harrington'sThe Other America shocked the affluent by reminding itthat the poor are still with us. Harrington's poor wereinvisible, tucked away in urban slums, skid rows and mi-grant workers' camps. Existing on the fringes of societywith little discretionary income, it is not immediately ob-vious that they should have consumer problems. If youhaven't read David Caplovitz's The Poor Pay More orhave seen the movie by the same title ... I suggest thatit is a must for anyone concerned with consumer educa-tion of lower socio-economic families. It shows that t tiepoor do take part in the consumption society and at aconsiderable cost. Whereas the poor at an earlier stageof development were viewed as exploited workers . . .

today, they are exploited consumers. The American ide-ology of "equal opportunity for all" is an empty mythfor those cut off from legitimate pathways to upwardmobility and achievement in the society. The disparitybetween what lower income youths are led to desire andwhat is actually available to them is the source of in-tense frustrations. Blocked from achieving through thenormal avenues for success in a highly achievement-oriented society, they often select a deviant path.

The low income consumer usually does not knowthat consumer information exists. In fact, he has littleawareness except that he realized that life is expensive.He usually does not consciously think about choices .he buys something and subsequently discovers he hasbeen "taken" he goes right on making payments be-cause he accepts this as his lot. He is poor and there-fore believes he can't fight the system. Can you showhim the way?

The poor family doesn't have a great deal to look for-ward tothe head of the household is pessimistic aboutthe future and often there is a pervasive kind of depres-sion called apathy. One day is like another.

The glib pattern of the salesman is designed to flat-ter the ego is music to the ears of the low incomeconsumer who lives in a permanent state of apathy-despair. In the face of flattery, it is difficult for the lowincome consumer to admit that he doesn't understandsuch mundane items as contracts, interest, carryingcharges, etc.

The consumer problems of low income families differin kind snd intensity from the consumer problems ofmiddle and upper income groups.

Too often the low income consumer has little or nochoice. Too often there is little or no competition amongbusiness firms in low income areas. The consumer lacksadequate funds or sources of credit to shop amongcompeting firms for good buys and may not have theadditional alternative of not buying or of postponingpurchases.

On check day the average low income consumer hasa bare refrigerator. The previous check didn't allow hima surplus, so he has to buy food and can't wait for thesales to stock up. Saving is for those with a surplus.

The low income family, with an irregular employmentrecord or dependent upon welfare payments, finds itssource of credit is limited to the retailer in the neigh-borhood, who in turn compensates for the risks bycharging exorbitant prices for the merchandise andmaximum credit rates.

How is it that in the final third of the twentieth cen-tury, in the most affluent society in the world, and withina few blocks of medical centers and educational institu-

tions, such situations exist? There is no question thatthese social problems, as well as other issues of healthand welfare, indicate that the professions have a greatdeal to do.

I don't propose that these families represent thetypical family any more than their problems representthe wide gamut of social concerns. They serve merelyto remind us that there are people with hopes anddreams; human frailties and strengths, that are tryingto find the "good life."

The environment of families in your community iswhat you must identify and understand. You will thenunderstand better why they make the choices they door why they do not have many choices in the market-place. The changes in the American family as the resultof urbanization, industrialization, and broad economicand social movements are well known to you. You knowthat you are educating for "life in a complex society" ...that most of the families will be living in an urban area.It is estimated by the year 2000 the population densityin the metropolitan regions m; y rise from approximately400 to 700 persons per square mile. Education mustprepare families to live in Lincoln, Omaha, Denver, LosAngeles, Phoenix and other centers which may have adifferent environment from the community in which theylive now. My point is that the American family mustbe provided improved decision-making skills in view ofthe constantly shifting environment in which they willor are living.

John W. Gardner, former Secretary of Health, Educa-tion and Welfare, stated it this way: "The purpose of allour efforts is to enhance the quality of life for the peopletoday and for generations to come. We want a humaneenvironment ... a benevolent environment in which theindividual human being can live fully, in good health,free of the constraints that limit his potential." How

Tony Rios Rebecca Farrington

can you b:ing about this change?What is consumer education? In the minds of some,

it is "how to get more food for your money," or "let'sexamine the blouses in the kit," or "how to buy fabricthat is printed on the grain." I would not deny that con-sumer education can and should be incorporated inclothing construction or food preparation courses. Con-sumers also spend their money on cars, insurance,houses, appliances and trade schools. They rent apart-ments, pay for services, borrow money and sign con-tracts. To be relevant, consumer education mustencompas,-, the key, central financial transactions offamilies. It must take into account processes and prin-ciples of buying, reliable sources of information, thegovernment agencies which serve to protect the con-sumer, the federal and state regulations which affectthe consumer. Students must have a working knowledgeof the marketplace. They can't afford to be naive. Weneea sophisticated consumers thinking consumers.And that is our charge.

I view the important connecting link between thefamily and the marketplace as decision-making. Youneed to know in reality how your students make deci-sions. Are they alternative minded? Do they have powerin the marketplace? How will they develop self-confi-dence in consumer decision-making? Where do theyshop? Effective decision-making is instrumental inachieving "the good self" we seek and that includesdecision-making in the marketplace. It stands to reasonthat anyone teaching consumer education must be veryconcerned with decision-making, with making superiorrather than inferior choices in the marketplace. Ourgoal is to help families make good decisions in the mar-ketplace that will enable them to reach their goals,realize their values and maintain their standards. Thisis consumer education in my way of thinking.

28

M. Janice Hogan

bib

Tony RiosExecutive DirectorEast Los Angeles (CSO)(Community Service Organization)

Cooperation.

I would like to discuss the other portion of consumereducation . . . the businessman. We hear a great deal oftalk about educating the consumer; we of CSO (CommunityService Organization) have recently begun educating thebusinessman.

I think we may be wasting a lot of time in educating onlyone group in consumer affairs and not the other. This isespecially true in the Spanish-speaking community, wherepeople may not speak English or may have a workingknowledge of it, but not enough to handle contracts andcredit matters.

Let me give you an example of what happens when youbring consumer pressure to bear on the business com-munity. After the August 29 Moritorium rally, march, andthen riot and burning of some stores in East Los Angeles,organizations such as ours began getting calls from localbusinessmen asking what they could do to become closerto the community and needs of the people. They wantedto show the community that they were "good guys" . . .they had food to give away . . . they wanted to serve onadvisory committees . . . and they began to help us byexplaining credit contracts in English and Spanish. This isone form of consumer education.

Before the riot, we were trying to develop other kindsof consumer education. We have been trying to negotiatewith the business community for a long time and it hasbeen about 20 months since we started a consumer com-plaint center. We now have more than 2,000 complaints.

Today, many businessmen in East Los Angeles haveadopted nine "commandments" pledging fair consumerpractices and posting the sign in their windows.

There must be ways to educate the merchant and busi-nessman and it can be done by legislation, by communityaction groups with teachers such as yourselves serving asadvisors, and by lawsuits. We have six class action suitsfiled at the present time. One suit was settled out of courtwith the company agreeing to a four-year contract by whichwe will arbitrate all consumer complaints concerning thiscompany. The contract includes the expenses to hire theAmerican Arbitration Association to render the final de-cision.

These are the kinds of consumer education programsI would like to see .. . those that educate the businessmanin the barrio or ghetto about fair business practices.

Rebecca FarringtonCoordinator, Consumer EducationNAPP (Neighborhood AdultParticipation Project), Los Angeles

Action!

Consumer problems in our communities of South Cen-tral Los Angeles really tie into the latter portion of Jan'spresentation. Markets, chain stores, and large retail con-cerns are not attracted to our communities because theinsurance rates are very high, police protection is ofteninadequate, and the potential buyer has a very limitedincome.

Generally speaking, we have an honest merchant witha small store who often is just a step out of poverty him-self, or, we are the prey of unscrupulous businessmen whouse doorto-door salesmen or run shops of low-quality mer-chandise. These stores are often filthy or unsanitary, park-ing lots are not sufficiently lighted, and there is no dignityor courtesy given the people who patronize these stores.

29

We have begun to take action against these merchantsand I'd like to tell you of one example. Not long ago, aftersurveys and comparison shopping by small groups . . .

buyers clubs and low-cost cooking clubs that our agencyorganizes throughout the community they found them-selves boycotting some stores, writing to the managementand asking for an opportunity to discuss conditions in thestores. At first, the merchants didn't respond to the letters.We then held community meetings at local schools wherewe displayed meats and merchandise from these storesand where we got together and talked about our problems.As a result, several of the clubs joined together to forma Coalition of Community Clubs. As we moved our con-sumer efforts from community to community, the clubmembers who lived in these neighborhoods, shopped atthese stores, had legitimate complaints, and wanted todo something about the conditions, participated in theCoalition. The groups talked with the management of thesestores about poor quality items, fair employment prac-tices, and unsanitary conditions. We got very little re-sponse.

We believe in action, so ultimately we went before theLos Angeles County Board of Supervisors and amplifiedthe need for support in the area of consumer protectionin South Central Los Angeles. Our presentation resultedin finding out that there wasn't adequate inspection in thearea. County inspectors were sent out to 981 supermarketsand 1,036 restaurants; this resulted in 633 of the marketsand a large number of the restaurants being cited.

The results of the inspection helped conditions a lot, butit took effort on our part because we had to purchase meatfrom the stores and go directly to the health department'scenters with it, otherwise support was difficult to get. Sup-port is always hard to get even when people in the neigh-borhoods recognize the problem, come together and talkabout it, and make collective decisions about solving theproblem.

In this case, we did get positive results.

;isir&

I am reminded of a story about a grandmother lookingfor a toy for her grandchild. She found what she thoughtwould be a fascinating toy, and the price was right, butshe couldn't make it work. She tried two others, andcouldn't get them to work either. Clinging to the toy, shesought the floor manager, and made her complaint."But Madame," said he, "you don't understand. Thattoy is made for the child of today, in today's world. Itcan't work!"

Our brightest and most caring young people are tell-ing us that our society can't work. And unless we, asmodels in our own settings, criticize our own institution,organize to change it, and stand up and be counted, wemay find that the young people are right.

Taking as given the changes in the American family,the evolving new roles for man and woman, for husbandand wife, and for mother and father, what do we need tochange in our present Consumer and HomemakingEducation?

It is no longer enough to be content with the girl inthe sewing and cooking classes, and the boy in theshop. It is no longer enough to teach about shoppingwisely, cooking nutritiously, or planning to build andfurnish a home. Nor is it enough to teach child develop-ment in the framework of white middle-class suburbia,nor to teach about marriage and the family, with hus-band, wife and two children who buy land, hire an archi-tect, and build a house. It is no longer enough for thestudent to know the location of schools, churches, play-grounds, libraries, hospitals, and social agenciesin hiscommunity.

We are trying to educate students to be good workers,parents, consumers and citizens. To be an educatedstudent, one has to go out into the real world, to learnits life and language, to structure that learning throughorganizing concepts, and then learn to analyze, criticize,and develop new strategies and tactics for bringingabout necessary change, while conserving values andpractices which are worth conserving.

30

Young people need to develop self esteem. They needto develop a sense of community. They need to developthe knowledge and the tools to help them master theirown environment. They need to increase choice, and tochoose wisely.

Let us take a quick look at what they have to know,and what they have to do to grow up healthy in a ratherunhealthy society.

The high school student has to make a career choice,has to find a mate, and support himself. He has not onlyto survive, but to create a good world for himself and thefamily he will build. He has to learn the resources avail-able to him. But he also has to overcome the gaps inservices, the limits on opportunities, and the injusticesand inequities in society. He has to achieve the. power tocreate new resources, to protect and extend his rights.He has to live with other men, work with them, organizewith them, and with them create a world in which he canfunction well.

In choosing a career, he needs to get out into thelarger community, to learn what educational and train-ing opportunities exist. He ought to know about man-power development. He has to learn a large variety ofalphabets and acronyms, iike MDTA, USES, and HRD.As he gets to know the Employment Service, he alsofinds out about unemployment insurance, with its helpand its disadvantages, its inadequacies in today's world.Once he understands the functions and disfunctions ofthese systems, he will know what they can't help him do.With the aid of thoughtful and imaginative teachers,he will learn about bureaucracy, he will understand itsrationale, but he also, one hopes, will understand betterthe sources of power, of authority and of money. Fromthis, it is but one shortstep to learn how to use thesystem, to manipulate it or change it, so that it betterserves the people for whom it was once created.

Our student has to think about income and the pos-sible loss of it. He has to understand the welfare systemdeveloped in the 30's, including the social securitynotions born in a depressed and suffering society, andthe public assistance concepts which were supposedto make the need for relief wither away. Be he black orwhite, Puerto Rican or Cuban, Chicano or AmericanIndian, affluent or poor, he has to understand the de-fects and evils of the present welfare system. He has tostudy income maintenance proposals, ranging fromNixon's Family Assistance Plan to children's allowanceplans, because he will have to support or reject a varietyof such plans. He has to know, if he himself has notexperienced it, about powerlessness and poverty, andhe will have to learn about the Welfare Rights organiza-tion, Consumer Protective Associations, and Nader'sRaiders.

HA has to understand his own attitudes, be heapathetic or militant, rich or poor, hard hat or boss,toward racism, and he has to learn to verbalize his valuesystem. He has to learn the attitudes and values ofthe people around him, especially those who are dif-ferent from him. Can we teach him to understand andvalue difference, instead of crushing or hating it? Can helearn to get into the skin of his opposite member insociety, or of his enemy, and view the world from thatperspective? Can we help him speak a variety of lan-guages, all English? I think we must we must teachhim to "love the unlovable," while fighting the hatefulact. Our student has to know something about the func-tions of public and private housing. Not only must heunderstand the goals of each, but also he must know hisrights as a tenant, as a landlord, his rights to rent sup-plements or housing rehabilitation, his responsibilitiesas a neighbor. He has to learn to organize to protectthese rights.

Health services are of major importance. Our stu-

31

Zelda SamoffDirector, Social Welfare ProgramTemple University, Pennsylvania

dent needs to know about public and private practice ofmedicine, the care that money can buy, and the illnessand suffering which lack of money perpetuates. Heneeds to uiderstand the philosophy of Medicare andMedicaid, and how they operate in practice. He has toknow the problems in health service delivery. 0E0 andother health programs, like community health and com-munity mental health centers, like children and youthprograms, like maternal and infant care, have to be partof his body of knowledge. Differences in health services,such as private medical care, Blue Cross and BlueShield, the Kaiser plan, the group practice of medicine,and universal health insurance must be understood.

Our student needs to know the health and safety fea-tures of the products he buys, as well as their effect onthe air he breathes. He has to know not only how to gethis money's worth, but what to do if he doesn't.

He has to know about family planning, about childcare facilities, about the services or the lack of ser-vices for veterans, for the aged, for the disabled, dis-turbed or retarded.

Thus far, we have looked at some of the knowledgebase a student needs in today's world, and some of theattitudes and understandings he must explore. Textbooks are useful but too often out of date and un-under-standing of or unsympathetic to the plight and strengthsof the poor and the minority groups. Magazine articles,GPO publications, and pamphlets are important. Butexperiencing learning through living is at the core of agood education.

Experience without the support of a theoretical frame-work and a rationale can be either useless or damaging.But purposeful experiencing of planned activities canbe unforgettable.

"Let us learn first handwhat discrimination in em-ployment and housingmeans to an individual,to a family, and to a com-munity."

What kind of planning are we talking about? If wewant students to make wise decisions, we have to letthem experience the decision-making process throughtheir involvement in their own education. There is noth-ing like participation in a curriculum committee thathelps a student better to understand the authority thatcomes from knowledge, and the powerlessness of igno-rance. He quickly learns to be more cautious in givingsimplistic answers to complex questions. With accep-tance from caring adults, he learns better the kinds ofquestions he must ask, the kinds of answers he mustseek, and the nature of the powers that be. He cancontribute his own fresh insights and relevant chal-lenges to freshen up and stimulate his more jadedelders. We, the more jaded elders, need to be challengedagain and again, so that we test and retest older ideasin a different and changing world.

Our student must be a part of the school community,in that he learns about the hierarchical structures, thetable of organization and the formal and informalsources of power, and in that he has a sense of matter-ing in it. What does that mean? Simply that as he be-

haves responsibly and with the maturity expected athis age level, he can influence the system, and can helpbring about desired change.

Thus tar we have talked about a number of communi-ties the school is but one. We have mentioned estab-lished agencies like USES, and public welfare. And wehave talked about community agencies that challengethe establishment, such as the Welfare Rights Organi-zation (vVRO).

This is as it should be, for there is no such thing as"the community" anymore than one can, after the re-cent elections, talk about "the California electorate."Just as we distinguish between Reagan and Tunney, sowe must disaggregate both "community" and student.When we do, we find some surprising things. No group,no community, has a monopoly on any trait or valuesystem. Apathy and militance, understanding and big-otry, are part of the continuum found in every group,black or white, minority or majority, affluent or poor.What we often come up with is that many of our prob-lems are a function of poverty. And poverty is a lot easierto change, to diminish or to eliminate than is prejudiceor drug abuse or crime.

Certain kinds of experiences may be planned with aminimum of effort by student., and teachers. A visit to alarge city hospital clinic is an eye opener, and can bedone by individual students. A little more planning, anda student may be able to take a child to the clinic fortreatment. A weekend in a jail is not impossible toarrange with student acting as if he had been arrested,and with inmates believing he had. A visit to a magis-trate's court, especially on a Sunday morning, is an eye-opener. A visit to City Council or a state legislature isrewarding. Working with a Voluntary Defender or a com-munity lawyer is a lesson about our legal system that isnot soon forgotten. A student's report to the class of avisit to a city or state home for the aged stirs a "gut"reaction. These are but a few illustrations of individual-ized assignments tha'c are relatively easy to plan orarrange. All these activities must be purposeful; studentindignation, anger or dismay must be accepted, andchanneled into efforts for constructive change.

"A student's report to the class of a visit to a cityor state home for the aged stirs a 'gut' reaction."

There are other kinds of community involvement thatrequire different and more long-range planning.

Does your school exist in a community different fromthe white middle class community many of us know sowell? Are there different culture patterns, behavior, andaspirations that we need to know, to understand and tovalue? Then let us hire to educate us, students andfaculty, a representative of that community or ethnicgroup, and let us not be concerned about academiccredentials. Let us rather look for someone who under-stands the community in all its diversity, who knows thepeople, the shops, the homes, the conflicts and thepower struggles, who cares about and loves the com-munity. Let us engage ourselves with this person,faculty and students, to help develop constructive com-munity involvement, to better understand our ownbiases and stereotypes, to be challenged in our thoughtsand beliefs.

Let us develop a community encounterfor studentsand staff to learn how the community groups viewthemselves and their worlds, us and our worlds. Let uslearn first hand what discrimination in employment andhousing means to an individual, to a family, and tocommunity. Let us stroll through a community, guidedby our community person, our eyes sharpened about

things to observe, our hearts opened to the strengthsand aspirations of the people in it.

If Blacks or Chicanos or Indians are hostile to whites,that is relevant and quite different from admonishingyoung people to love each other. Once we begin tounderstand the aspirations and dreams of people in thecommunity, we are more likely to lose our fears andprejudices, and the more open we can be to encouragingcommunity participation in the education of our youth.We can develop more clearly the role of the consumerand the role of the expert or professional if we havecleared away the myths, have seen people as people,and value them as parents, children and citizens. Wethen can be better able to protect their rights withoutfearing so much the loss of our own.

Having talked at some length about the diversity ofcommunity, the realities and potential of difference, andthe need for involvement with the community, I, ofcourse, have only scratched the surface of this vasttopic. But perhaps we can conclude with greater brevityby talking about the DON'Ts and DO's of going into thecommunity, and especially into the ghetto community.

1. Don't go into the community if you haven't learnedto observe both strengths and problpms. Don't sendstudents in without observational skills, and skillsin reporting observations.

2. Don't go into the community without sharpeningyour communication skills, and without openingyour ears. Help students be open.

3. Don't go into the community without some knowl-edge of

school-community relationscommunity feelings about the school, about you,as a teacher or administratorthe populationthe agencies and institutionsthe problems and dangersthe language and culture

4. Don't go into the community without positivepurpose.

5. Don't go where you are not wanted.6. Don't go if you think in stereotypes.7. Don't go if you are depending on being loved,

thanked and/or accepted.B. Don't go as savior, messiah or leader.9. Don't go to do something for or to somebody.

10. Don't give up your own values in order to be"with it."

11. You go to learn as well as teach, to get as well asgive.

12. You are your brother's brother, and you do with him,rather than for him. Protect his choices, includingthat of rejecting you.

13. Go if you value the independence of the other, andcan help him maintain and protect it.

14. Go . if you are knowledgeable, resourceful andunderstanding.

15. Go if you can take conflict, hostility and anger.16. Go if your going can make a difference to your

knowledge and understanding, to that of your stu-dents, and to that of the community.

Don't send your students under conditions differentfrom those of your involvement. Do prepare them, pro-tect them, and keep them out if necessary. For the tattergroup, those who need to be kept out, the ones not readyfor community participation, bring the community intothe classroom.

The real world can provide a glimpse of the idealworld if we open our minds and hearts to each other,and if we trust the strength and rights of the other. Toparaphrase an old expression, "Enter the community tolearn; go forth from it to serve it."

32

I was greatly impressed with many of Mrs.Samoff's ideas, but due to time, I will respondto only three of them.

One of the things our speaker said is thatwe must see ourselves as catalysts for change.Speaking from the agency point of view aswell as a member of a community, I think thishas been one of our major hangups. We haveobtained our credentials and established ourroles and functions as if in isolation to therest of society. We operate as if we live in avacuum.

Not too many years ago, we as probation of-ficers merely "rehabilitated." We didn't reallydeal with schools ... you were "those peopleover there"... and of course, we had nothingto do with social workers. l think all of us,teachers, probation officers, and social work-ers stuck to our careful roles and functionsand we wound up pretty irrelevant. The young-sters we were zeroing in on had to relate to allof us and we treated them as though theywere on an assembly iine, stamping them withour mark without consideration of what wentbefore and what was to come.

What I heard our speaker say is that wemust see ourselves as part of the total socialsyster . ordcr for you to teach youngsters,you must understand how this society worksand communicate your understanding to yourstudents.

I would like to comment on the idea ofbringing the community into the classroom.One of the ways you and I can bring the corn-

BEII1GELEVAIIT

Ruth RushenProject DirectorLos Angeles CountyProbation Dept.

munity in is to support the idea of New Ca-reerists. For the past three years, I have usedNew Careerists as assistant probation officers.They can bring the community to you if youare willing not to get too upset when theybetter you on the job ... and if you are nottoo afraid of change. If you bring in someonefrom the community as a teacher aide to helpyou become a better educator, then you aregoing to have to give up some of your verydear and cherished myths. You will have to

deal with what I call "constructive confronta-tion" so that when you are told that you are"messing up the works," you do not defendyourself or the school, but ask, "How am Idoing it wrong?" New Careerists ... as pro-bation aides or teacher aides ... have somesimple ways of helping us, largely by directingus back to being human and stopping thisbusiness of "we" and "they."

The third and last thing I would like tocomment on is the benefit of the experienceof living. In this day of the simulation, we asprofessional: must engage in a great dealmore of it. Let me share with you one ex-ample. A group of us who were teaching at theUniversity of Nevada in July of this summerput a group of judges in jail overnight. Well,it shook up the entire judicial system. If youread about it in the papers, you will recall onajudge said in an open interview, "I think theprisons should be burned to the ground." Inone night he reached this conclusion. We hadto pass out tranquilizers to several of thejudges the next day and many of them saidthat the experience ... the simulation ... didmore for them in terms of understanding theirrole and power than all of the law courses andhuman relations seminars they ever had inthe past.

I leave you with this thought ... if you wantto see what goes on in the community, thereare ways to get there and there are people totake you. But stay awhile. There are things foryou to learn.

I represent a different sort of agency thanthat of Ruth Rushen's, but it isn't really dif-ferent in that people are people and we atWelfare Information Services handle some25,000 calls from troubled people during thecourse of a year. We learn about an awful lotof problems that an awful lot of people havein just trying to live on this earth.

One of the things I sca in working with schoolpeople is the problem of specialization, ofnever seeing the whole. I once worked withLos Angeles City Schools on a committee todevelop a pamphlet on community resourcesand we had to involve 34 different professionaldisciplines from within that single system inorder to come up with a plan. Too often, weprofessionals just see our speciality and teachour students or staff members accordingly.Somehow, we need to help students learnabout the world they're living in these days.I can't emphasize that too much.

We at Welfare Information Services are see-ing people who never, never, never learnedthe system. These include people who workedat fairly large salaries in the aerospace indus-try before losing their jobs. The only place theycan think of for help is United Way (in somecities, it's called Community Chest or UnitedFund) and the fact is, they don't know any-thing about what they've been paying taxesfor all these years the public assistancesystem. They are appalled that anyone wouldexpect them to live on $65 per week in un-employment insurance benefits, that they arenot going to have real medical coverage fortheir families, and shocked when they findthat it takes about two months to get anapplication for food stamps processed.

People today do not know the systems atwork in our society and teachers must helpthem to learn. It seems to me that Consumerand Homemaking Education teachers are anatural for this.

One of the things our agency does is topublish a directory of health, welfare, voca-

tional, and recreational services in Los AngelesCounty. We are getting out a new one rightnow and I am feeling very humble since thereis nothing in the directory among the manyschool systems we list that mentions Con-sumer and Homemaking Education as a partof the social service system. I think I will goback and try to squeeze it in.

We list 1,100 agencies with about 3,000branches and special projects in the directoryand one of several major changes we are not-ing is the parent involvement programs ...the hot lines, free clinics and drug abuse proj-ects, for example. I think there are practicallyno family counseling, mental health, or com-munity center programs listed that do nothave special programs for parents to helpthem understand their children better.

The other big change is in the consumereducation and consumer protection fields. Thisrepresents a real expansion of interest that

Barbara ThiessDirectorWelfare Information ServicesLos Angeles United Way

RE OURCE/FOR CORSUIllEREDUCATION

33

is constructive and involves people in realchange. We are listing new buyers clubs andnew funeral societies and cooperatives; we arelisting the Southern California Law Enforce-ment Consumer Committee made up of 27federal, state, and local agencies to whom onecan file a complaint and get some action; weare beginning to list police forgery and bunkosquads as a very legitimate place where peo-ple can make consumer complaints.

We have added interesting new resourcessuch as the postal inspector, the Weights andMeasures Department of the county and thesame department for the state. One of thebest agencies is the Attorney General's Con-sumer Fraud unit. We plan to include the fed-eral Food and Drug Administration and weare going to emphasize how a person goesabout making a complaint regarding the qual-ity of food and drugs.

These are very exciting new trends to meand are some of the resources that I wouldhope could be a part of the curriculum in yourclassrooms.

I think it is important that all of us helppeople understand the rights and benefits theyhave as citizens. Many of you work in adulteducation and you might be interested toknow that in the 25 senior citizen centers inLos Angeles, the major interest is consumereducation and nutritious meal-planning on abudget. These are areas where your skills areneeded.

People and communities need your skills,but how many of you have really become in-volved in your own communities? How welldo you know your local community resources?Do you ever bring in speakers from yourcounty health department or from the manypublic agencies that protect and serve people?How about the fraud and forgery units of yourpolice department ... these are people per-fectly suited to instruct our youngsters insome of the rights they have that make livingin this very complicated world a bit better.

I would like to speak to you this evening about themarketplace. This is a topic that offers me a lot of lee-way because almost everything is a matter of choice inthe marketplace, whether it is who you marry or whereyou live or what you buy. I will limit myself to thesubject of consumer commodities and how we spendour money. This includes why it is that we select thosethings that we finally choose to buy, how we judge theirvalue, and why we always go on spending more thanwe really have.

In talking about the things that we buy, we have tostart with the most fundamental of subjects, advertis-ing, because the things that we buy are very muchinfluenced by those things we see and hear through ad-vertising. Let's begin by talking about the advertisingof one product: automobiles. Let me also state herethat whatever it is that I may say about a brand nameit is never intended to suggest that the brand is anyworse or different than any other. It simply happensto be the one that sprang to mind when I was preparingmy remarks to you. Let's talk about advertising (nowthat I have gotten myself out of a libel or slander suitby the following companies that I am going to nameby name). Let's talk about Ford which "Has a BetterIdea!" I want to talk first about ads that never tell youanything and never describe quality when you hearthem. "Ford Has a Better Idea!" But does it make abetter car?

What are the kinds of things that we know? Weknow that between 1965 and 1969, Ford Motor Com-pany produced 85,000 police cars that had to be re-called because when the cars were going at high speeds

as police cars are apt to do and the brakes ap-plied, the front end of the car simply fell off. But "Fort!Has a Better Idea!" After four years of that, they don'tdo that anymore. But here is the problem . . . that al-though 85,000 police vehicles were recalled and pre-sumably fixed, four million cars made by Ford-Mercurybetween 1965 and 1969 are still being driven. Thisfigure does not include all Ford-Mercurys, just some... the big ones ..e. the station wagons ... the one inwhich people may have lots of children as they travelon highways at high speeds. But "Ford Has a BetterIdea!" General Motors, on the other hand, is "The Markof Excellence" . . . except that 4,000 GM school buseshave been recalled during 1970 (at the early part of theyear) because of defective brakes. But they have "TheMark of Excellence." Twice since the first recall ofthose 4,000 school buses, they, have been recalledagain. A recall of a recall of a recall is something ofa record even in the automobile business. BetweenSeptember. 1966, and December, 1969, 38 percent ofall the cars built in this country were recalled at leastonce. Meanwhile, the ads keep telling you "non-things"that you need to know. You are offered a young-mobile,a sleek-mobile, a speedy-mobile, but you are never toldhow long it lasts, what the repair record is, what thesafety features are, how many miles per gallon you canexpect to get,

How many times have you heard the ad (whichstrikes me as the all-time loser for ads this year), "TheBest Cigarette, Like the Best Women, is Slim and Rich?"Even if we did our best, we couldn't all be slim and mostof us will never be rich. Most of us don't even thinkthat the best woman is necessarily slim and rich andthe best woman may not be lowest in nicotine andtars, yet presumably those are the qualifications forthe best cigarette.

Toothpaste that offers to "Give Your Mouth Sex Ap-peal" should prevent cavities and be good for yourhealth, too. You are never told that some toothpasteswhich are particularly good whiteners do the job, infact, by simply removing the enamel from your teeth.

011

When you go into the service, my husband tells me,you are notified that toothpaste with whiteners mightbe very dangerous over a long period of time becauseyou end up with no teeth at all. What you will havewhen you are 60 and toothless is "sex appeal."

Some advertising is simply and boldly deceptive.They don't try to fool you in the manner of the betteridea, or sexy toothpaste, or the slim and rich cigarette.These ads fall into the general category of what isknown in the trade as bait-and-switch ads.

If you look in your local tabloid newspaper, you willfind back by the section that describes such productsas fishing reels, row boats, power saws, and other itemssuch as these, ads in small boxes that say: "No moneydown! Instant credit! Every customer a car buyer! Seethe 1969 Chevrolet! Only $75! A 1968 Mercury, only$105!" There will be a list of three or four more carsfor sale. "Many more like these," it will say glowinglyat the bottom of the ad. Well, you will not buy one ofthose cars because they are the bait. If you are a redsnapper, you are in trouble. You will get to the car lotand discover that perhaps there is a $75 Chevrolet ora $105 Mercury, but yore won't want either and if youare fool enough to buy, you will barely get it out of thelot. The point is that you will arrive and see this poor,battered hulk of a car sitting next to bright, shiningcars costing three to four thousand dollars. Which doyou suppose the salesman will want you to buy?

I think the best way that I can explain to you aboutbait-and-switch is to describe to you a couple of realcases that happened to come up in New York City whiteI was working there, but are happening all across thecountry.

There was a marvelous encyclopedia deal advertisedon one of the two Spanish-speaking radio stations inNew York City. It was not advertised on any of the non-Spanish-speaking stations.

"All of the contract is in English except for onesentence and that sentence reads in Spanish, 'Ihave read this contract and understand its terms.'Once she signs, she is hooked for 10 years."

34

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The announcer described to the listening public agreat deal: "For only $14.98, five volumes of an en-cyclopedia containing all of the knowledge of man canbe yours." All you had to do was call the radio station,give them your name and address and, miracle of mira-cles (you didn't even have to get on the subway andgo downtown to the store or take your children outinto the cold), the salesman and the five volumeswould arrive at your door.

He would arrive carrying two things; in one handwould be a large satchel . . a suitcase affair ... and inthe other hand, the five volumes. They were about oneinch thick, three of them were eight and one-half inchestall and the other two were about seven and three-quarters inches tall. All of them were gray, except one,which was blue. They split the alphabet, leaving outonly one or two letters. The books looked as if theywere fourth or fifth-hand. The salesman, who alsospoke Spanish, came into the house of the woman whohad called (by the way, all of this took place duringthe daytime while the husband presumably he hasmore will to resist was gone) with his five, dog-eared,miserable volumes and his satchel. He would say tothe woman whose face had fallen at the sight of theencyclopedias that contained all of the knowledge ofthe world, "I knew you wouldn't want this. I know youare unhappy about this because I can tell that you area woman of discernment. You know that if you wantyour children to have an easier life than you have had,they will have to have a good education. You know thatNew York City is a dangerous place for children andyou can't let them go to the library at night." All thewhile, the woman of the house is nodding in agreementbecause it is all true. He tells her that he just happensto have the answer to her problem. The lady has now,in classical terms, been "baited" and is about to be"switched." Out of the mysterious satchel comes atall, thick, white volume, plastic bound to look like

"If the drawer of the chest of drawers has a back,the back of the chest has no back. If the wall werenot there, you would simply push the drawer stra ightthrough into nothingness."

35

Harriet Van Tassel RabbStaff Counsel

Stern Community Law FirmWashington, D. C.

leather and with gold lettering on it. And it is only "A"there is all the way from "B" to "Z" to go. All the

woman has to do to have these books is to pay $298,plus carrying charges. If she does, she will have allkinds of other marvelous services at her command,such as a research service (some place out in Chicago,where research services always are for these encyclo-pedia deals) so that if her child needs to know any-thing on a given subject, all she has to do is write toChicago and someone will send the answers.

With accounting charges, service charges, and re-search charges, she will probably spend no less than$325. All of this the salesman explains to her in Span-ish. The encyclopedias are in Spanish. Remember, theinitial advertising was in Spanish. In fact, everythingis in Spanish except for the three-page contract whichshe signs when she agrees to pay $325 for an encyclo-pedia that was supposed to cost $14.95. All of thecontract is in English except for one sentence and thatsentence reads in Spanish, "I have read this contractand understand its terms." Once she signs, she ishooked for 10 years.

There is another bait-and-switch and it is one thatthe Federal Trade Commission is following. I happento have a copy of the. letter they send out because theydon't begin their bait-and-switch campaign by radioads. I might say here that radio advertising is used bybait-and-switch people because it is very difficult tofind the merchant selling on radio and see if he doeswhat the law provides that is, actually offer the per-son the merchandise being advertised. This one, how-ever, had a new way of beginning. This particularsewing machine company sends you a letter at thetop of which is your very own name and address. Un-derneath it says in boldface type, "Congratulations!Lucky telephone number! You were selected at randomfrom all the people in your area to receive a 1970deluxe, twin-needle, zigzag sewing machine with built-incontrols to monogram, applique, darn, etc. It is fan-tastic what this machine can do for you." As you sus-pected, the machine is absolutely free. The lettertells you that the machine is nationally advertised at$269.50. But the next paragraph tells you that thisis part of their promotion campaign and to receive themerchandise, it is necessary that you purchase a 10-year service and instruction policy of $8.95 per year.The policy covers everything that can wear out orbreak, instructions in oiling and cleaning, and so forth.Add it all up, including the carrying charges and ser-vice charges and you will pay at least $90.00 for it.But it's still a deal.

We asked this particular sewing machine companyto come in and talk with us about the offer. It turnedout that these machines are purchased by the companyfor between $40 and $60. Even if they sell a machinefor $90, they make a $30 profit. But what about theservice policy? The guarantee? What you are buying, itturns out, is the right to bring your 30-pound sewingmachine back to the store and if a salesman is therewho knows how to fix the machine, he will do it. Sowe inquired about how one got to be a salesman. Onebecame a salesman by simply answering an advertise-ment. One was given no training because one neededno training. There was no service department in anyof the seven or eight stores in the New York City areathat used this technique and there was no contractwith the company or any outside service department.In short, if you brought the machine back and a sales-man could fix it, he would. If he couldn't, there wentyour $90 plus tax and carrying charges.

Now you and I might know better when we receivea letter such as this. We also know that when we lookat the newspaper and see an ad with three rooms of

furniture for $149, it just ain't so. You can hardly getone room of furniture for $149, let alone three. Thisagain is bait-and-switch. People who hadn't previouslythought about furnishing a whole home at once willgo into a store where, if they put a fingernail on thewood, they discover that it makes a deep scar. If theylook at that ad offering furniture of maple-like finish,they discover that it is not maple at all, but in manyinstances, heavy cardboard with maple-patterned con-tact paper placed over it. If you pulled some of thepieces of furniture away from the wall, you would findthat there are no backs to them at all. If the drawerof the chest of drawers has a back, the back of thechest has no back. If the wall were not there, youwould simply push the drawer straight through intonothingness.

You don't know how many people fall into this trap.They went there thinking that they were going to getthree rooms of furniture for $149. Those three roomsoften don't measure up to what I have just described.That is because they are not supposed to be sold. Thefurniture is nailed to the floor, it is battered, torn, waterstained and broken. No one would think of buying it.That is when the salesman switches you to the bettermerchandise.

This kind of bait-and-switch goes on through thetelevision and radio, it goes on through door-to-doorsalesmen and it goes on in stores. It is no remedy totell your student that if she finds herself in this situ-ation, read the contract. First, if you have ever triedto read a contract for an installment sale, it is im-possible. The contract is long, it is made up of the bestof legal language, and it is designed to keep you in thedark about what is being sold and what your obligationsare. The gentleman who gives it to you to read lightsone cigarette after another, looks at his watch repeat.edly, and tells you that it is a "standard contract" andthat he is in a hurry. The other important reason itdoes no good to tell your student to read the contractis that once she has been baited-and-switched, thewhole psychology of the business is such that shedoesn't stop at that point to think it through. The bait-and-switch technique has a momentum of its very ownand you, the buyer, are not about to read the contractand refuse.

There is another kind of ad, the non-advertisement.You didn't do anything to get yourself into this situa-tion. One day, the doorbell rings and a young lady,well attired, is standing there. She explains that sheis taking a survey and she wants your opinion about theeducation of children. She begins by telling you thatshe is there to learn "how children learn where theyget their attitudes about education, school, and knowl-edge." The first question is: Do you think children learn

the most between the ages of one and five, five and 10,10 and 15, or older? If you respond that children learnthe most between one and five, you are well on your wayto making a $300 purchase. The second question: Fromwhom do you think the child learns most of his atti-tudes the home, the school, the church, neighbor-hood children or "other?" If you respond that the homeis the most influential, you have had it. The next ques-tion: Do you know that they are teaching New Math inschool? Do you know the New Math? You may havelearned New Math at some point, but you certainlydon't remember it and you say so.

Obviously, the only salvation for your child is a setof encyclopedia with a research service located, of allplaces, in Chicago!

Let's move from the area of advertising and non-advertising to the area of making purchases and judg-ing quality. Many people simply have no idea of howmuch something should cost and if offered four packsof chewing gum at two cents, they will snap it up. Weare skeptical, we know there is something wrong withthat. We have learned about quality and how to judgeit. We know that convenience foods are "butler service,"and we know that we are paying well for that con-venience. The problem is that there are so many otherpeople who do not know the cost of that convenience

the real cost. When I worked with Bess MeyersonGrant, we believed that most people cared what theypaid, but did not know the real cost of food and, as aresult, we did a project on unit cost selecting twogroups of women. One was a group of women withabout 25 years of experience in shopping; the othergroup was made up of students from New York Uni-versity who were studying home economics. While thelatter group had very little experience, they were usedto taking tests and working with numbers. Both groupswere to take a list of 20 food items, go to the market,and to select that offering in any product category thatgave the most for the money. They were instructed notto consider brand preferences or family size. They didprecisely what we were afraid they would do. Theycame back with virtually the same problem. They haderred and bought more expensive products 10 centsextra on every dollar. There were several reasons fortheir mistake. First, the mathematics involved causedconfusion tuna fish in a five and one-half ounce canat 41 cents, in n six and three-quarters ounce can at53 cents, or in a seven and one-eighth ounce can at 61cents. Second, the store managers became suspiciousand told them to buy or move on.

We suggested to retailers in New York City that theyhad an obligation to put something more than the sell-ing price on the shelf they had an obligation to tellthe price per ounce and per pound so that people could

Dr. Joan Lare, PresidentCalif. Home Economics Assn.Dr. Norman R. Stanger, MemberNational Advisory Council for Vocational Education

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Leland BaldwinAssistant Chancellor, Division of Vocational EducationCalifornia Community CollegesMrs. Dale RossiRegional SupervisorBureau of Homemaking Education

compare all the categories before making a selection.Manufacturers were irate! The supermarket peoplefought us cats and dogs! They said it would be theend of marketing, a disaster, we would go to a sovietsystem where there would be two sizes of everythingand the poor consumer would have no choice at all.What would you be left with? Drab, boring, subversivesupermarkets! We fought and they fought and theytook us to court. They spent money and took BessMeyerson to court. It is still in court, but a funnything happened along the way. Several supermarketchains in this country have decided that it is goodbusiness to have unit prices on grocery shelves alongwith the total price. The ads proclaim, "We Care AboutYou!" But they fought tooth and nail.

We have to teach people to read, not reach for thenearest can or the most attractive label. Teaching themto read is a problem, but letting them know what todo once they understand is, as I suggested earlier, aneven more serious problem. This is because of thedoctrine known in the law as the Holder in Due Course.This is something that I suggest you do soon havea lawyer come in and talk with your students aboutthis. It is something that all of us can learn and teach.The Holder in Due Course is such a trap and is sowidespread that unless someone sits down and ex-plains it, people don't know how to protect themselves.

This is how Holder in Due Course works. A. is amerchant. The customer comes into his store and buysa piece of furniture for $100. A. has few scruples andhe doesn't intend to collect the money. He wants aquick profit. He sells the contract to B., a finance com-pany, for $80. At this point, B. sends the consumera packet of papers that tells him, in incomprehensivelanguage, that if anything is wrong with the furniturehe must complain within the next 20 days. If he doesnot, B. is not responsible. Now it may be that the fur-niture is not delivered for three months and it is de-livered as a single bed rather than the double bed thatwas ordered. The consumer complains and B. says, "Ireally feel terrible about it, but I merely bought thecontract and I notified you about complaints. It's notmy fault." What the consumer must do is pay the $100to the finance company and A. goes on selling furnitureto someone else. A. and B. have an on-going relation-ship and this is the way they do business. And theyknow the consumer is on the hook and can do nothingabout it.

One of the things you may not realize is that all ofthe credit cards you have Unicard, BankAmericard,and all the others make the credit card company aHolder in Due Course. If you buy a jump suit for yourlittle boy, pay for it with a credit card, and find thatit shrinks, fades, or falls apart, the company will simply

say, "Gee, I am really sorry, but you owe me $8.95."Think about all the things you buy with credit cardsand consider whether or not you should re-evaluatewith whom you do business. When you deal directlywith a department store, you can always go back tothe store and complain. You have no chance at all whenthere is a Holder in Due Course.

Let me suggest some things that I think might beuseful in solving some of the problems I have outlined.

One of the things that I think might help is if youdivide your classroom into two different parts andreally play it out. Let one side of the room becomesellers and the other side those who are resisting. Letthem learn what it is like even if they don't learn toresist well let them learn what it is like to give thatsales pitch and know that if they really do it well, theycan sell. And once they learn what they will stoop toin order to make a sale, the chances of letting it happento them grow much slimmer.

Another thing I would suggest is having studentsclip ads from newspapers. Let them take any productand see what ads give the most information on thatproduct. They can get any other reputable informationthey want from any other source the business, re-tailer, or company and let them compare the realfacts about that product with the ads they see. Theywill find that the thing being sold in this country isyouth and sex because that's what it's all about.

Give your students a project in comparison shopping.Let them go out and compare prices on a televisjonset, going from store to store. Send them into thesupermarkets and see if they can figure out how to getthe most for their money on a given item.

The other thing I would suggest is that you takeadvantage of the legal services office in your area.What I have told you about Holder in Due Course isonly the beginning of it. There are so many legal thingsthat people can do for themselves; people can betrained with legal services help, with any lawyer's help,to protect themselves.

One of the astounding things about the frauds I'vetalked with you about is that they seem to be universal.Encyclopedias are so often sold the same way, as wellas appliances, furniture and cars. Home improvementcontractors who "miss" their re-roofing estimates bytwo or three thousand dollars are in this business allover the country. Your local neighborhood legal ser-vices can tell you about these frauds and what is goingon in your community.

I haven't been able to talk to you about everythingin the marketplace today, but the next time we gettogether we will talk about other things like whereto live and how to choose a spouse. But until that time,I thank you.

Wesley P. SmithState Director, Vocational EducationState Department of EducationMrs. Virla KrotzChairman, Joint Committee for Vocational Educationand Member, State Board of Education

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Alexander RossiMrs. Joan KingMember, California Board of GovernorsCalifornia Community Colleges

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(Editor's note: Meryl Ruoss edited and prepared forpublication the speech he gave at the closing sessionof the conference on Consumer and Homemaking Edu-cation. Below is the condensation of his presentation.)

C. Wright Mills characterized the art of teaching as"the art of thinking out loud"... of trying to showothers how one individual thinks.

There are three things I would like to think out loudabout with you in these moments. One: What is goingon out there now? Two: What could be happening?Three: What ought to happen and must happen?WHAT IS GOING ON OUT THERE NOW?

The times in which you and I live are a great break-ing point in history. We are in the threshold years ofa new epoch in human experience. Culturally, we spent50,000 years making the transition from pack to tribe,from the random to the organized, and from animismto identity. We spent the last 5,000 years as a toolmaker and user, reflective recorder and social being.As such, we have learned husbandsman and herding;we Piave learned to reason, develop common sense andestablish laws; we have invented tools for mass pro-duction and other technologies; and we have nowreached the state of cybernetics machines usingmen to produce other machines. In the emerging epoch,I believe that man will go beyond cybernetics and againcontrol his tools and machines. Indeed, I believe wewill have a cosmic view of the wholeness of life, re-placing the scientific method with its resulting frag-mentalization of life.

We are in a time of becoming . a transition fromold to new. The pace of change in America has beenaccelerating for more than a century so that today, weare involved in massive change of the very life pro-cesses of an entire people. We are an urban nationwith a quite new mode for the civilizing process andthe knowledge explosion is helping to create a newstyle of life. It is requiring us to think about life, aboutthe universe, and about our life together in vastly dif-ferent ways. Today's shape of the American Dream inspecific elements is a world beyond that of a centuryago.

For example, our community is no longer the cross-roads village where goals and decisions were mattersof tradition. For seven out of ten Americans today,community is the metropolity which provides a kafeide-scope of choices and opportunities never before avail-able to the individual. The new forms of transportationhave taken the mystery out of what lies beyond thehills. The internal combustion engine, with an assistfrom rubber, has made us mobilites who can jet fromcoast to coast any day in the same amount of timeit used to take old dobbin to get us to market. Electriccircuitry is breaking down barriers to products, prac-tices, and ideas nearly as rapidly as our cybernetictechnology produces them.

Dr. Albert Einstein. speaking at the American NobelAnniversary dinner in 1945, aptly put it in thesewords: "The picture of our postwar world is not bright.We (the physicists) feel the duty to speak up and toremind those responsible that there is no escape intoeasy comforts, there is no distance ahead for pro-ceeding little by little and delaying the necessarychanges into an indefinite future, there is no time leftfor petty bargaining. The situation calls for a cou.-a-geous effort, for radical changes in our whole attitude."

One understanding that we need here is that oftenthe rate :;f change is more significant to us than theactual change. Man and his society are always chang-ing. The important new element is the rapidity ofmajor change.

We are in a time of death and birth. We must realizethat the woes of the present times are the death throesof an old order, but and this is their real significancefor us today they are also the birth pangs of a neworder. Some of the signs of this new order are thefollowing transitions:

village to metropolityindependence to interdependencestatus quo to stability of changenormalcy as settled to normalcy as permanentlyunresolved situations.

In such an epochal time of man's becomingin thesedays of death and birth every man must choose.Each of us must decide. Are we mourners in a funeralparade or are we midwives cutting the umbilical cordso that a new kind of existence might make its bawlingappearance in the world?

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WHAT COULD BE HAPPENING?Man could be planning his own evolution. The urban-

izing of a nation and the knowledge explosion arecreating a new style of life in America through compre-hensive and extensive changes occurring rapidly whichleave no nook nor cranny of life untouched. Together,they make it possible for man to plan his own continu-ing evolution.

I feel it is particularly crucial for educators to under-stand the true dimension of the possibility within theirhands. Especially educators who understand their vo-cational responsibility in the process of social change.Whatever our personal proclivities for retreat from thefray into "objectivity," the very substance of realityvocationally and socially places us on the firing lineof social change.

Time constrains me to cite only one example outof the many possible opportunities and requirementsfor us to be agents of social change. This is the en-couragement, development, and organization of citizenparticipation in the planning of man's evolution.

The democratic tradition fits such a time becauseof its essential ideas that societies are changed bydeliberate actions of men; that man must take himselfseriously as well as the bundle of living in which heis bound inextricably to his neighbor; that a free societyis dependent upon actions by its citizens with thepower to act; that people affected by policy have a rightto help determine that policy.

In our new style of life which can best be called"organizational society" a healthy society is still de-scribed by the citizen's exercise of his guaranteed rightsto use his power (i.e. human and material resources)to promote and shape the common life so as to achievehis own goals as fully as possible. Such exercise ofcitizen responsibility is essentially a political enterprisecarried on within a social system and affected by thebasic elements of that system.

There is a formula which summarizes the sequenceand relationships of the citizen's responsibilities andopportunities for participation in this general enterprise:

Citizen participation requires political processPolitical process requires powerPower requires organization.

Deliberate organization by citizens to work for cer-tain social, economic and political goals and programsis not unique to our generation. As a matter of fact,it is not unique to America or American history.

In today's America, much of the organized citizenaction is loosely labelled "community organization."Actually this is a tag pinned on a bewildering array ofpackages. Even the major packagers disagree sub-stantially about the contents.

Let's look at models for organizing true citizenparticipation. In approaching your role as organizerof citizen participation in the development or modifica-tion of social change, there are three models of organi-zation which you might use. Which one you chooseat the given moment in your situation depends uponyour purpose.

When you and the folks with whom you are workinghave come to a point of agreement that "somethingneeds to be done," the first question you must dealwith is "what kind of end product do we want out ofthis change?" Or another way of putting it might beto ask the purpose for organizing. What kind of changeand what do you really want to happen?

The three kinds of organization you have avail-able with which to respond to the questions are com-munity organization, community development, andmass-based organization. Let's briefly look at someexamples of the use of these three models.

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Meryl RuossDirector, The Urban Semester

Center for Urban StudiesUniversity of Southern California

1. It your purpose is the delivery of a new service,then you will want to use community organization. Forexample, if the people in your community need a well-baby clinic or homemaking classes for unwed mothers,you have alternatives. These are social services thatcan be delivered by private or public social servicesand you may need to tie your s, 'n with theirs todeliver the service. Or your focus could be in advisingthe organizing citizens about delivery in order to getthe professionals to do their job. it is not, in the firstinstance, to organize such services. That may becomenecessary if you find there are no agencies in yourcommunity or at the county or regional level to deliverthe required service. When this turns out to be thecase, you may find yourself at another level of citizenorganization.

2. If your need is to organize a process or a projectwhich in some way adds to or improves existing sys-tems, then you need to use the community develop-ment approach. Here your approach is to organize anucleus of concerned parents, let us say, to speakbefore the school board and gain their approval foraction, or to recruit necessary materials, supplies andsupport for a self-help project.

3. If what the citizens really want are very funda-mental changes in the way things are now happening,then you must face the probability of mass-based or-ganizing. The fundamental problem may be discrimina-tory employment or wage patterns, or the provision ofreally equal educational opportunities under a schoolsystem which for decades has been deliberately under-educating the poor, the Black, the Chicano, and theAmerican Indian. If this is the case, then you need tobring together large numbers of those affected. In suchcases, citizens are challenging very basic patterns andpolicies of major systems in the community. This kindof organizing requires more energy, a longer period oftime, and a longer-range view than the other forms.It is not to be entered into lightly, nor will it produceresults in a hurry.

A few generalized guidelines might be helpful foryour initial thinking about your role as a change agent.

1. Citizen organization is for a specific purpose orpurposes. Select the method of organization which willsuit your purpose best. Try to avoid underestimatingyour needs, but also avoid overkill.

2. Citizen organization should produce communitydevelopment and systemic change at some level orother. To do this it must be based on the norms of thepeople, not your norms as an outsider, from a differenteconomic level and cultural background. Your purposein any organization is to help the system adjust to theneeds of the people, not vice versa. And you are notorganizing citizens for the purpose of adjusting themto systems that are faulty or unworkable.

3. Citizen organization should provide personal andsocial development for the people involved. Theyshould be exposed to wider horizons. A major purposeof organization is to help people learn the processes ofsetting goals, establishing priorities, and making deci-sions to implement those goals and priorities.

4. Most groups exhibit a kind of "life cycle," whichgoes something like this: Dependency to independenceto rebellion to interdependence or death. If the stageof rebellion results in death rather than interdepen-dence, you are faced with the task of starting a newcycle.

WHAT OUGHT TO HAPPEN AND MUST HAPPEN?What is going on and what could be going on are

but preludes to what must happen if man is to be pre-vented from reducing himself and his planet to rubble.

Kenneth Boulding put it this way: "If the human

race is to survive, it will have to change its ways ofthinking more in the next 25 years than it has donein the last 25,000." Such a conviction about what musthappen implies the growth and spread of a new knowl-edge of what it means to be human. Such a radicaldevelopment is required if we are to reverse the cyber-netic use of man by his machines and move into atime when the machines we have built may be turnedto human uses. The result of these epochal times isnothing less than new values, a new way of living, yesa new man!

Actually, this is not as wild and impossible a taskas first reaction may see it. Already there is such aone underway. It is as profound as that one thousandsof years ago when reason replaced instinct. If it suc-ceeds, it will change all our lives and all our systems.It does not require violence to succeed, nor will it besuccessfully resisted by violence.

Richard S. NelsonChief, Program Operations UnitVocational Education SectionState Department of Education

This revolution began subtly in various quarters andis now spreading with amazing rapidity. Already ourlaws, institutions, and social structures have felt itsimpact. I believe its ultimate consequence could besomething beyond Aristotelian and Baconian reason.It could produce a truly new human community andit is producing new and liberated individuals.

Here are some of its changing values, its new wayof living, its involvement:

1. From scarcity to affluence, with emphasis uponsurvival giving way to the possibility of truly living.

2. From occupied time to the abundance of time;from chronos to kyros; from work to learning and devel-oping; from being a producer to being.

3. From simplicity to complexity and fragmentationto wholeness, with the scientific method changing andreplaced by general systems theory, general seman-tics, etc.

4. From life-destroying to life-preserving forces;from war to ecology; from competition to love.

5. From hard cost to elusive symbol and GNP toquality of life.

6. From place to process; teaching to educating;status to change.

As educators faced with what must happen, we mustshift our emphasis to educating for tomorrow. We dareno longer be guilty of educating for yesterday or today.To assume this new stance may require new personalunderstandings and commitments.

We must understand Marshall McLuhan's new manand the new situation where the medium is themessage.

We must make a philosophical commitment to theconcept that "things are temporary" and that they arenever going to settle down again.

Wesley P. SmithState Director, Vocational Education

State Department of Education

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tr.

We must learn to approach each situation as achance for creative action. This requires us to sys-tematically think of new and creative concepts in viewof the differences in any different situation from allother situations.

We must understand that process acquires new im-portance. The process of human interaction and expe-rience is every bit as siznificant as content.

We must be willing to tackle the larger problemsand work out the best methods we can as we go along.We can no longer be content to limit ourselves to deal-ing with trivia because of dogma about method. Wemust face the reality that dealing with any problem ormethod involves choice and judgment and rid ourselvesof the delusion of objectivity.

Our starting point in any situation becomes "whatprocesses and methods can we use?" rather than firsttrying to reach agreement about old methods.

STAFFBureau of Homemaking EducationState Department of Education

M. Catherine Welsh, ChiefTheodora FaiolaMildred HuberMartha C. KammDale RossiDorothy W. StoneLucille ValinotiMaurine Vander Griend

California Community CollegesVelma S. Johnston

Coordinator for Pre-Serviceand In-Service EducationMartha Eichorn

AD HOC ADVISORY COMMITTEE forCONSUMER AND HOMEMAKINGEDUCATION CONFERENCEVirna Canson, Chairman, Consumer Education Committee,

California Advisory Council on Vocational Education.

Melchoir Estrada, Director, Vocational Education, Camp-bell Union High School District.

Dorothy Hu 1st, Chairman, Home Economics Department,Modesto Junior College.

Ruth Methvin, Chairman, Home Economics Department,Fall River High School.

Kathy Oneto, Student, Member of Future Homemakers ofAmerica, Jackson Unified High School District.

Dr. Merna Samples, Chairman, Home Economics Depart-ment, California State College at Long Beach.

Mary Ann Schoell, Home Economics Department, SanDieguito High School.

Aina Summerfelt, Instructional Consultant, SecondaryHome Economics, San Diego City Unified School District.

Dr. Sam Wallace, Assistant Superintendent, Kern JointUnion High School District.