| "Plan Your Work and Work Your Plan"---such was the historic, enduring motto of the University of Kentucky's Home Management House. The historically important motto captures and conveys concisely both to students and to its constituents the guiding principle of a distinctive professional and academic program intended to bring systematic knowledge and expertise to what was hailed as a model of efficiency and home management beginning in the early twentieth century. This qualitative study reconstructs and analyzes this program and its principles via case study and historical analysis.;This study describes and analyzes the history of home management houses located in the departments and colleges of home economics beginning 1908 through the 1930's at two state funded Universities, The University of Kentucky and Eastern Kentucky University. The emphasis is on the home management house curriculum and its inhabitants and how both were affected by internal as well as external factors. Influences such as demographics, institution and institution type, and perception of discipline are considered. Also central to the research agenda is the examination of the perception of the home economics discipline, taking into account the time period, and how environmental influences impacted the existence of the home management houses. I contend that the inclusion of home management houses attributed to the diminishing status of home economics much like the addition of vocational education in 1917 with the passing of the Smith-Hughes Act (Stage, 1997). This legislation would prove to be both a blessing and a curse to home economics. A blessing, because more women would find employment and a curse because it "legitimized further the concept of sex-differentiated and unequal educational programs in high school, colleges, and universities" (Nerad, 1999, p. 10).;KEYWORDS: Domestic Science, Home Economics, Practice Cottage, Home Management, Efficiency.;Multimedia Elements Used: JPEG (.jpg). |
