Bachelor Living

education · EN

In this episode, a longtime consumer science instructor reflects on the "Bachelor Living" class she created at City College of San Francisco—a course born during a time of social upheaval from a wave of veterans, new immigrants, and young or newly divorced men who arrived struggling to navigate an unfamiliar society. Drawing them in with the promise of James Bond–style self-sufficiency (and posters over every urinal in the building), she taught the fundamentals of a healthy, safe life: cooking and nutrition, clothing and grooming, housing and cleaning, banking and consumer protection, and the social skills for job interviews and everyday connection. Her students left more confident, stable, and equipped for adulthood, able to live independently—one became a chef, another launched a garment business in Los Angeles. From these stories, during hard times in San Francisco, she makes a larger case for "human ecology," the modern evolution of home economics, arguing that teaching people h