General citizens' View of Homemaking Education and Factors of Its Formation (1) : Relations between Difference by Sex and Educational Objectives

Abstract

This paper aims at finding actual conditions of general citizens' view of the homemaking course and analyzing factors contributing to its formation. By using the data of a survey conducted by Takamatsu City, Kagawa Prefecture in October, 1991, we investigated actual conditions in citizens' sense of homemaking learning of boys and girls and the position of the homemaking course in aim of education. As a result, it is found that about a half of the respondents of general citizens view positively homemaking learning of boys and about 70% of them do so for the learning of girls. We applied factor-analysis to answers of 13 items concerning the attitude of upbringing and educational objectives and extracted from behavior of each item 5 factors for boys and 4 factors for girls. While in the case of boys "homemaking learning" and "domestic help" constitute the 5th factor, in the case of girls "homemaking learning" constitutes the 1st factor together with "independence as a human-being", "fertile and stout humanity", "contribution to vocational life" and "domestic help". From these results, it can be inferred that there still exists in general citizens' view of homemaking education a deeprooted sense to perceive the homemaking course as preparatory education of girls for housewives.