Tasty Orange Juliuses and tedious needlepoint are what come to mind whenever somebody brings up the topic of middle school home economics class, and none of the lessons I recall had anything to do with keeping a household budget.

According to The New York Times, home economics was started [1] with the idea of teaching students about pinching pennies but transformed as people worried less about money.

Once upon a time, schools taught survival skills like how to feed a growing family cheaply and run a household on a tight budget. But in an era of prosperity, easy credit and changing social norms, many of those classes were revised to focus on more up-to-date topics.

Source [2]