My 6-year-old son went to camp this summer. The camp was held at his school and was run by some of the school's faculty. Each week there were different activities to choose. One week, he signed up for cooking classes. It was there that he learned what no kid should ever learn.
When I imagined "cooking classes," I envisioned something like Sarah Elton described (Sarah was a featured speaker at an international food meeting where I also gave an invited plenary recently). Sarah spoke about the importance that other cultures place on culinary education, noting particularly that in France, children go to cooking lessons the same way American kids might go to soccer practice. French kids learn to prepare and eat everything, and as young as 6, may learn to handle sharp knives and cook over flames.
I didn't imagine my soon-to-be second-grader wielding chef-grade cutlery or doing much with fire at his school camp here in the U.S., but I was thinking other kitchen skills or lessons in food literary would be on the agenda. Perhaps he would learn basic kitchen tools and cooking techniques, or be exposed to fundamental flavor combinations from different ethnic traditions. Maybe he'd sample the aromas, tastes, textures, and cooking attributes of select ingredients, or master a basic recipe or two...
What my son actually did was devote many class hours to mindless assembly.
In Cooking Class 1, the first day was devoted to mixing bagged pretzels, Chex cereal, and melted white chocolate together to make... whatever the heck that makes (other than a father -- and food-focused physician -- very sad). Subsequent days featured equally miserable assemblies of ultra-processed pre-packaged products.
With Cooking Class 2, I had hope. This class was called "Pizza Party" and was a series devoted to making different kinds of pies. Certainly he would learn to make and shape dough, simmer and spoon sauce, and appreciate how to work with olive oil and herbs.
In fact, the "pizza" that he "made" on one day was a store-bought cookie dough pressed into a disk and then covered with sugared cream cheese and jelly (my Italian grandmother rolled in her grave). Another day, the "pizza" was a pre-packaged pastry dough rolled into a sheet and the covered with (wait for it) Kraft Macaroni and Cheese!
I would have been horrified to the point of inconsolability had my son not revealed to me a remarkable fact: "It was gross, Dad. I spit it out." Table manners aside, I was heartened by this reaction.
My son has had macaroni and cheese many times in his life -- the kind made from scratch with real pasta (often whole-wheat), real cheeses (often imported), and usually a fair dose of vegetables (mirepoix at a minimum). Up until the camp class though, he had never tasted that powdered orange abomination that industry has tried to convince us is "cheese." And when he did taste it -- having missed his infant indoctrination and years of habituation to the product -- he recognized the boxed mix for what it actually was: disgusting.
And it is not just the taste that is nasty, the whole premise of minimal-assembly-required products disgusts, particularly in the context of a school class. What could be more perverse than a "cooking class" that supports the atrophy of actual cooking skills and the absence of real food knowledge; one that promotes a lack of self-reliance in the kitchen and that teaches kids to be dependent on industry for their meals (an industry that cares nothing for them except as consumers or, more accurately, as future customers).
Michael Moss (who also spoke at the food meeting where Sarah Elton and I gave talks) has written about the decline of home-economics classes in the U.S. (or at least a shift in their focus away from basic cooking and kitchen skills). My own research reveals a loss of food knowledge and cooking abilities over generations among urban dwellers, with an increased reliance on fast foods and convenience items.
Relying on ready-made products teach our kids to be helpless, ignorant, and dependent. To paraphrase Michael Pollan, we must "reject the debilitating notion that ... production is work best done by someone else, and the only legitimate form of leisure is consumption."
School can complicity reinforce learned helplessness with food provision and food messages to kids. We must do better.
Other countries emphasize preparing meals from staple and fresh foods. We should do so as well, and avoid depending on industry-engineered artificial products.
Just because something comes in a package doesn't make it a gift.
Life is about more than "just add water" and "heat and serve." We don't need to rely on a processing industry to eat, and we don't need to condemn our children to lives as constrained and skill-less dependents.
What you don't want school, or anyone, to teach your kid is dependency.