Food for Thought

When I was growing up, it wasn't unusual for kids to go home from school for lunch.  Now, of course, that would be impossible.  Now kids are put on conveyor belts and run through a cafeteria that serves them a bunch of stuff that they eat very quickly because time can't be taken away from teaching.   And we've all seen how time spent teaching correlates with learning, right?

Why couldn't we try this?  Why couldn't we treat school lunches like something really important.  How about we serve really nutritious tasty meals and do it over the course of 75 minutes.  A teacher could sit with each table of students and they would learn table manners, nutrition, patience, and well, just a gazillion things in this relaxed environment.

I've heard people say that kids won't eat weird, nutritious meals, so why serve them that stuff?  Really.  I've heard parents say that.  Hmmmm.  Using that logic we could say that we don't use proper grammar at home, so why teach it at school?  We could say, no one at my house can do basic arithmetic, so why should my kids have to learn it?  Yep.  And pretty much that's what has happened.

I think we need to approach the whole school problem with this stuff called common sense.  Get rid of tenure.  Get rid of standardized tests. Have a big garden at every school so the students produce much of their own food while learning.  What can't be taught in a garden?  Be consistent in our messages - that is, don't tell kids in nutrition class why they shouldn't drink diet soda but sell it to them in the hallway.   Teach kids to be respectful by being respectful.

We need to learn basic skills.  We need to learn to read, use the web and other resources around us, but most of all we need to learn how to think for ourselves.  It seems to me that too much if focused on giving the right answer, and not enough focused on how to obtain the answer.  Life doesn't come with text books containing all the right answers.

And it seems to me that a good place to begin using common sense in schools is with lunch.  There really isn't much more basic to our lives than eating, we might as well learn to do it well.