to be deeply sceptical about "food technology"

[hatwoman]

just back from an open evening at our local secondary school and had the pleasure to look at the food technology department...they seemed to do lots of "projects"...eg designing a questionnaire to find out what type of food a "target group" might want...and watching cut apple go brown . When I asked a sixth former if she knew how to bake a cake she said "erm...yes...but that's because I do it at home". shouldn;t they teach, erm, cooking? you know, how to make a white sauce, how to cook mince so that you can make spag bol, chilli or shepherds pie...how to cook a stew, a basic 4-4-4-2 sponge with butter cream icing that you can knok up in 10 mins without getting a recipe book out.

Seeker - that happened to my brother!
He's an amazing cook (I regularly nip down to his house for some of his apple crumble ) but his food tech teachers consistently gave him Cs or even Ds because apparently the only important thing about cooking is how it looks .
That actually put him off doing catering, which he originally wanted to do, because the teachers didn't even taste his food. They marked up this one girl's fairy cakes because they looked fabulous ... she gave a few out to her friends, and they were all gagging!
(Think I may be v. bitter on my baby brother's behalf, but I hated food tech at school too, it was boring and totally killed my desire to cook anything.)

Same here for both of my two, they are good cooks at home, sweet, savoury and baking, but both dropped Food Tech at the end of Y9 and didn't miss the endless paperwork and testing and research.
They did cook some basic, tasty stuff but that was only a small element of the overall course.
But that's what's on the curriculum. So if you want a change, you need to start at NC level.

heracles - countering my scepticism (which, as I said, has in part been allayed) by saying food tech isn't cooking doesn't work. If food tech isn't cooking then I transfer my scepticism away from the content of the subject "food tech" to the whole concept (certainly as a compulsory subject). ie I argue not that food tech should include cooking....but that food tech (as a compulsory subject)should be replaced by cooking. (and perhaps things like sewing buttons on, reading washing instructions, household menu planning ( a far more important skill than researcing target groups ). And I don;t care that much what they call it.

hmmm. just read more of the recent posts and my scepticism is creeping back...I am especially struck by the juxtaposition of nymphadora saying she got an A and can't cook, and hoddspur saying RG unis don;t consider it academically rigourous. put these two comments together and you are left thinking (if you'll forgive the food analogy) that it's a right old dog's breakfast - neither academic nor practical. which, from what I saw, is what I suspected.

huddspur are you talking about A level or GCSE? do univerisities look much/care much about GCSE?

Same here seeker. We did food tech and what we made was judged on how it looked/how neatly we'd cleared up, not how it tasted.

Also we had to write 'plans' that went from step 1- step 10, of how we'd cook whatever it was. Which drove me nuts, because you weren't meant to put 'I will stir the onions while I chop the carrots', you had to do one thing at a time, and wash up every dish as you finished with it.

Anyone actually cook like that? No, thought not.

I did Food Technology for GCSE.

I got an A*.

A few months ago I had to call my mum to ask how to poach an egg.

Enough said.

Actually, I will elaborate :)

Our GCSE was 70% coursework, 30% cooking.

We had to pick one dish, cook it.

Then decide 7 or 8 things we could 'modify'.

For example, Different milks in sauces, Different flours in sauces etc etc and then decide which was best and cook the final 'best' dish.

It was more about drawing tables and taking pictures and reading a recipe out of the cook books than actually learning any skills to carry forward into cooking for ourselves and our future families.

I am officially the worlds worst cook

"heracles - countering my scepticism (which, as I said, has in part been allayed) by saying food tech isn't cooking doesn't work."

Of course it does. Merely ignoring my point then changing your whole stance to "well in that case it should be dropped and replaced with cooking lessons" is an entirely different argument and still makes not one iota of difference to what food tech is.

Your complaint was there's no cooking in food tech; that's because foood tech isn't about cooking. Id have liked free back rubs during my maths lessons, but guess what...?

Fuck me I so agree with you! DS#1 is in yr 9 and has been doing 'food tech' for 2 years now. So far he has cooked savoury rice, veg soup and apple crumble. Whoop-de-do!

But he can plan a menu, design a food safety poster and a drinks advert.

Twattery!

(highjack, and if any of you care to share your best tiramisu recipe with me, I would be forever gratefule. here sorry)

This is a bit of a tangent but I'm interested that so many people think that schools should be teaching children to cook, sew, budget, learn the basic rules of home safety, that kind of thing.

Some people would argue those "life skills" are for parents to teach and schools should teach academic subjects.

I'm not quite sure where I stand. Ideally I suppose parents would teach life skills and schools academic subjects; but then that assumes that the parents know the life skills themselves, and have the time to teach them.

I wonder if there is a market for sewing/cooking/basic DIY/first aid after school classes for children? Certainly more useful than ballet or violin lesses.

Sorry, this is more of a ponder than a post. Just got me thinking.

(As regards the OP, I suspect Food Technology is aimed at older children who have an interest in going into the food industry - hence the marketing and chemistry type elements - rather than teaching people to cook.)

Schools should be providing the lessons that can't usually be adequately taught at home. You can learn to cook at home (more time/room for failure/fun) just as you can learn to sew etc. These aren't subjects you should be getting marked on. Getting a C for your shit pie is a great way to take all the fun from cooking, isn't it?

People need t be able to read, write, count, argue, understand their position in history, geography and society. Cooking's a very handy skill, but isn't one of life's essentials. Is food tech essential? Well, that's a different argument I guess, but it's more important to understand the science behind what we grow, consume, kill and develop than how to cook it. In my opinion, obviously.

I think it's good to teach children to cook/sew in school - but not as a GCSE. There's a limit to how 'academic' you can make it - sorry, but if you really have to study 'why an apple goes brown' in GCSE Food Tech, then it is a waste of time. Do science. I think we covered it in year 7 science, actually.

A food tech teacher friend who has been teaching for decades despairs at the current curriculum, and longs to teach basic cookery skills. Not being able to cook can have a direct impact on finances and health so I believe all children should be taught basic cooking skills at school. Most children will not use the 'skills' they are taught in the current curriculum.

Universities don't even require a food technology qualification to study food tech at degree level. A good grade in basic science subjects such as chemistry are more important.

The girls at our 2nd choice schools open evening mentioned smoothies and salads several times when discussing food tech, but i did see evidence of horrible looking apple tarts they'd made lol

Maybe because I don't think my DC will be doing this at GCSE level that I get narked that there is so much extra non-cookery stuff involved. But they do cook at home a bit so not entirely devoid of kitchen skills.

My DD is taking GCSE Catering - her school is a technology one so she had to take catering, textiles, graphics or manufacturing BTEC.

It is actually really good - from what she has done so far (3 weeks work) they research the traditional french methods of cooking and comparwe them with modernday cooking.

She has also done plenty of cooking - she has made creme brulee, chicken and tarragon pie (made with proper with white sauce) and chicken liver pate.

She is enjoying it.

I don't give a monkey's re Russell group unis sneering at it - she is doing 12 GCSEs altogether, and most of the rest are academic (maths, english lang and lit, history, geograpjy, triple science). Frankly I think she enjoys catering because it makes a change having a practical lesson.

She cooks at home anyway, she is tasked to cook the dinner twice a week.

I would imagine that Food Techology sets you up for a career in food manufacturing rather than learning how to cook. I work in an office full of people who can take a recipe created by a chef and scale it up so that it can be mass produced in a factory, or quality assess what has been produced so it can be released to the customer. You don't need to be able to cook to do that - but you do need to understand the effects of slight recipe changes, what customers are looking for and how different foods work in a factory environment.

My son became a lot more interested in cookery once I pointed out some of the 'scientific' aspects... eg. why runny cake mix gets firmer when you bake it in the oven but rock hard potatoes do the opposite. (Made it less 'girly' I'm reliably informed) They may have to science it up to make it an examinable subject but otherwise I do think children should be given more opportunities simply to have a go at food prep and cooking generally.

Unlike Heracles I believe very firmly that being able to convert raw ingredients into an edible meal is one of life's more essential skills.... I've certainly cooked a lot more often than I've had to solve a quadratic equation or describe the fundamentals of glaciated limestone scenery since my school-days.

My DW is a trained HE teacher and taught the subject for many years. However, she found that the curriculum chnaged so it was about the design side of stuff e.g. how to make packaging a pizza more interesting - really useful. Not teaching it now. The tech stuff should be there about why some things work e.g. adjust sugar content in a recipe and what happens.

I really think aall children in secondary 1-3 should have basic cooking type lessons so they know what to do. Just found out that Jamie Oilver is behind a new home cooking skills which can be taught at BTEC levl but the sheets on stuff are really helpful so they learn the different types of fruit / veg. Plus there's vieos on how to do stuff. Trying to get DW to pick this up and teach it in her EBD school as many of the kids would benfit from the more practical stuff.

DS2 is doing hos cooking modules now at school - we keep adjusting the recipe and giving him more interesting stuff to make. The booklets are just so dull and uninspiring - bring on the Jamie stuff.

I think all the "techologies" in school are a waster of time.

Imo YANBU