Why isn't nutrition/cooking a core subject at school?

[estavino]

Just that really. I see so many kids having regular lunch/dinners that's barely contains any nutrition not out of laziness/budget but due to lack of education.

I can't think where I use any science knowledge gained from school in day to day life yet I had an hour a day once a week for years. Cooking on the other hand I had one term a year for three years. I think we had to make shortbread, a fruit salad and a flapjack. In the second year we had to make a tomato and cheese sauce. In the third I think we had to cook chicken breasts and something to do with beef. Yet I can still label parts of a cell, atoms and know some basics of the periodic table.

We literally use nutrition various times a day- why isn't it compulsory?

Some subjects got squeezed out when the National Curriculum was introduced in the 1980s (I was a school governor at the time) and this was one of them. Add to that the need for facilities to teach cooking, to avoid accidents and being sued, and sadly the lack of enough time on this is no surprise.

I agree that it's important but the core subjects are English, Maths and Science (and sometimes Computing and/or French).

Are you saying you would want as much curriculum time devoted to cooking as to those subjects?

Or just that you want it included on all curriculum as a matter of course in the same way that, say History and Art are?

If the former I think YABU. If the latter YANBU but I think the majority of schools (or at least secondary schools) do this anyway.

Reading literature encourages the mind to enter new, exciting and improbable, spheres of experience. Some texts inspire us to feel admiration and compassion - empathy - for unlikely heroes or heroines, others confront us with deeply perplexing concepts - making us question our very reasons to be. You get a picture of the world from a million different perspectives, you get to see things from another's point of view.

I didn’t get any of this from any of the books I was forced to read at school.

School is more suited to teach cooking than homes without a literate parent/no cookbook/ no space for 2 people in the kitchen/ little kitchen equipment/ no oven.

English lit on the other hand is suited to hone learning where all the learner needs is a library card.

I didn’t get any of this from any of the books I was forced to read at school

Just because you didn't does mean that it's not part of the purpose of reading literature.

English lit on the other hand is suited to hone learning where all the learner needs is a library card While the study of literature has the capacity to widen perceptions and improve and expand literacy in its widest sense, it is not the preserve of an elite. It is also not just reading more books, as your library card suggestion implies. It is the discussions of ideas that matters.

I am a rubbish cook but I have a grade B GCSE in food tech, barely cooked anything though! I really wish I could cook better. I understand the nutritional side but don't necessarily have the skill to put it into practice in terms of anything I'd actually want to eat that isn't boring! My 5 year old cooks at school but not that often.

It is. Food tech until yr9 and nutrition in both PE and Science. Or that was the case when I was in Secondary (2006-2013)

Also I think parents should teach their children how to cook, or do what my mum did and send me to a weekend class.

Anyone who wants to learn to cook better should read the book SALT FAT ACID HEAT. It teaches the basic chemical reactions of food prep and how certain environments or applications effect our food.

Although I do think we should be taught ‘life skills’ including budgeting, taxes, mortgages etc.

From what I've observed with my oldest DD and her friends, it's impulse control skills they need to learn. Not nutrition- they learn all about that from reception.

We're talking about kids who've gone from being transported to schools with healthy eating packed lunches, to suddenly being let loose in the world with money to choose their own food and a sweetshop or take-away on every corner.

It's not surprising some of them go a bit. I know I did at that age. I think my record was 4 Double Deckers for lunch one especially fine day.

My dd did a semester of cooking at school. She enjoyed the class and got excellent marks for not very much work. She learned to do a few things she didn't know before, but she was already a pretty good cook (has been helping since she was small and cooking a meal a week from about 12 or so) and can do most things with a recipe book or you tube video. Timetabling cooking can be a bit tricky as it wouldn't be likely to get a big slot on the timetable and you need time for more complicated recipes (at her school all classes are 1.5 hrs every day so plenty of time but that's not in the UK). It's also relatively expensive and if schools are asking children to bring in ingredients that can be a bit of a burden for families.

We were also taught computing, sex and relationships ( yr 7 sex, 9 relationships, consent, and abusive relationships, yr10&11 sex in more detail, abuse again) and citizenship ( politics, community work, critical thought about the country).

This was a comp with 3,000 students.

I always find these discussions a bit hand wringy and irrelevant tbh. As many people have pointed out it’s on the curriculum. I am certain children now know far more about nutrition that we did (wasn’t even a thing in the 80s)

Also the golden era of home economics- the 60s and 70s didn’t do anything to prevent an entire generation raising their children on findus crispy pancakes and fish fingers did they?

Well the point of school is to provide an academic education not basic life skills. It's bad enough that parents are expecting the taxpayer to pick up the slack re educating their children but expect the state to pay to teach kids how to cook is just taking the piss. Are parents not responsible for anything anymore?

@secendown you really have the wrong end of the stick. English lit teaches you how to read properly and critically. Only bright people can manage that entirely on their own, the rest desperately need guided exposure to literature to stand half a chance of understanding and enjoying it.

@RestingGrinchFace I feel the same way about cooking.

I think that’s on us at home to teach our kids, but then there are children who don’t have parents at home who give a shit... what about them?

I feel quite proud to say that DD can create a variety of meals from scratch, including Indian, Chinese,Mexican, Italian and British cooking. DD is 10. It takes a little bit of time but to be honest, it was more of a cunning plan when she was quite a bit younger to eat food “that she didn’t like” she soon ate it when she had helped chop the vegetables and stir them in and we went from there!

I do agree that more education is needed though

I used to do cookery at school. We used to make very simple dishes, I remember making fruit salad, stuffed lambs hearts , a sort of shepherds pie but with crushed crisps instead of mash. plus pastry and other basic skills. I could cook but not everyone could and I learnt a few different skills .We also learnt about food hygiene too

I did it at school. Was the option to do it at GCSE. I'm 28. I still make a lentil and broccoli lasagne I learnt to make during the classes! But agree there should be more focus on this at school.

Some stuff needs to be taught at home

I have read so many posts over the years from posters banging their own particular drum about what schools should do more of. I’ve seen advocates of:

First aid
Sign language
Mental health training
Music to a much greater depth
Relaxation and wellbeing
Massage
Cooking
Sewing
Setting up bank accounts
Brushing teeth
Applying suncream
Toilet training
Philosophy
Road safety

For every person whose chosen specialised subject is ‘working with the deaf community’ who wants every schoolchild to be proficient in signing, there will be another raising the flag for first aid or sewing.

Schools can’t provide it all, they really can’t. Parents have got to take responsibility.

Threads like this give me the rage. There’s no room in school curricula for drama and art any more because of the constantly shifting goalposts and absolute fear of the new GCSEs, OFSTED, league tables and the rise of MATs. What do you want schools to drop so that they can teach these other things? Or maybe, as a PP has said, parents should drop their newborns off and pick them up again aged 18, then they really can blame schools for everything.

^^
This

Schools do teach food technology, just as we teach other areas of technology. We also teach the rest of the curriculum- from relationships to MFL to music.

We are also the first line of action (usually) for child protection, prevention of radicalisation, health care, mental health provision, parenting programmes, socialisation.... At some point we need parents to be allowed to actually parent.

“I think that’s on us at home to teach our kids, but then there are children who don’t have parents at home who give a shit... what about them?”

I think it’s really important that school helps children who have poor parenting so their disadvantage in life is reduced.

But I see this as directing them to university, music, literature, language exchanges, cultural trips etc.

Their disadvantage can’t dictate that an entire school needs extra cooking lessons. That’s just the way it is.

What I also find frustrating about these threads is that a few lessons are the answers to societies ills (obesity? Teach school children to cook!) I bearly remember anything i learnt at school and I’m sure that not unusual. It’s an academic experience, not a step by step how to get a mortgage/ cook a pie/ sew on a button experience. Who benefits form that?!

Are parents not responsible for anything anymore?

I’m pretty responsible. I have taught my kids to cook. But then I’ve also picked up the slack for maths, English and science where schools have not.

I am currently doing the same for DS1 with secondary school.

Schools around here are barely teaching the basics, let alone anything extra (which is our ideal, if you like, we’re not Micheal Gove, we can’t actually make any changes...it’s just a discussion).