Well, yes it is. But thatchers govt started the decline in proper cookery lessons at school while also creating circumstances at home that made it difficult if not impossible for this education to be done in the home.
We're now at a point where many current parents of teens/early 20's weren't taught nutrition, meal planning, budgeting and cooking themselves and are therefore unable to teach their dc and we STILL don't have decent, proper cookery lessons in school!
I was very fortunate to have a mum and 2 grans who were not only excellent cooks and bakers themselves, they also had (due to being from very poor working class backgrounds and big families to feed so the food had to stretch - glasgow Catholic, grans raised in without sugar coating "slums" and mum born into same though thankfully moved into "modern" housing before age 5) been taught/learned budgeting well and how to make every mouthful go further. Plus they had the time and patience to teach me, my siblings and cousins.
In addition when I was at school (I'm 48) thatchers policies hadn't quite worked through to my school year, iirc it was the year 2 years below got hit with withdrawal/reduction in decent cookery classes.
Plus we were still being taught by the "old school" cookery teachers, so were taught the fundamentals (sauce basics, pastry, bread, stock...), nutrition (I had a teenage moment of "enlightenment" when I realised mum didn't cook a wide variety of different veggies and cook seasonally just for fun! That it was to ensure we got different vitamins and minerals and the right ones for the season d'oh!), budgeting, time management, catering to different dietary requirements (I went veggie after school but this was my first introduction to it and the teacher carefully explained about ensuring nutrients not gained from meat were gained from vegetarian sources)...
We were taught knife skills, although obviously didn't do this at skill we were taught things like safe freezing and other storage techniques.
I've been repeatedly shocked and saddened as a mum and as a volunteer working with youngsters that so many of my dds age (19) and thereabouts have been taught by nobody how to make even a very basic dish like pasta and pesto and don't have the confidence to even attempt.
I even have one friend (about10 years younger) who she and her family live on ready meals and takeaways mainly as she's terrified that if she tried to cook something she'd prepare it or cook it wrongly and poison them all! This is something now deeply believed by her.,
I've had children under my care at guides/scouts who until camp had never seen a raw unpeeled vegetable, didn't know chips were made from potatoes, were afraid to use knives, kettles, even toasters!
Which brings me to another issue - parents who are ridiculously over protective when it comes to children dealing with hot/sharp things.
As I say dd 19 and until very recently (last year) she had friends from her year in school that weren't ALLOWED to use a kettle or sharp knife at home!
As a mature student myself I had an experience where I realised out of a large household of the younger students NONE of them knew how to cook from scratch and they were getting into financial difficulties due to spending on convenience foods and takeaways AND were very run down healthwise as nobody had explained to them the importance of a healthy diet, food groups, nutrients etc
I ended up by starting them off with a notebook of simple "recipes" (I put recipes in quotes as it's a very loose term for what I did here as it included things like directions to make pesto pasta, making stir fried but using ready made sauces & straight to wok noodles to "ease them in"), then that turned into "but I hate veggies/x veggie" where I ended up explaining about nutrients, food groups, the connection between food and health.
I'd get phone calls when I was at home with dd "I'm making x and it looks weird is it supposed to look like this?" Etc
What was bewildering was these were intelligent, well cared for kids with relatively well off families yet for some reason their parents hadn't thought to prepare them for adulthood.
Not only cooking, they didn't know how to do laundry, plan a budget (inc bartering and shopping around, how to assess if a special offer was worth getting), clean!
I left home at 17 due to abusive father, but both parents had also prepared me with years of cooking, budgeting, sewing, knitting, diy and other common sense skills. Mum even had me plan and shop for (with their money of course) a few weeks worth of groceries, checking I could quickly assess a special offer, plan to cover all meals and snacks plus non food items etc and she says she still worried I wouldn't cope!
I was fine, if overwhelmed at first!
@MaskingForIt I had to teach ex to cook too PLUS he was RIDICULOUSLY fussy when we first got together. As were his siblings (he's youngest of 4) his mum totally mollycoddled them all on food! I managed to not only teach him to cook but also eating and trying a far wider range of foods
@THisbackwithavengeance I get what you're saying but YouTube etc is not the same as having someone there reassuring you you're doing it right, that yes the sauce/pastry etc is supposed to weirdly look like THAT at this stage in the process (YouTube and other online videos/images aren't necessarily going to look like how it does in your home/pan!), that builds confidence in newly developing skills.
Online tutorials also can't really teach anything regarding smell/taste eg when teaching dd I'd do things like have her smell something "on the turn" so she'd know what to be aware of when checking if something is fresh. A recipe can look ok and match an online pic but taste lousy and YouTube won't be able to tell that disappointed/heartbroken new cook why!
You do know that we now have schools that don’t have cooking facilities on site for school dinners? The meals are delivered. and even the ones that do rely heavily on convenience items!
I was lucky to grow up in an era where schools not only had cooking facilities but the school cooks could actually cook! I saw the cooks starting at the start of the school day if not earlier and be peeling veggies, prepping (fresh!) fish etc
It's absolutely abysmal this is no longer the case!
Also not every child HAS a decent, safe, non chaotic home life with parents able and willing to teach them. What about kids in the care system? Kids with addict parents?
My home wasn't ideal either I was just lucky this aspect wasn't affected, many others were and that can really knock your confidence and resilience.
The friend I mentioned that's 10 years younger she grew up in a group home, the workers didn't have the time or resources to teach cookery.
I absolutely think it's NO coincidence that the disappearance of decent cookery lessons and school dinners times in with the rise in childhood obesity!
@maxelly it might not solve the obesity crisis completely but I'm betting it would help a lot! Dd has had overweight friends complain to her they're fed up of being overweight and don't understand why they are as they "don't eat that much" and she's (not always too subtly! Had to rein her in on that!) pointed out that while they may not be eating much volume wise WHAT they're eating is high in fat/sugar/calories, so many of them didn't even know about calories! Or that eating chips and chocolate daily will likely make you fat! Some even asked why she is so slim despite doing the same things as they do/eating at the same places, but
1 she has a disability that means she has a very high metabolism and actually struggles to maintain a healthy MINIMUM weight - usually cues questions about what a metabolism is, why this means she's slim etc we've actually also learned that high fat/sugar foods don't actually help her gain/maintain weight. A high protein diet works best.although a good amount of healthy oils do too
2 again due to her disability (these foods irritate her gums and stomach) she hates deep fried foods and chocolate, so if they all go along to McDonald's she'll have a burger but salad instead of chips.
Now I'm overweight and understand it's more complex than simply knowing what a healthy diet is, but that certainly helps at least a bit!
If I didn't know I believe I'd be much fatter than I am!
If you can read, you can cook.
Mine are only 8 and 3 but I've always baked with them and when DD gets a bit taller and can reach the oven I'll be teaching her basic cooking skills can you not see you’re contradicting yourself?
If “you can read you can cook” why does your child need to be able to reach the oven and have you teach her in person?
Someone who hasn’t been taught won’t necessarily know what “sauté” or “roux” or “until onions translucent ” means if nobody has shown them.
Why should the government pay to teach people how to cook because it’s in our society’s best interest? For health, for the economy, for social coherence?
Equally, the lack of education around personal finance seems a bizarre decision totally agree! It’s why I fully support Martin Lewis in his efforts to have personal financial education become part of the curriculum.
Again, I was lucky my parents taught me some of this, some I learned myself but lots really would have been better taught at school within maths lessons.
And yes, precarious finances affect people's confidence to cook too! If your budget is tight it's understandable to be reluctant to experiment and risk wasting precious food budget.
We has a mini "apartment" in the cookery dept where everyone got chance to spend a day. We had to plan shop and cook a meal and invite teachers to eat. had a similar set up in one of my schools (army brat), a "fake house" with kitchen, dining room, sewing room and craft room as we were taught as part of home economics not just cookery but dressmaking, making and repairing various craft based materials, how to properly lay a table etc
Cookery books all assume some skill or knowledge. exactly!
@LondonJax we did home ec cookery lessons every week throughout the school year until we took gcse options and I did it at gcse level too. 2 lessons a week, one would be cookery one sewing etc
things that have a practical application NEED to be kept in the curriculum. I agree but many are NOT in the curriculum at all at the moment
You can buy all these things in the pound shop. Which still requires our fictional novice cook to HAVE those pounds! We have 100,000's of families in this country don't even have that spare!
I don’t see this as an addition for teachers, but that something should be deprioritised for it. I’d say this is more important than an awful lot of what’s taught in schools these days
Totally agree