personal responsibility continued------------- are the parents not responsible for anything anymore?????

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so parents are not deemed fit to teach their kids about making food anymore???? wasnt it bad enough when parents were declared unfit to teach them about the birds and the bees?

I rarely disagree with you custy, but Im with hmb on this one! they cant/wont do it, we cant just abandon them to ad campaigns for rubbish like Sunny D!

Otherwise where does the cycle end? With one part of the community that can look after itself and the others (often those with least money I would bet) who are stuck with eating expensive crap.

Guess it depends how important you thnk nutrition is. I think it's very important, so don't have a problem with schools teaching it.

Besides, it feeds directly into lots of other subjects. Reading a recipe, Maths: weighing things out, History: why we eat certain things, etc. Teamwork... and let's face it, most kids like cooking at school because it's funner than exercise sheets; anything that makes school fun can't be all bad.

...
Biology the nutritional content of what we eat and why we physically need it.
Chemistry lots and lots of chemistry in food science.

tbh, zebra, I wish I had more time to teach these aspects of science, particularly for those kids who are switched off by the curret educational system who are unlkly to get GCSEs in science. I feel their time would be far better spent learning about how to keep themselves healty than , say, photosynthesis.

You could generate a real science for life course for these kids, relevant,interesting and challenging, but in stead they have the 'right' to be given stuff that bores them fatless and makes them switch off even more

Have you head of "grossology", hmb? It's an educational... movment? in the USA. Started by a scientist who reckoned the best way to turn kids/teens onto it was to study the science of really "gross" things, like spit, wee, etc.

Ohh, never come across that but I could see how it would work! TBH kids are facinated with most bits of human biology. Even the most arsy girls are facinated by reproduction . Tell kids that half their poo is made up of dead bacteria and I can guaretee their undivided attention! trouble is not all the course is like this, and that is when you lose some of the less 'academic' kids. Which is a great shame.

my children would LOVE grossology

God, that's horrible! I'm so glad that no bright spark had thought up grossology when I was at school. I've got a very easily turned stomach and even the thought of spit is enough to make me heave!

So you wouldn't be interested in my demo of a bulls eye dissection then, whould you? {grin]

agree with hmb that the advertisers and big food corps have a lot to answer for....those weird twangy ' cheese' string things, anyone ? is that actually edible? cos it looks like bogeys. and Ronald Mcdonald can just fuck right off....parp!

No, oddly enough I was fine with dissecting things. There's just something about bodily fluids that gets me.

we got to dissect a bulls eye each when I was at school.

also a mackerel, and the a level biology students did a rat.

we also grew loads of bacteria in petri dishes, but I was told that is deemed too dangerous now?

Kids love the cookery part of the subject, and the eating, don't we all. But the problem in school now is that food is an expensive subject to run and kids are lucky if they get 100 minutes a week for 10 weeks in the year, yrs 7 to 9 and 150 mins a week for GCSE. Rant over. How can they learn with such little time

donnie - my children love cheesy strings! it is the treat they always want.

Stupid, isn't it geb? And that is wihtout the shortage of trained staff in some areas of the UK. I have read of schol closing food tech rooms because they can't get the staff.

This is right up there with selling off school playing fields in what has affected kids health, imo.

I did a rat nighly night, and very interestingit was too. can't do that any more...not time and no monet!

The kids do a kidney and a heart at GCSE....food grade, so trimmed of all the blood vessels, which makes it all rather pointless.

They do the hreat again at A level and that is about it.

what a shame - it does reduce the drama somewhat. they can dissect a kidney or a heart in my kitchen any time.

Do you know, it is a strange thing, the boys in classes are gagging to 'do a dissection' when in reality all they want to do is chop the thing up and muck about with the bits. You'd have thought they could have popped out to the butchers themselves and sorted this out!!!!!

One thing I have learned, As a student teacher I told the boys to put their finger into the aorta and wiggle their finger around. I had toatly forgotten what the tissue woul feel like to the average 16 year old male!!!!! never made that mistake again

Do you know, it is a strange thing, the boys in classes are gagging to 'do a dissection' when in reality all they want to do is chop the thing up and muck about with the bits. You'd have thought they could have popped out to the butchers themselves and sorted this out!!!!!

One thing I have learned, As a student teacher I told the boys to put their finger into the aorta and wiggle their finger around. I had toatly forgotten what the tissue woul feel like to the average 16 year old male!!!!! never made that mistake again

lol bet the boys never forgot your biology class though!

That one was rather unforgetable....for all the wrong reasons!

Like the time I cracked up in the 'hygene' lesson to year 11 which was last lessons on a Friday, when I had to tell them that it was imposrtant to wash their hands after touching their genitals or anus! I just cracked up. Not because of what I was saying so much but rather the thought that this is a bloody daft way for and adult to earn a living

By 'parents' doesn't it mean mums (as usual)? Something else we need to add to the list.

I learnt to cook well at school, I learnt to over cook vegetables and be stingy with ingredients at home.

But this just made me crack up; "We met some 10-year-old children who could not recognise a bowl of tuna. One pupil called it a donkey,"

Are we sure Chris Morris isn't behind this somewhere?

i agree with you HMB, in that i think food nutrition should be taught at some stage, but my kids area learning cooking and food nutrition and not in the same class. my dd is learning what foods contain carbs and fibre etcetc in science. however the way the school works, they do a term in woodwork a term in this and that and a term in cooking.

so at the mo she is learning about food nutrition - but her cooking class isn't till next term.

and it isn't linked.

am not sure what my own argument is here - i guess i am saying i agree with the food nutrition bit - but i dont think my kids should be doing cooking - rather they should be learning extra maths english or science.

and i think this would serve better the children from households where the parents dont give a shit.

God what a bunch of idiots we would have if they left school with their only qualifications in Maths and English. Why should they remove vocational subjects that heve been taught for decades do do more maths and english?

Face it schools teach a wide range of subjects they always have and always will? Not sure really what the argument is here. The original article was discusing the view that many children have a very limited knowledge of food and nutrition. The School Dinners series should how little many children know and the different that good nutrition makes.