On Teaching Children

It just so happens that after I read Bea's comment from yesterday about reaching kids with our message I saw a New York Times article from today called "Where Little Chefs Learn the Art of Slicing and Dicing," by Ann Farmer. Farmer writes about the Creative Cooks Culinary Center in Brooklyn, where kids 5 to 11-years old are taught cooking in a place "that treats the culinary arts as an anthropological adventure."

Let's deconstruct:

• "Anthropological adventure" is an interesting choice of words. For me, the focus on culture and tradition is basically an excuse for "anything goes" when it comes to animals. But I bet anything doesn't go. Are the kids cooking monkey, cat, dog, alligator or turtle? I wonder how much they learn about the animals other cultures eat. (In the slide show there is a photo of one of the kids poking a live crab–I wonder what kind of discussion was encouraged around that.)
• The students learn to debone a chicken and slice cheese. I wonder how much the students learn about the chicken and where the carcass came from and what happens during the life of a chicken. And what about cheese? Cheese is made from something, isn't it? I wonder if the kids are given any pieces of the cheese puzzle.
• The kids prepared Buddhist delight that "conformed to Buddhist dietary restrictions." Something about the word "restrictions" annoys me. Would I ever say I restrict my diet to food that wasn't made from the parts of creatures as sentient as the greyhounds I share my home with? I don't think of that as a restriction.
• The kids made tortillas from scratch and then went to a factory to see how professionals do it. Any other factories on the agenda? (The site says food production factories are included, but I doubt that means those involving the slaughter of animals.)
• Removing skin and bones from a chicken breast was "slimy and gushy and . . . fun" said one (female) child. I wonder how much fun it would be if she knew the chicken and saw how the chicken died and was dismembered.

How about an ethical adventure? I wonder how long it would take parents to complain if the Creative Cooks Culinary Center filled in the blanks for the kids and educated them about the lives of the animals they eat that some might not even realize were ever even animals? If you're going to call something an anthropological adventure, it would make sense to teach the kids about the other animals humans eat and give the kids the opportunity to prepare and eat dog, cat and monkey, no?

Perhaps they are taught that other cultures eat animals other than cows, chickens, fish and pigs, I don't know. What I do know is that if you're going to teach children about the standard American diet, there will be a certain amount of lies of omission or spin or other nuances of dishonesty that will be necessary in order to keep them on track with learning what they're supposed to learn: that it's okay to eat beings as sentient as the family dog.

. . .

PS-The slide show includes children in aprons. One is male. I don't even know where to start. There are more professional male chefs than females, yet women do and are taught to do most of the cooking.