[onoway]

In a talk Joel Salatin gave to Google, one remark came up that amazed me. He said that an art teacher in Washington had asked 22 students to bring a cooking pot from home to use as an art model and all 22 looked at her blankly. When asked what the problem was, they said they didn't use/have such a thing, when cooking at home they just opened boxes and "cooked" everything in the microwave.

No wonder kids are growing up thinking that white cows=white milk and brown cows=chocolate milk and primary school kids can't identify common foods such as potatoes and broccoli. I'm not dissing all fast food, by any means, but to have no concept of anything else is just weird to me. Preprepared foods are MUCH more expensive..(a single potato french fried in a fast food place=a 1pound bag of frozen potatoes = 5 pound bag raw potatoes or even a 10 pound bag in fall harvest sales). Also, the nutritional values are doubtful at best. This isn't even considering the flavor or texture, or the chemicals used for preservatives and to enhance the flavor/color.

I would venture a guess that these kids came mostly from "disadvantaged" backgrounds who most need both the money and the nutrition of "real " food, but that certainly might not be the case.

Anyone have any ideas/opinions about this? Should anything be done and if so what/how?

[mike777]

I dont believe the story.

I dont believe that 22 art students have no concept of what a cooking pot is or that growing up none of their families never owned one. You can use some cooking pots in microwave ovens.

I mean do none of them have the concept of what a tv is or a magazine?

I have no idea why you would guess that poor people dont own a cooking pot.

[mgoetze]

The USA is doomed, obviously.

When I went to Junior High in Canada, there was an optional Home Economics class which included cooking. Maybe you should have those everywhere. Of course here in Europe we seem to get by just fine without such classes.

[mike777]

 mgoetze, on 2012-March-21, 14:17, said:

The USA is doomed, obviously.

When I went to Junior High in Canada, there was an optional Home Economics class which included cooking. Maybe you should have those everywhere. Of course here in Europe we seem to get by just fine without such classes.

Clearly someone had enough money to pay for 22 art students to take art classes but none to buy even one tiny cheap cooking pot for 22 families......no charity, no church, no one....

Bad enough that the catholic church does not want to pay for birth control pills for Georgetown law students but now they wont even donate one cooking pot when asked.

[kenberg]

From the OP it was not clear to me how old these Art students were. Art class was mandatory in elementary school at one time, and we had an "Art Teacher". If the Art students referred to here are elementary age kids, I can sort of believe it. I learned how to cook, primitively but adequately, when quite young. Some kids still do, but I think often either the mother (or in some families the father) cooks or else indeed the kids just stuff something in the microwave. Or the family goes to McDonald's. They may well have several pots, pans, etc but the kids are oblivious. This is definitely not confined to the poor.

I have little doubt that the biggest changes in our social structure involve kids. Some good changes, some not so good, but very different from the way I remember my childhood.

By the way, I was convinced that I would not graduate from elementary school because I was a truly lousy artist. After my mother died and I went through her stuff I found some old drawings of mine from first grade or so. Quite good, better really than my eighth grade work. I cannot explain this fact.

[hrothgar]

 mike777, on 2012-March-21, 15:01, said:

Clearly someone had enough money to pay for 22 art students to take art classes but none to buy even one tiny cheap cooking pot for 22 families......no charity, no church, no one....

Bad enough that the catholic church does not want to pay for birth control pills for Georgetown law students but now they wont even donate one cooking pot when asked.

Ken beat me to the OBVIOUS comment: You find art classes in all sorts of places, including public schools...
Moreover, if said art class was predominantly drawing from a single neighborhood with strong correlation in terms of social patterns,
you might very well find a enormous number of students whose parents don't cook.


As an interesting data point:

With very rare exceptions, my sister does not cook.
My folks were down visiting Lauren in Mountain Lakes a couple weeks back and were shocked to discover that the major kitchen appliances seemingly had never been used.
The family lives complete on take out (much to the dismay of my mother).

FWIW, my sister is quite well off. I wouldn't be surprised to discover that this happened in an affluent suburb where the family is rich enough to afford constant takeout, personal chef's and the like...

[jdeegan]

Throughout history it has been pretty much the norm for people to eat in communal kitchens. After all, people who specialize in cooking are usually better at it. In urban areas the public can have its choice of numerous communal kitchens within a short commuting distance. This has been going on for a long time. Have you ever been to Pompeii?

[mike777]

I dont believe this story.


There are not 22 families that dont own a single cooking pot in this class. And of course my point is the local school and charities wont give one family one cooking pot if asked. Of course cooking at least one meal a year.


IF the kids are so young they dont know the words cooking pot that is another story and not this one as told in the OP.

And of course you can use some cooking pots even in a microwave.

[kenberg]

I also was thinking a bit in terms of family. The oldest grandchild declared herself to be a vegan a couple of years back. Her father bought her a book, a real tome, on vegan cooking. We got her a (if I do say so myself) a more practical smaller book. My daughter, her mother, tells me that she in fact cooks. I'll believe it when I see it.

Kids lead immensely busy lives these days. I rarely had a clue where I might be in another half hour. Their days are scheduled beyond belief. Better? Worse? Definitely different and it may not leave a lot of time for exploring in the kitchen. She knows Shakespeare. She learned Calculus in high school. She knows about Roman History. I am not at all certain she knows a pot from a frying pan. The dorms (oops, of course I mean Residence Halls) in college provide vegan options. Maybe after graduation she can learn to fry something. Just for the hell of it.

I really love her, but modern life is weird. And yes, Mike, I confess to (mild?) thread abuse. You are right that not having a pot is different from not knowing about pots. But I take the setting to be "What's up with the kids?"

They say that we don't have a pot....

[mike777]

 kenberg, on 2012-March-21, 17:01, said:

I also was thinking a bit in terms of family. The oldest grandchild declared herself to be a vegan a couple of years back. Her father bought her a book, a real tome, on vegan cooking. We got her a (if I do say so myself) a more practical smaller book. My daughter, her mother, tells me that she in fact cooks. I'll believe it when I see it.

Kids lead immensely busy lives these days. I rarely had a clue where I might be in another half hour. Their days are scheduled beyond belief. Better? Worse? Definitely different and it may not leave a lot of time for exploring in the kitchen. She knows Shakespeare. She learned Calculus in high school. She knows about Roman History. I am not at all certain she knows a pot from a frying pan. The dorms (oops, of course I mean Residence Halls) in college provide vegan options. Maybe after graduation she can learn to fry something. Just for the hell of it.

I really love her, but modern life is weird.

Ken You do know you can cook stuff in a microwave....it is cooking.

Cooking is not only done on a stove or in an oven.

It would be pretty wierd for 22 families to only own a microwave and no stove and then all of them to never I mean never use the stove for the whole kids life.

If they really dont have any idea what a cooking pot is maybe their teachers might hve them read a book and spend less time in art class.

[onoway]

 mike777, on 2012-March-21, 17:07, said:

Ken You do know you can cook stuff in a microwave....it is cooking.

Cooking is not only done on a stove or in an oven.

It would be pretty wierd for 22 families to only own a microwave and no stove and then all of them to never I mean never use the stove for the whole kids life.

If they really dont have any idea what a cooking pot is maybe their teachers might hve them read a book and spend less time in art class.

It was an art teacher in I believe an elementary school who said she was going to resign from teaching and when asked why so, told him this. No reason to think he made it up, and I don't believe he is in the practice of lying. Aside from anything else, he has no need to do so. If you had watched the Jamie Oliver video of the kids in school who had no idea what ANY of the vegetables were that he showed them you would find this entirely believable.

The comment about nobody willing to donate a cooking pot is really a non sequiter, nobody ever suggested anyone ever asked for one. The POINT is that apparently these families don't feel the need for one.

Ripping a package open and heating the contents in the microwave is hardly what I would call cooking. And...it is interesting, perhaps, that in the schools in England where Jamie Oliver has managed to change the food choices to healthier ones, although there has been some grumbling, it's reported that both the absentee level has dropped significantly, presumably because kids are sick less, AND the level of accomplishment has risen (as shown by test scores in relation to other schools and their own previous records).

Both of these results seem to me to be worth thinking about. Aside from most parents wanting their kids to do as well as they can in school, governments everywhere are yowling about health care costs,and it is a bit naive to think only kids are impacted by their everyday food choices.

[kenberg]

Time out for a minute.

It's probably a bit of a trap to worry about exact truth here. Maybe it happened exactly as said, or maybe several kids said they didn't have a pot and no one else contradicted them, and the teacher was imprecise in telling the story. It happens. The guy is telling a story about what the teacher told him about what the students told her. No one is under oath. I wouldn't want my life to depend on it being exactly the verbatim truth.

But end of time out.

I think many teachers would tell you that kids come in having too little sleep, too much trouble at home, and not much in the way of a good breakfast. And then they don't learn and don't behave. What the hell would we expect? Whatever the exact accuracy of the story may be, the problem is no doubt real. Not so easy to solve.

[ggwhiz]

In my day in High School the boys took shop and the girls took Home Ec.

Shortly after I left it was reversed. The girls learned how to change a tire and the boys learned to cook but that approach didn't really stick over the years.

This has nothing to do with art but I thought it was a great twist. If you want to get along with the ladies as a young man, cook something. It doesn't matter what it tastes like, every woman on the planet will say "You should do that more often". It took me way too long to work that out.

[mike777]

"Anyone have any ideas/opinions about this? Should anything be done and if so what/how?"

Step one if I was the school I would look deeper into this and see if it is the truth or just some version of fantasy.

Per you story it seems the teacher choose to accept this story as truth and rather than look into it he quit.

My Mom was a teacher on the west side of chicago. She choose to spend countless hours making sure her special ed kids got a hot meal, warm boots and coats. This guy quit.



OK so the basic point you make is that all 22 families in this class neither ever had a cooking pot or wanted one.
You say you are not dissing all fast food but you sure are insulting all of these parents. Just because people are poor does not mean they dont ever want to make a home cooked meal for their families, ever.

Ya I dont believe that is true. Talk about an urban legend. If the teacher or those that repeat it without looking deeper, than that says more about them than the story.
--


As far as the vegi story, watch Jay Leno sometime and his Jay walking segment. I think alot of adults may fail this vegi test.

[Fluffy]

Where are the bacon&avacados? this is about food!

[hrothgar]

 mike777, on 2012-March-21, 16:59, said:

I dont believe this story.

There are not 22 families that dont own a single cooking pot in this class. And of course my point is the local school and charities wont give one family one cooking pot if asked. Of course cooking at least one meal a year.

IF the kids are so young they dont know the words cooking pot that is another story and not this one as told in the OP.

Here is an alternative hypothesis:

1. Many of the families in question don't own cooking pots
2. Some of them do, but they are rarely - if ever - used
3. The kids are pretty ignorant about what happens in the kitchen

As I noted earlier, I wouldn't be at all surprised to discover that this happened in an affluent suburb

Prepared food is much more expensive (and where else are you going to find an art class these days)

[blackshoe]

Shoot the messenger! He's still twitching, shoot him again!

[onoway]

 mike777, on 2012-March-21, 22:11, said:

Per you story it seems the teacher choose to accept this story as truth and rather than look into it he quit.

My Mom was a teacher on the west side of chicago. She choose to spend countless hours making sure her special ed kids got a hot meal, warm boots and coats. This guy quit.

Nobody is talking about your mother who may well have been a saint. Your comment reminds me of a neighbor I was talking to the other day who was shrilly declaiming that everyone in a certain group (none of whom she knew anything about or had ever had any even peripheral dealings with) were arrogant and nasty people. This teacher may have been working for years and tried to help and had simply burned out as people do do. Neither you nor I know the background there and it is astonishingly beside the point in any case.

Quote

OK so the basic point you make is that all 22 families in this class neither ever had a cooking pot or wanted one.
You say you are not dissing all fast food but you sure are insulting all of these parents. Just because people are poor does not mean they dont ever want to make a home cooked meal for their families, ever.

How am I insulting anyone? Agribusiness spends literally millions of dollars trying to promote the idea that all food is equal; that there is no difference nutritionally between a frozen t.v. dinner and the same menu produced from fresh food grown and processed in a healthy and sustainable way (or, for that matter, a big Mac)It isn't their fault they don't know it isn't true.

Quote

Ya I dont believe that is true. Talk about an urban legend. If the teacher or those that repeat it without looking deeper, than that says more about them than the story

You have said repeatedly you don't believe it but that doesn't make it untrue.
--

Quote

As far as the vegi story, watch Jay Leno sometime and his Jay walking segment. I think alot of adults may fail this vegi test.

I think you just proved my point.

[Winstonm]

So, what's this got to do with Finnish tomatoes?

[S2000magic]

 mike777, on 2012-March-21, 17:07, said:

Cooking is not only done on a stove or in an oven.

Darned right!

(There are barbecues.)