Plea for Culinary Education

Jamie Oliver says we need to teach cooking in elementary school. Yes, yes we do. However, we need to teach kids to cook and value intercontinental food as well. This could be an effective way to open the mind of a child not only to international cooking, but to other international relations.

At least in a certain area, teaching simple cooking to children does lead towards a healthy interest in it that will hopefully last a lifetime. A farmer in California started teaching elementary school kids and-POOF-they started asking for veggies and wanted to eat the stuff they’d learned to make. Thus, kids don’t have to eat this high-fat, prepackaged stuff. It is simply that they are first introduced to these foods through the media and parents who also have not had a chance to receive a sufficient culinary education.

Start preparing them for the world by teaching them how to care for themselves! By the way, cooking also involves time management, chemistry, planning, coordination, and if you teach it correctly history, anthropology, design, psychology. And so on.

Culinary education could potentially also help with international relations. I'm not saying that culinary education will lead to peace….Oh wait, I actually am. In the first few years of school, we are taught to get along with our peers. However, this usually doesn't include the international community, which it should since they are quickly becoming our peers.

So you know cooking cannot solve all our problems, but if we learn and teach our kids how to get along with others- how to eat a meal with people from other cultures- we will definitely and prove relations. Food is the ORIGINAL international language-the universal language. We had food before we had anything else! Think about it, if you have a meal with Japanese businessmen , dothey frown if you use chopsticks and sit down on the floor like they do? No. They are going to feel much more comfortable around you and feel that you understand their culture.

International relations today on more important than they have ever been. For many thousands of years, traveling across the globe was either impossible, dangerous, tedious, or all the above. Thus, culture was internal; it was in isolation to all but what was immediately around it. Today, those cultures are no longer isolated, but are being enveloped in a global culture; one that is still searching for how to handle difficult situations.

"Globalization” was once a far-off dream, but has now become reality, with unforeseen consequences of a new global mindset. This amalgamation of cultures is pulling the riches of the world's eclectic quilt out from under us and replacing it with a homogenized society, eradicating the past. Whatever my views, this push towards androgyny has mixed reactions.

While many ethnographic groups are fighting to preserve their cultures, others seem willing to abandon their collective heritage. For example, a discussion in my anthropological linguistics' class at Oberlin College centered on an initiative in New York designed to preserve dying languages. This project, along with the public library’s Endangered Language Alliance, focuses on languages that have only a handful of speakers left. There is an upsurge in Ireland of teaching Gaelic in schools because the traditional language is quickly fading. In addition, I just heard a podcast about requiring Mexican officials to learn an ancient language.

“Globalization” issues are not black and white, and I am certainly not bashing technology or scientific advancement. I even wanted to be a computer programmer starting in middle school. Of course, this stemmed from an early age when I was a teacher’s assistant in my third-grade computer class. Tangentially related, I am going for a Masters degree to pursue a career as a digitization archivist, a career which would combine science and humanities. I am elated by the ability we now have as a global society to communicate across the globe. However, with mostly all matters, we must walk a tightrope, cautiously placing one foot in front of the other so as not to come to our doom. We must manage it.

Enter "International culture." As the daughter of a Foreign Service officer as well as a trained anthropologist, I feel often much more comfortable than others around foreigners. Not to mention that time spent abroad was during my formative years.

To achieve some of these goals from the ground up, I propose that every student be required to take a minimum of one foreign language though out their schooling. There must also be cultural diversity requirements at all colleges and study abroad should be made mandatory.
For example, Oberlin has a cultural diversity requirement. A student is required to take at least three classes in two universal regions in order to graduate. This idea of being a more cultured and well-rounded person must be implemented more widely; for one is sure to be hindered in this global climate if they are not culturally aware. Being culturally aware is even more crucial in this transition period with such a burgeoning of new technologies promoting interconnectedness.

Interconnectedness is what sets this age apart from other eras of technological growth. However, there must be a balance; we must acknowledge what society is conforming to. Thus, it is a good idea to require that students learn a cultural language. I say cultural to distinguish them from the languages of the future which, depending on your perspective, seem to be computer languages, instead of ethnographic.

It is an enterprising idea that a computer language can count as a foreign language because of the increasing focus on technological innovation starting with our generation. At the same time, this emphasizes globalization over an international culture, a choice that is more than crucial in our current societal climate. Ergo, the idea is a great feat of balance is often difficult to achieve.
I believe that we can avoid to looming inevitability of the cons of globalization though education reform. This education must start with elementary schools and the general public.