I think most schools don't teach hands-on cookery for elfandsafety reasons. I think food preparation and nutrition should be taught for precisely those reasons.
I don't think it's Health and Safety, I think they lack both the facilities and teachers with any knowledge of the subject. Many schools don't have cooking facilities of any kind - hence all the problems with the new rules on having hot food available. Our education system focuses on academic studies to the almost total exclusion of practical life skills. There have been changes more recently but changing the curriculum doesn't in itself make it possible to teach cookery or sewing, let alone car mechanics, gardening or woodwork.
I went to a comprehensive school (35 years ago, roughly) but it was set up in an old Secondary Modern school building which had both the facilities and the teachers with the skills to teach all those subjects. Those teachers have all long since retired and the facilities converted to provide more space for teaching psychology and media studies. Given that most teachers now couldn't cook a pizza from basic ingredients, it's not difficult to see why children are not being taught how to do it - even if the school had a few ovens in a classroom to allow them to try.
Last edited: 12 December 2017 16:23:34
Gardening on the edge of Exmoor, in Devon
“It's still magic even if you know how it's done.”
Nowadays it's all ticking boxes and getting through the next test, it no longer encourages originality, invention, discovery, wonder or imagination, so can hardly produce well rounded individuals unless they are fortunate in their home circumstances.
The curriculum has been pared down till it is narrower than the Victorian one in many ways.
I dont know about remembering just the good bits, we had ice on the bedroom windows, INSIDE, food was all home cooked and mostly home grown, didnt miss central heating because no-one had it. Got some pics of me 1963, snow as tall as me! People used to skate on the village pond. My youngest second marriage, has got a slo cooker, people in their 40s used to take the micky out of me at work, for my slo cooker and pressure cooker, she is 26, and loves it! My hubby was born in 1957, in the 60s, hardly the dark ages, him, his brother and Dad shared one double bed, gran and sister the other, cooking facilites was a cooker on the landing aparently.
This is starting to sound like Monty Python's "four Yorkshiremen" sketch: "my mother brought up seventeen of us in a shoebox, we used to dream of living in a co
Sorry my battery went flat in mid-sentence. That last word was going to be"corridor". Sorry, Palaisglide if you thought I was criticizing, not at all, I am, reflect, old enough to remember Monty Python. I was born in 1952, in North London, no woods and fields to roam in, our equivalent was the bomb site. It never occurred to anyone that it ought to be securely fenced to keep children from playing on it. In the days before Guy Fawkes night, small boys from our flats would strip timber from the remains of some houses that must have caught the edge of the blast, to build a big bonfire. The doors and window frames were long gone, by the time my brother was old enough to join them, they'd started on the structural timbers. It's a wonder none of them got killed. On the night, everyone from the flats (Victorian, no bathrooms, flat roofs where the children played and the women dried the washing) gathered for a party, each family contributing a few fireworks to the display. My nan and her sister made toffee apples to give the children, and we had a candle in a stoneware jar to light the sparklers. Needless to say, this was all thoroughly risk assessed and the appropriate insurance taken out. Not.
Jasusa 47 I was a WO1 in the army your skin gets to be fireproof, criticism runs off and on these boards you will get well and truly criticised at times. You are the same age as my elder Daughter, we had gone through a war and very hard times of Austerity after I had come back from the Middle east which was in as bad a state as now, we were in uniform as civvi's were not allowed but you never mentioned anything otherwise there would be a shout of swing the lamps. No one wanted to know they were sick of it and the 1950's were the start of the New World, (in your dreams). We all clammed up until the year 2000 then all of a sudden BBC and others launched sixty years after History forums, a bit late for lots, my Daughters said we know nothing of you and Mum before we were born what did you do??? They saw what I wrote and put the BBC in touch it all went from there.
I spent time in London having Kin there, saw the awful damage to property and people, went on leave there many times often staying with some of my Troop in the East end or what was left of it, I was the only Northerner in the troop so got called Geordy and never had to put my hand in my pocket when with those boys at home, wonderful people who got on with life in terrible conditions.
Now my Grandchildren question me for their school history which seems to start in 1950 as against our History at school where we had to know every King or Queen from Canute and all about Empire, the sun never set on, what happened to that I ask. Never upset Jasusa we all have opinions, may never agree on some things, but as an old soldier know war settles nothing better to talk as we do on here.
Just caught up with the most recent posts. I would agree there is a definite shift from around the 1970's. If anyone else watched the series Back in time for Dinner this, in a number of series charted not only the nations food habits, but also many of the social changes that went hand in hand. One of the big problems with many now would seem to be that everything is someone else's responsibility. The school / government/ THEY must do something. I think a lot of people have been given a false expectation that everything will become easier/ given to them. What happened to children learning to cook at home? They don't need to be specific lessons but if no-one is cooking from scratch at home then they won't know or learn about it. My grandchildren see their Mother Grandmothers & me cooking if they ask we show/tell them what we are doing. (They do also do this at school as well).I realised some time ago you learn more than you think just by following & watching, my father never taught me to garden as such, but I did learn most of what I know from him, I watched my mother in the kitchen too I may not be a great cook but I can put a meal on the table & mostly from ingredients I have grown.
Someone else commented much further back "what happened to common sense" the trouble is it's not as common as we might wish. Joshua is also right though we are in danger of becoming a parody if we ignore the bad bits from the past. Life expectancy has risen by more than 10 years in the last 50. I myself have survived 3 conditions 2 of which would have been classed as definitely fatal had I been born in 1903 not 1953.
I think the 50s was a good time to be born as we missed some of the worst stuff and benefit from some of the new.
But we still got to know and understand what went before from direct experience of those around us. As a very small child I knew about air raid shelters and doodlebugs and could have told you which scars in the woodwork in the house were blast damage. My 21 year old mum travelled every day into London, to her office near the Elephant and Castle, all through the blitz, and the bomb sites remained for years into my childhood.. My 18 year old dad got his name in the paper and was put on a charge because he was rota -ed to be on firewatch in two different places at the same time and didn't turn up at one of them!
I also know , though I can't remember, that I was very ill as a baby with broncho-pneumonia and was treated with the newfangled drug penicillin, or I wouldn't be here typing this.
Mum had a pretty clutch bag that Dad had knitted for her in blackberry stitch, not many would be able to do thay nowadays!
I love to watch series like Heartbeat and Inspector George Gently which are set in the sixties when I was growing up. Heartbeat presents a very airbrushed version, but I love to see the fashions in clothes and home designs and those classic cars. And to hear the music. George Gently is brutally honest about the casual racism that was widely practised, and how the immigrant communities responded. Some things have changed for the better:. I remember seeing signs in shop windows: "Room to let, no children, no pets,no coloureds, no Irish."
Posts
I don't think it's Health and Safety, I think they lack both the facilities and teachers with any knowledge of the subject. Many schools don't have cooking facilities of any kind - hence all the problems with the new rules on having hot food available. Our education system focuses on academic studies to the almost total exclusion of practical life skills. There have been changes more recently but changing the curriculum doesn't in itself make it possible to teach cookery or sewing, let alone car mechanics, gardening or woodwork.
I went to a comprehensive school (35 years ago, roughly) but it was set up in an old Secondary Modern school building which had both the facilities and the teachers with the skills to teach all those subjects. Those teachers have all long since retired and the facilities converted to provide more space for teaching psychology and media studies. Given that most teachers now couldn't cook a pizza from basic ingredients, it's not difficult to see why children are not being taught how to do it - even if the school had a few ovens in a classroom to allow them to try.
Last edited: 12 December 2017 16:23:34
“It's still magic even if you know how it's done.”
One lost cooking generation and the ignorance filters down.
You're right about teaching practical skills like changing a washer or a tyre or turning up a hem.
Nowadays it's all ticking boxes and getting through the next test, it no longer encourages originality, invention, discovery, wonder or imagination, so can hardly produce well rounded individuals unless they are fortunate in their home circumstances.
The curriculum has been pared down till it is narrower than the Victorian one in many ways.
Last edited: 12 December 2017 17:26:42
Exactly.
My OH was taught to knit and to cook rice at his school in Hong Kong. I don't think think we'd heard of rice in Cornwall at that time .....
Last edited: 12 December 2017 17:30:35
“It's still magic even if you know how it's done.”
I dont know about remembering just the good bits, we had ice on the bedroom windows, INSIDE, food was all home cooked and mostly home grown, didnt miss central heating because no-one had it. Got some pics of me 1963, snow as tall as me! People used to skate on the village pond. My youngest second marriage, has got a slo cooker, people in their 40s used to take the micky out of me at work, for my slo cooker and pressure cooker, she is 26, and loves it! My hubby was born in 1957, in the 60s, hardly the dark ages, him, his brother and Dad shared one double bed, gran and sister the other, cooking facilites was a cooker on the landing aparently.
Sorry my battery went flat in mid-sentence. That last word was going to be"corridor". Sorry, Palaisglide if you thought I was criticizing, not at all, I am, reflect, old enough to remember Monty Python. I was born in 1952, in North London, no woods and fields to roam in, our equivalent was the bomb site. It never occurred to anyone that it ought to be securely fenced to keep children from playing on it. In the days before Guy Fawkes night, small boys from our flats would strip timber from the remains of some houses that must have caught the edge of the blast, to build a big bonfire. The doors and window frames were long gone, by the time my brother was old enough to join them, they'd started on the structural timbers. It's a wonder none of them got killed. On the night, everyone from the flats (Victorian, no bathrooms, flat roofs where the children played and the women dried the washing) gathered for a party, each family contributing a few fireworks to the display. My nan and her sister made toffee apples to give the children, and we had a candle in a stoneware jar to light the sparklers. Needless to say, this was all thoroughly risk assessed and the appropriate insurance taken out. Not.
Jasusa 47 I was a WO1 in the army your skin gets to be fireproof, criticism runs off and on these boards you will get well and truly criticised at times. You are the same age as my elder Daughter, we had gone through a war and very hard times of Austerity after I had come back from the Middle east which was in as bad a state as now, we were in uniform as civvi's were not allowed but you never mentioned anything otherwise there would be a shout of swing the lamps. No one wanted to know they were sick of it and the 1950's were the start of the New World, (in your dreams). We all clammed up until the year 2000 then all of a sudden BBC and others launched sixty years after History forums, a bit late for lots, my Daughters said we know nothing of you and Mum before we were born what did you do??? They saw what I wrote and put the BBC in touch it all went from there.
I spent time in London having Kin there, saw the awful damage to property and people, went on leave there many times often staying with some of my Troop in the East end or what was left of it, I was the only Northerner in the troop so got called Geordy and never had to put my hand in my pocket when with those boys at home, wonderful people who got on with life in terrible conditions.
Now my Grandchildren question me for their school history which seems to start in 1950 as against our History at school where we had to know every King or Queen from Canute and all about Empire, the sun never set on, what happened to that I ask. Never upset Jasusa we all have opinions, may never agree on some things, but as an old soldier know war settles nothing better to talk as we do on here.
Frank.
Just caught up with the most recent posts. I would agree there is a definite shift from around the 1970's. If anyone else watched the series Back in time for Dinner this, in a number of series charted not only the nations food habits, but also many of the social changes that went hand in hand. One of the big problems with many now would seem to be that everything is someone else's responsibility. The school / government/ THEY must do something. I think a lot of people have been given a false expectation that everything will become easier/ given to them. What happened to children learning to cook at home? They don't need to be specific lessons but if no-one is cooking from scratch at home then they won't know or learn about it. My grandchildren see their Mother Grandmothers & me cooking if they ask we show/tell them what we are doing. (They do also do this at school as well).I realised some time ago you learn more than you think just by following & watching, my father never taught me to garden as such, but I did learn most of what I know from him, I watched my mother in the kitchen too I may not be a great cook but I can put a meal on the table & mostly from ingredients I have grown.
Someone else commented much further back "what happened to common sense" the trouble is it's not as common as we might wish. Joshua is also right though we are in danger of becoming a parody if we ignore the bad bits from the past. Life expectancy has risen by more than 10 years in the last 50. I myself have survived 3 conditions 2 of which would have been classed as definitely fatal had I been born in 1903 not 1953.
I think the 50s was a good time to be born as we missed some of the worst stuff and benefit from some of the new.
But we still got to know and understand what went before from direct experience of those around us. As a very small child I knew about air raid shelters and doodlebugs and could have told you which scars in the woodwork in the house were blast damage. My 21 year old mum travelled every day into London, to her office near the Elephant and Castle, all through the blitz, and the bomb sites remained for years into my childhood.. My 18 year old dad got his name in the paper and was put on a charge because he was rota -ed to be on firewatch in two different places at the same time and didn't turn up at one of them!
I also know , though I can't remember, that I was very ill as a baby with broncho-pneumonia and was treated with the newfangled drug penicillin, or I wouldn't be here typing this.
Mum had a pretty clutch bag that Dad had knitted for her in blackberry stitch, not many would be able to do thay nowadays!
I love to watch series like Heartbeat and Inspector George Gently which are set in the sixties when I was growing up. Heartbeat presents a very airbrushed version, but I love to see the fashions in clothes and home designs and those classic cars. And to hear the music. George Gently is brutally honest about the casual racism that was widely practised, and how the immigrant communities responded. Some things have changed for the better:. I remember seeing signs in shop windows: "Room to let, no children, no pets,no coloureds, no Irish."
Last edited: 13 December 2017 14:17:09