Vorpal wrote: ↑12 May 2022, 1:33pm
al_yrpal wrote: ↑12 May 2022, 9:45am
I do agree that Home Economics has a place in every schools curriculum, but here and now this guy is offering adult education by volunteers which is a worthy alternative for those who might benefit from it
Patronising? I dont think so, practical would be my description. I can appreciate that some folk might see it that way and decline, bad habits die hard.
Milk and teabags for a day would exceed his 30p limit. I am going to drop him a line and ask him to publish his menu.
Meantime, here is a video from Mr Ashfields Facebook page...
https://youtu.be/xt8fEcV-zXA
Nice to see something positive to help the least well off from a politician.
Al
There is nothing wrong with offering budgeting and cooking classes. I think that could be an important part of providing resources to families in need. But to state unequivocally that people rely on food banks because they don't know how to budget or cook is patronising & ridiculous. Some of these families don't even have a working cooker, let alone the money to pay for gas or electricity to run it.
Perhaps there are more effective ways of encouraging skills such as those typically included in "home economics" than devoting an half-hearted hour or two a week to them at school. Good cooking involves a large range of skills, from selecting & buying ingredients to managing different tastes and nutritional needs, not just the cooking parts (which can also become quite complex). Like all practical activities, a large amount of practice is needed, with the theoretical stuff merely something of an accelerant to the learning-by-doing (and mistake-making) via a great deal of the actual activity.
People who come from families with a deep cooking tradition are often the most successful at themselves learning and practicing "good home cooking". Even these folk, in this day & age, are often undermined in these skills as they acquire demanding jobs and other high time demands. And they are also waylaid by the immense advertising and peer pressure to eat pre-packaged (often junk) fud.
Like many skill-based activities, cooking from basic ingredients to fully nutritional meals needs a certain degree of background socio-economic stuff, both to enable it and to encourage it. It also needs to be something of a norm. These days, ability to perform these skills seems far from normal.
Most people I know, even of my own ancient generation, now eat pre-packaged supermarket and takeaway stuff almost exclusively. "It's easier and quicker", they claim. Some of the same folk also drive 200 yards to the shop for their noosepaper, crisps and fags, even though I offer to lend them a bike! It's easier & quicker, see?
Cugel, well-fed by the immensely skilful ladywife kitchen magic.
“Practical men who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence are usually the slaves of some defunct economist”.
John Maynard Keynes