Micahel Pollan's In Defense of Food: Simillarities in Education?

This Tuesday (2/23) I attended the Farwell Distinguished Lecture entitled In Defense of Food; the Omnivore's Solution by Michael Pollan. Pollan spoke about what's wrong with the way we eat and look at food. He described the "American paradox": our unhealthy obsession with health. I thoroughly enjoyed what Pollan had to say, not only because I am taking a nutrition course this semester, but also because of the correlations between food and education that Pollan's words got me thinking about.
Pollan asked the question, "How do we get to this point?" He described how the unspoken judgements and ideology of nutrientism is the root of our problem. Pollan laid out 4 main points of nutrianism. Below I will compare these ideas about what has gone wrong in our understanding of food is quite comparable to the ineffective beliefs that have made education what it is today.

1. The key to understanding any food is understanding the nutrients they contain. Similarily, I think we may focus to much on what schools are made up of (students based on race, SES, etc.) I'm not saying we should completely ignore this - we can't. But what about looking at the bigger picture of what education should be for everyone?

2. We need experts who understand better than us to tell us what to eat and depend solely on them. In education, we depend so much on the research. We base our instructional strategies and the content we teach on the "teacher experts." When people say, "You must have a standardized test score of x to succeed (or at least graduate from high school), why do we so willingly take their word for it and put so much dependence on the numbers?

3. We divide the food world into good and evil nutrients. We focus so much on whatever the "good" nutrients are at the time. We divide teaching ideologies, types of students, and many other aspects of education into good and evil sides. We also follow several trends of the times within our classrooms. I believe it is good for education to work for what the society needs as time changes, but not every aspect of society need be followed and dropped so quickly.

4. The whole point of eating is health. Whereas, in other countries eating is for pleasure, community, identity, etc. I think we may be missing the point of education too. Are we just putting kids through schooling to give them something to do? Conditioning them to be good little American workers? Teaching them that it's just your intelligence measured by a number that will determine the success of your life?

Michael Pollan addressed many other interesting beliefs that we hold about food, that just seem ridiculous when you actually think about it. What about educations has become this way? How did we get to this point?

Socialization in schools: Great goal, but not following through

There is often discussion about the purpose of schoooling. I believe one important goal of education is socialization. I found a definition on dictionary.com that I feel defines the process well: “a continuing process whereby an individual acquires a personal identity and learns the norms, values, behavior, and social skills appropriate to his or her social position.” Socialization within our schools would ideally prepare students for the behaviors and social skills that are expected of them once they get out into the “real world.” It would create proactive individuals who are confident in their personal identity and the values and behaviors of their social position. Unfortunately, there are several factors in our school systems today that are decreasing the possibility of this socialization to occur. For instance, many schools are cutting the amount of time given for lunch and recess (some lunch periods down to 20 minutes!) What ever happened to sitting down, relaxing, and actually enjoying lunch while socializing with others? Yes, much stress has been put on meeting academic standards, but do we really need to cut down the time set aside for kids to play with one and other and to develop as a kid (part of their current social position)? I agree with Brighouse in On Education when he says that we must provide for our students the best judgement for their long term flourishing, not just our viewpoints or opinions for them in short term. Part of developing for long-term flourishing includes going through the stages of social development as a child (while they're still a child.) I don't know how to solve this issue, but here are a few ideas: 1) Evaluate our philosophy often, making sure it is fitting to the needs of our specific classes and the changing times. 2) provide opportunities for students to simply socialize on a deeper level whether it's in study hall, discussing the meaning of a song in choir, communicate in phys-ed and sports (sportsmanship. 3) Encourage the development of students' personal identities by not teaching to one level, but making accommodations and differentiating your instruction to reach each child.

A new experience

This semester I will be blogging about a course I'm taking, "Making Decisions in US Schools." I currently don't know much about the politics of education. I am prepared to be challenged in this course and look forward to exploring new ideas and developing my own philosophy of education. Here's to a new look at education.