schools

Alice Waters has been making waves in the food industry lately, so many that she's appearing on 60 Minutes this Sunday. Along with other prominent foodies, she's strongly urging President Obama to promote local, sustainable eating by petitioning for a White House garden.

To solve the country's obesity crisis, Waters believes, we should plant more gardens, and not just any garden, but schoolyard gardens. If you can teach a child to grow fresh, in-season fruit and vegetables, you'll awaken their senses and teach new skills. Essentially, it will change the way they think about themselves, food, and the world.

This is the concept that Waters eloquently presents in Edible Schoolyard: A Universal Idea ($24.95). The book describes the history of the garden Waters created at Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School, in Berkeley CA. To find out what I thought of it, read more

When it comes to entitlement, American college students get high marks. At universities around the country students expect better grades for less work.

Growing increasingly concerned with students' increasing expectations, researches at the University of California, Irvine decided to study student attitudes. According to the New York Times the report found that a third of students surveyed said that they expected B’s just for attending lectures, and 40 percent said they deserved a B for completing the required reading.

The study hypothesized that parental pressure, competition, and achievement anxiety (prescription drug sure to follow shortly) has caused students to see an A as the default grade, rather than a C.

High report-card expectations aren't a bad thing, but let's hope actually learning something is part of the goal too.

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In an effort to tackle childhood obesity, secondary school students in the United Kingdom will be given practical cookery lessons. That's right, they're going back to the days of home-ec. They're hoping that basic cooking skills will encourage teenagers to cook their own meals and stop their dependency on processed foods.

The full plan is expected to be announced today by Schools Secretary Ed Balls. There's worry that there will be a shortage of teachers and equipment, but if all goes accordingly, schools that currently offer food technology classes (85 percent of all schools) will have to teach basic cookery skills. The other 15 percent will have to follow suit by 2011.

What do you think? Do you think that mandatory cooking classes will actually help childhood obesity? Would you want a similar program put into place in America?

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