My school has been teaching Catering for the past two years..Before that it was Food Tech and hardly anyone wanted to take it because it involved too much research and written presentation.With the catering there is hardly any written presentation or writing at all.Every week they have to have their 'whites' on and cook.They get an automatic grade for that lesson and by the time they get to the final practical exam they know what grade they have.These courses have proved to be the most popular since they were started and as a consequence more of the students want to learn to cook.
When I was 11-16 I had two AFTERNOONS a week spent in
Home Economics.I learned to cook far better than the students have been doing for the past 20 years.All they have learned is how to read a ready prepared meal or food product package.They have not learned how to cook from scratch with fresh ingredients but with stop gap ready produced rubbish as Taf has already pointed out.
I actually think this WILL work especially when you think how many cookery shows there are on tv.They have proliferated vastly in the last 20 years and I think it is because many young adults have left school and home without the necessary skills to survive on their own.
How Maggy T's education Gurus thought replacing HE with Food Tech would benefit the country I cannot understand.Mind she was also responsible for closing down many school kitchens because she refused to provide the subsidies for school meals, leading to the catering mess that Jamie Oliver highlighted in his school dinner's campaign.
