A controversial topic
Polly Robinson’s feature on her experience of cookery and nutrition teaching at her children’s school [Sep, p130] prompted a big response:
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FROM: CLAIRE BURR
As a food teacher of 22 years, I’m proud of our role in promoting food to young people. Ms Robinson has taken isolated points and mistakenly applied them as fact across the country. Teachers have to consider a number of factors regarding recipes:
1) Lesson time: some schools have reduced lesson time significantly, so teachers have to simplify recipes to focus on a specific skill. Being asked to bring in tinned fruit for a crumble may have meant the focus of the lesson was teaching how to rub in. In a 50-minute lesson, most students would not be able to weigh out, rub in, prepare fruit, cook, clear up and be ready for their next class; hence the use of prepared fruit.
2) Over-reliance on a specific ingredient: we need to consider the home circumstances of our students, and the affordability and availability of an ingredient to all of them.