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School lunch is often regarded as a necessary but inconvenient distraction from the real work of education. Lunch, in this view, is about providing students the nourishment they need in order to attend to academic content and the tests that assess whether content has been learned. In contrast, the central purpose of this collection is to examine school lunch as an educational phenomenon in its own right. Contributing authors-drawing from a variety of disciplinary traditions, including philosophy, sociology, and anthropology-examine school lunch policies and practices, social and cultural aspects of food and eating, and the relation among school food, the environment, and human and non-human animal well-being. The volume also addresses how school lunch might be more widely conceptualized and practiced as an educational undertaking.
List of contents
1. Introduction.- 2. Alice Waters and the Edible Schoolyard: Rethinking School Lunch as Public Education.- 3. Postmodern Dietetic: Reclaiming the Body Through the Practice of Alimentary Freedom.- 4. Schooling Lunch: Health, Food, and the Pedagogicalization of the Lunchbox.- 5. "Eating Democracy": School Lunch and the Social Meaning of Eating in Critical Times.- 6. Food for a Common(s) Curriculum: Learning to Recognize and Resist Food Enclosures.- 7. Education Toward an Increasingly Integrated Outlook on Meat.- 8. "Social Consequences" of School Lunch for Students Who Receive Special Education Services: A Critical Outlook.- 9. School Lunch and Student Food Insecurity: A Teacher's Observations and Reflections.- 10. School Lunch Curriculum.- 11. We Are How We Eat: An Argument for the Social Value of Slow School Lunch.
About the author
Suzanne Rice is Professor of Social and Cultural Studies in Education at the University of Kansas, USA.
A.G. Rud is Distinguished Professor of Cultural Studies and Social Thought in Education at Washington State University, USA.
Summary
Provides an overview of significant philosophical understandings of food and eating from the ancient to the postmodern
Critiques two aspects of school lunch, food provided at school and the pressures on students who bring home-prepared or store bought lunches thought by school personnel to be inappropriate
Argues that there is a need for curricula explicitly addressing the food students eat at school-where it comes from, how it is produced, processed, and distributed, as well as its nutrition, cultural dimensions, and bearing on environmental concerns
