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The venom in the Atlantic piece was misplaced, but the main thrust was not. The idea that she wants cash strapped governments to spend money on her little project is ludicrous.

"lifted uncounted generations of human beings out of the desperate daily scrabble to wrest sustenance from dirt." well what sort of creatures does she think is providing her food for her?

I taught middle school for many years in a place where we were free to do just this sort of project approach to teaching, and I've no doubt the teachers in California are making use of the opportunity to tie learning to garden and cook to other lessons in math, perception, history, science, cooperation, and so on. Shakespeare? Probably not. We here all know the value of being able to cook your own meals. The sense of fulfillment and self-reliance expands tremendously when you are also able to grow the food you cook.

Time to lift generations of human beings out of the unnecessary dependence on others to provide all their sustenance for them.

I'm so glad you posted thoughts on this article; when I read it, I was absolutely stunned. First of all, the Atlantic has such a great and reliable food section that generally departs from the somewhat slanted/occasionally provocative tone of the rest of the magazine, and casts its net wide to deliver impartial, humorous, and informative food news. I was so disappointed to see endorsement of Flanagan's radical and, indeed, sometimes quite racist arguments.

The idea of employing gardening and healthy food philosophy to educate children is valuable and can be successful, if implemented correctly. It is true that such activities should never supplant real curricular material, and if that is what is happening in California schools, action should be taken. But it is impossible to tell from Flanagan's article what the goals of the Edible Schoolyard program are, and what measures are used to indicate their success! As you say, if there is (appropriately) no expectation that the program help math and english grades, then who cares if it doesn't help math and english grades as long as the children continue to perform well?

And I won't even discuss her abhorrent and frequent references to how teaching gardening was a disgrace to immigrant field workers, or how having children in a garden is somehow comparable to discrimination in the Jim Crow south. Just awful. And I'm not even a huge Alice Waters fan!

I would support the program if they add marijuana to the garden

There's nothing wrong with teaching kids about nutrition, and as far that goes, I'm all in favor of kids having a garden - among many other things, it's a great biology lesson. The problem is that her main impetus seems to be to indoctrinate the kids into her superstition that foods grown "naturally" are somehow better for them than the stuff they can find in any supermarket.

The point of inner city education should be to enable the children to grow up and escape poverty. Poverty and boredom drive most bad food decisions in the inner city, knowing your food comes from the ground is taught in basic biology class, if the kids stay in school that long. As I have stated before, as a second generation American,my parents and grandparents would have gone crazy removing curriculum for stoop labor in a garden for a few hours a week. Yes, my grandparents all farmed when they came to the US. Only one of their children to farm, and none of the grand children. I was at school to be sure I would not need to do that work when I grew up. These kids need distractions removed and a goal and purpose to their life to escape poverty. Get them to pass the classes and get into college or a good trade school and then, let them learn about the religion of food. And from the comments on organic and locally grown, it is a religion.

Also, who is to say organic gardening is the correct thing to teach? organic gardening has led to the downfall of countless civilizations as populations outgrew the ability to produce adequate amounts of food, wars for the same reason, to get the neighbors resources. Of course that could be a tie in to history. Lets add the Dust Bowl to the lesson plan as well, teach contour farming, fallow fields etc. What year is the garden going fallow at the school? If you are going to do it, do it scientifically, 2 gardens, 1 organic and heirloom, one using science, fertilizers and seeds bred for yield and performance, and let them learn reality. But that would question the religion and dilute the message targeting the children.

Redfish, that is the most profitable farm item today, and would be an item a lot of them are familiar with in the real world. They need to know it doesn't grow in baggies. They just need to be sure to get the Federal tax stamp so they are legal. But isn't the best usually grown hydroponically? Doesn't fit the organic title then. And of course those farms have a whole variety of pest problems, poachers, cops, employee shrinkage.

Give a person a head of lettuce,,,teach a person to grow a head of lettuce? You want fries with that burger?

School gardening holds promise for the ultimate applied educational experience. In addition to phys ed, you can sneak in biology (many obvious connections), chemistry (fertilizers, water, soil science), arithmetic (e.g., measuring plots and rows, economics), and I imagine there are ways to tie in reading as well. I personally think nutrition should be taught as a primary element of any educational program, and it also incorporates many of the above basic subjects.

What better opportunity to get kids outside and moving around in a safe, supervised environment, when they'll probably be going home after school to eat Doritos in front of their computers?

Before the brain trust that created this bit of drivel put pen to paper, she should have done a little research on the notion that, as she puts it, the Edible Schoolyard "bears the hallmark of contemporary progressivism, a kind of win-win, “let them eat tarte tatin” approach to the world and one’s place in it that is prompting an improbable alliance of school reformers, volunteers, movie stars, politicians’ wives, and agricultural concerns (the California Fertilizer Foundation is a big friend of school gardens) to insert its values into the schools."
It appears, according to the Salt Lake Tribune, that the CEO of the Monsanto-funded Utah Farm Bureau is buying books for the school system, to refute so-called eco-propaganda: http://www.sltrib.com/business/ci_14151675
As for inserting ones values into the schools, perhaps she might consider covering the issues of fast food in schools, or school prayer as fodder for her next argument.

This just proves what I always say...'we could be saving the world itself and someone will have a problem with it'.
Polarizatiing ideas rule the day. Whether it's the internet or the paper's need to sell, it's too bad that those truly educated on matters no longer lead the discussion. Ignorance with an opinion is EVERYWHERE.

Here's Caitlin showing her expertise not only in education, race, and economic classism, but feminism too.

http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/61880/april-19-2006/caitlin-flanagan

More disgusting than Cleaving? Yikes.

What is wrong with Tarte Tatin? If I call it apple pie, is that more acceptable? Does she think Latinos are incapable of making pastry dough?

Nice response. I also enjoyed this reply at Civil Eats.

Interestingly, the question I remember the most from my state-mandated standardized tests in middle school was a math question that required us to double a chocolate chip cookie recipe. My math teacher mother always used the grocery store and the kitchen as math lessons for us. And we definitely learned about calories in chemistry class.

I'm with Carey. I thought it was crazy that she was acting as if passing state standards tests is the sole purpose of an education! I have to admit that I don't know much about education policy, but my impression has always been that focusing on standards tests cheats children of a real education. They learn to pass tests (if they learn anything) but not how to think for themselves and advance to the next level of understanding.

Writing recipes and measuring things are exactly the kind of "building block" activities you do in sixth grade, whether your school has a garden or not. I doubt very much that those sixth graders were reading Shakespeare before the garden. You work up to Hamlet.

And this may seem too far a stretch, but I think the financial crisis has shown us that lessons in basic home economics would be useful for all school children. Every time I hear a story about people in crazy credit card debt because they simply didn't understand how the cards work I thank my stars that my parents drilled into me that you pay the balance every month if you want to stay out of trouble. Knowing how to live within your means and keep yourself healthy are two of the most important lessons you can learn.

I'm irritated that she's getting so much attention for this. It's exactly what she and the Atlantic wanted. I'd like to see the teachers, parents, and children at the school respond to this article. I suppose they probably have or will somewhere.

P.S. As a hoity-toity elitist Obamabot, I also have to say that I have never found the service at Chez Panisse to be anything other than lovely.

Ibisflight good for you. I studied agriculture and decided I could not afford to pursue it as a career.

But the reality is these kids, or at least most of them may not finish high school, let alone college. The children deserve more than that. Gardens are a great distraction to the real issue which is school failure and poverty. Perhaps the article was written to start lucid and intelligent conversation in areas that haven't adopted this yet.

Perhaps the money really could be better used for tutoring and motivation, bringing in people to help educate and set real world goals and dreams, and not indoctrinate into the cult of organic food. We have a school full of kids who will never leave poverty and poor nutrition, unless they get an education, and we have people more interested in the sideshow than the main act. Outside of the school day, the garden has no relevance, they have no hope of having their own unless they leave their community for a better life, and forget that if they drop out of high school. Poverty is evil, education is how you can get out.

J. Kenji Lopez-Alt As for the anger at the writing recipes is easy comment. Lets look at it this way, at an hour and a half of garden work a week, and the fact that these children have no culinary training or experience, they are not developing recipes, they are transcribing recipes. They are writing pointless words on paper that they may not even understand, that is not education. I write recipes everyday,and understand how difficult it is, I find it more interesting that the difficulty in this task is recognized as being so easy that an untrained child could do it by the supporters of the program. Maybe some of the anger should be channeled there, or maybe you and I could be replaced more cheaply with a 5th grader from Compton. But lets hang the person who thinks its trivial to education.

And what is wrong with stay at home parents? Is what you do for a living more important than your children, I pity them. My wife and I managed it, it took sacrifices and each of us working different shifts until they were in school. We were Scout leaders and school volunteers, we made the effort to contribute time for the children rather than money for a political goal. We know they are better for it, though we are financially poorer.

The reaction I see in this is is a bunch of acolytes defending their prophet against an unbeliever and heretic. Here is the message The modern Farmer is evil, all food companies are evil and Alice is our savior, pass me the Koolaid (oops that contains processed sugar so we can't have it in the cafeteria), make it carrot juice.

The only thing this debate has highlighted to me is how creative we have become in using accusations of "the other side's" racism and elitism to absolve ourselves of any responsibility to self-analyze the way racism and elitism function in our own actions and reasoning.

Way to go, white people. Way to go.

Modern farmers use natural and chemical fertilizers, soil becomes depleted as anyone who took a soil science class can tell you. Using manure often doesn't replace all of the essential minerals a crop can need to grow, sorry I learned that in my Michigan State university soil science class. Organic matter is essential to keep the topsoil intact, you don't get that from chemical fertilizer alone. Knowledge is essential to success. If you can't graduate high school you can't take that class.

Yes, I am more progressive in my views on farming, but at least I am not a Luddite. Progress is necessary in measured steps. Hybridization to improve seed strains, pesticides and even improvements in shipping produce are all essential, or should we go back to horse and wagons for delivery and oxen pulled plows so we can fertilize while we work, that is conventional too. Denying knowledge that could be usefull, because it is not traditional is stark craziness. Not all that is done on either side is good. You are just too narrow minded to see many of the lies the natural and organic side are telling you, just the ones on the commercial side. I know there are liars are on both sides, and I'll call them out too. Lets go back to the good old days, a slaughterhouse in every town, a 3 day shelf life on fresh meat, food costs over 100% higher in 1911 dollars. And where will we get the millions of farm workers needed to sustain organic agriculture? Are you jumping to the head of the line for that one? Yes, I am stupid to appreciate progress. As i have said repeatedly the truth is somewhere in between both sides.

Yes the dust bowl was large scale farming by people who didn't understand the area was unsuitable for the.type of agriculture they tried to sustain. Non conservation farming in an arid area, is failure. Why not teach that? But again, the knowledge we have gained since then is all negated by the fact it isn't traditional.

The reality is the world population has hit a point where natural organic and heirloom just won't feed everyone, but then again, global warming is a lie too.

You are more worried about a garden at school rather than the kids in poverty. The garden message is the same as the one saying sports will get the kid out of poverty and get them an education, that has proven to be a failure too.

Sorry, I do work in the food industry. Oh, and by the way, I don't buy processed foods for myself, so I don't know who I am Shilling for.

By the way (don't stone me for this) why is it so important for everyone to go to university? Everyone who is prepared and interested in going should have a fair chance to do so, but to go just because you can is ridiculous. I like university, and have every intention of going for PhD, but neither my brother nor my sister particularly enjoyed it, and my brother in particular probably could have found something equally well-paying and enjoyable if he hadn't gone. I think more respect for those who work in areas that don't involve a degree would help things a lot more.

I suspect they weren't writing a recipe the way that a cookbook author would write a recipe. They probably did something like, say, harvest tomatoes from the garden, make salsa with the tomatoes, and then sit down and write a recipe about how they made salsa. It's similar to the "how to" writing exercises I did in elementary school. I know I remember having to write about how to make a pbj. And a how to essay was one of the four possible writing prompts in the annual standardized test, too.

I have absolutely no problem teaching home economics and basic life skills in school. It is absolutely essential to the education of our children.

The problem is food has changed from the basic source of life to a religion in the minds of some and a political tool to others.The bulk of the comments are an attack on the author, and when I mentioned teaching both sides, or running a controlled experiment I am a shill for the evil industrial food world. Canned fruits and vegetables can be a source of good nutrition, properly used, as can frozen foods but the focus on Fresh, natural and organic when equally healthful and more economical alternatives are available is nonsense. This is especially true if you are purporting it to be teaching them a life skill and they are economically deprived. Screw the garden and give them real home economics that they can use when they get home. Show a kid how to cook a nice flavorful dinner with foods the family can afford, and they will have more pride and respect than if they tell the parents i had really good food today but we can't afford to make it at home. Talk about damaging ones self esteem.

there are huge areas of the US where eating locally is not a year round option, and are we to say those in North Dakota can't have citrus fruits because they are not local? We, as Americans have developed safe and economical food distribution systems second to none in the world, should we be ashamed to buy a fresh tomato or orange in winter because they are trucked up from Mexico or Florida? to read the comments here, I think I am supposed to.

think, not thing

damn lack of edit function!

I just wrote a big term paper on kids and community gardens (not quite the same but very close). I came across a lot of stuff about this in my research, and I think in a lot of ways it totally transcends food.

A third grader whose class keeps a garden might learn about the water cycle, write about how to plant a seed, draw a graph to show how fast a plant is growing over time, etc. By themselves gardens do not teach math, science, and English, but they do give kids an opportunity to practice the skills they learn in the classroom. You can't learn to swim just by being told how to do it -- you have to strap on those floaties and jump in the pool.

The other issue here that has not been touched upon is the way gardens impact the learning environment. Children need a variety of mental and physical stimuli throughout the school day to stay focused, not to mention keep the teacher sane. As the day wears on and children become disinterested for whatever reason, the learning environment can suffer. A kid who is engaged in a learning experience and also gets a chance to work off a little energy is likely going to be ready for more, and so will his or her teacher.

I would also like to touch on how for years education boards have revised policy ad infinitum to try and raise student retention rates, graduation rates, test scores, etc., but the fact is that it is impossible to legislate a passion for learning. Laws alone cannot remediate failing schools; a failing school succeeds only when the students and teachers are inspired to come back each day and build upon yesterday's achievements. To me, this is the part that gets lost in Flanagan's politically-tinged vitriol and Alice Waters talking down from her sustainable, organic pedestal. Even if the garden is a petunia garden and nobody ever takes a single bite of what they grow, the kids who garden in school have that additional opportunity to truly reap what they sow and be proud of something that they made.

Gardens are just one example of a way to make school a more exciting, appealing place to be and you won't find that written into any curriculum.

My two kids attend LAUSD (Los Angeles Unified School District) so we are deep into the deeply flawed California school system. While I agree that the high dropout rate is deplorable, around 40% in my area, putting the blame on an Edible Garden is unfair.

If anything, I think that having a gardening portion to the curriculum might break up the monotony of endless drilling to improve test scores. Our school has to raise money to provide PE (physical education) to the students. If the parents did nothing, there would be no PE.

In spite of our efforts, each year the number of obese kids seems to double. If there is one overweight kindergarden, there will be two in first grade, by fifth grade around a quarter to a third of the students are overweight. Lunchables are everywhere, and few seem to know that they are truly unhealthy.

The private school Ms. Flanagan's kids attend probably has PE and heaps of other enrichment programs, not to mention a cafeteria that serves fresh food. It is very easy to cast a stone from an ivory tower.

When I read Flanagan's piece I was struck by how hard she worked to ignore the clear, concise and obvious connections between school gardens and California K-12 content standards. I'm positive that my Kindergarten students are mastering their science and social studies objectives by hands-on inquiry in the garden.

And while she has plenty of energy for vacuous allegations of racism against educators, she doesn't bother to think about social justice and school gardens. My school, like many in California, is in a food desert. My students, many of whose families struggle with chronic food insecurity, have extremely limited access to fresh produce. Our garden, which is not funded through the Edible Schoolyard program but is the hard work of students, teachers, and all of our families, is one way to increase access.

Since I think schools are charged to help students become creative, critical thinkers, gardens in schools like mine get kids thinking about issues like access and equity - and demonstrate the power they have to advocate for and create change. Flanagan appears to be more in favor of students who are good at taking tests.

Besides which, does Flanagan feel so strongly about gardens in private schools? They're very popular in expensive day academies.

Meat guy (please don't take my direct responses to you as an attack, but what you say seems worth responding to), just out of curiosity, have you looked at the Edible Schoolyard project site (the link at the beginning of the post)?

The point you raised about the garden not feeding several hundred students seemed reasonable, and, in fact, the site specifically states that 'Students harvest and prepare produce as part of their garden and kitchen classes. However, produce grown in the garden is not used for school lunch.' The initiative to improve school lunches is a separate one ( http://www.chezpanissefoundation.org/school-lunch-reform ), and there is a difference between feeding heirloom tomatoes to several thousand kids, and introducing fresh and organic food to the school menu '. . .while remaining within the district's food service budget.'.

I hadn't looked at the site before, and frankly, now that I HAVE looked it over, the project still doesn't strike me as interfering with 'ordinary' schooling; it just provides a concrete focus. What you learn to do with organic produce, you can also do with conventionally grown produce (or at least, I know I have), these just don't seem like wasted skills. Stuff you cook out of cans and bags is an entirely different category, anyway (and if you mean mixes/prepared foods, those come with instructions, and if they're just raw ingredients, the same argument applies that I made for conventional vs. organic produce), and it seems a bit of a stretch to tie instruction using high-quality ingredients to the possibility of a crushing humiliation.

There is also a difference between gradually building up a garden with some care and foresight, and making an inadequate legacy contribution for a building.

I'm curious; given the same financial and land resources, what specifically would you have done in place of Edible Schoolyard?

well, this has been a fun thread. I truly don't believe all that i have said, but there are a few that I wouldn't take back. I see value in the gardens, and for some of this I was pushing buttons. THe thing i won't take back is the indoctrination. Many of you engaged me in opinions and counterpoints, debating to bring about conversion, or at least accomodation. You, I could accept running such a program because it shows logic, reason and human relation skills. But then, there are the others who show only passion and vitriol. It is you i fear. Movements need prophets, and apostles, not bullying and demeaning brownshirts. Duck Cheney? surely you could do better than that. But, as I told my Boy Scouts one campout Don't ever call me an a$$hole, life would be hell without yours, don't make me that important.

my fear in the expansion of the program, as in many of these programs the reason is replaced with misplaced corruption of the principles it was originally designed to achieve by the brown shirts who push their goals to the front, and some of you exhibit those traits here. Even on other threads, i have seen people demeaned for asking rookie questions. Well, maybe this will get me banned from the site, but some of you really need to lighten up. Food is life, food can be fun, it is not a religion, it is a faith. Religions have rules to exclude non believers a faith accepts all.

When I was in the first and second grades I went to a school where the children worked the garden. I am old. This was during the depression. Is this why I have, in my adult life (teen age years should never be on anyone's resume), I have always been interested in having a garden and in the nutrition I provide for my family? I have no idea.
I do find St. Alice a pain. I do not find the gardens a problem unless they take away from other studies.
It is the kitchens that have been added to process the food, where that is part of the program, that I draw the line. In some areas, because of health regulations and other problems, the kids can't cook their food in the existing school's kitchen. That California might spend an outrageous amount of money (in comparison to the school's budget) on a kitchen when we are cutting state worker's wages everywhere is just ghoulish.

This is ridiculous. A school garden is a wonderful way to incorporate scholarship with real life skills. My friend, Dorothy Mullen, started this as a volunteer effort in her child's Princeton (hardly migrant workers) school system, and it has grown--read about it here:
http://www.dorothymullen.org/
As a 4H leader that taught cooking/nutrition, I am always amazed at how my students know so little about food--so we have them work with whole foods, real foods, do things from scratch--and they are so more willing to try things they have been hands-on with.

Humm! I do so love how white folks like to decide what works / does not work for black people. Obviously Ms. Flanagan knows no black people and I’m guessing that she feels that black people are so beneath her that G-d forbid she would have any discussion with us black folk. And since we (seemingly from her opinion) black people don’t have any type of taste buds then fast food is all we should eat, after all why waste time teaching black people about fresh food.

In addition it seems that Caitlin Flanagan has never in her entire life worked a farm. You have to have a degree in animal husbandry, you have to know about crop production you have to understand financing and cost analysis. You have to understand how to do biological testing and mostly you have to read, because the knowledge in agriculture changes just as much as in the technical world.

I went to the largest agriculture school in the United States. I’m black and I don’t ever remember feeling like I was being treated like a gigga boo, nor did I or my parents find it demeaning. In order to get into my school you had to be in the top 5 percent of your class, you had to be recommended by a science teacher there was a review board and 4 interviews that included in some cases your parents. Then once you were pre - admitted you had to spend 30 days at the school in the summer. Because the school is a working farm and trust me you worked in the fields, you milked cows, drove tractors you fought the chickens for eggs.

The structure of the school was such that once you graduated you should be able to run a farm. Not that most of us did, as a matter of fact I only know of a handful of people went into agri-business. So why go to the school? Because you lean how to learn, you know the measure of the type of person you are, you learned how to work in groups and in collaborations, in addition get the best education in the sciences. All the math, science and history you learned in the classroom you used in real time on the farm and you become on heck of a food shopper. I know the difference between fresh meats, fishes, fruits and vegetables. I know how food is produced, which is why fast food never made any sense, because once you know what fresh food taste like mass produced food just falls flat. I know sugar, salt, grape / apple jelly are pretty much the same, but you would only know that if you understood how food was produced.

I’ve worked with a risk youth and they are always amazed at how much I know about the world and I always tell them it’s the agriculture school I attended. The school gave me such a broad range of information on so many topics. But what hurts is to see the look in their eyes, questioning “Why” there are no schools like the one I went to in California, well after reading Ms Flanagan’s piece, I know why, these kids don’t have a chance in hell.

My suggestion is that Ms Flanagan and her editor perhaps lower themselves and bother to talk to a few black people to see how they actually feel…not that she would care.

Who is this "Carey" that's referred to in the sentence that appears right after the picture of Alice Waters? I can't find any reference to him or her earlier, or later, in the article. Really sloppy and frustrating. I would like to read more about this "Carey's" opinion on Cleaving but at this point, I guess that's not possible.