flaneuse.org

As an occupational hazard, I find myself thinking a lot about what good learning and teaching look like, and often I come across examples in the most unexpected places. Nearly every Wednesday I read the Dining section in the Times (online, of course : ) because I love food and love even more reading about places I will probably never be able to visit. Which reminds me, Chris and I should start saving up again for a really great meal…. some places are just worth the money.

In that section today was a great article, a follow up to a piece done about a culinary high school in the city. It seems that the journalist had made some assumptions about how the high school students, mostly low-income, would not probably be able to eat at a four-star restaurant but might work there some day. Two of the students mentioned got pretty mad — and rightfully so — that the journalist didn’t assume they might own the restaurant. In a sense, she made the classical mistake many of us in education make by assuming urban schools and students have only a couple of options open to them, and that patterns of family income and education don’t change when of course they do. The journalist, whose name escapes me as I write this, was admirably open to the girls’ critique and made up to them by taking them to Le Bernadin, a restaurant quite out of my league as a four-star mecca for French Cuisine.

To sum up this story, the girls loved the meal and made excellent and interesting observations throughout, connecting the food and service to their own experiences and learning in the culinary high school. They tried foods they had never had before, and asked questions of the waiter, sommelier, and chef. Clearly both girls learned an enormous amount, took notes as they ate, and demonstrated deep thinking and understanding. That is good education, of the kind sorely lacking in most American high schools — the opportunity to apply knowledge to real situations, to think deeply about connections, to ask questions of experts. It’s also the kind of education we should be shooting for.

Interested in reading more? Here’s the link to the article, and warning: it will make you hungry.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 2nd, 2007 at 4:16 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.