Contested Desires: The Edible Landscape of School

Abstract

Food and drink are associated with survival and for children and young people the edible landscape represents an essential part of survival in the modern school. Within any institution that ‘contains’ persons over time, such as schools, hospitals and prisons, the organization and control of eating and drinking takes on a particularly significant role. At one and the same time, food and drink and the space in which they are served and consumed can become a site of contested desires, a space where authority and resistance are exercised. It is clear from early accounts that the association of school children with food and drink was also seen as potentially chaotic. It served to remind those seeking to ‘improve’ the morals and behaviour of the ‘lower’ classes of the chasm of difference that existed between the social classes. There is a sense of fear and revulsion in these early accounts of collective consumption. But schools and kindergartens were, from the middle of the nineteenth century and well into the twentieth century, also important sites for the production and consumption of food as a form of pedagogy. This paper explores the interior and exterior edible landscape of school in the UK context and suggests some pointers to its significance in terms of the development of pedagogy and curriculum.

Notes

For more on the significance of food in school‐based rhymes see Opie, Iona and Peter Opie. The Lore and Language of School Children. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1959.

For Roman Catholic children, from about the age of six, a mysterious but essential part of the edible landscape of school was preparation and instruction around the act of taking “holy communion”, which entailed the digestion of the body and blood of Jesus Christ. It was, for example, vital that the teeth did not come into contact with the host in the mouth and children practised, in the playground, the correct technique, using sweets called “flying saucers”, which resembled it closely.

Hart, R. “Letter.” New York Times, 2 March 2002. Roger Hart was responding to an article (27 February 2002) by Rothstein, R. “Recognizing the secret value of lunchtime duty.”

Turner, B. S. The Body and Society. Oxford, 1984. Cited in Hendrick, H. Children, Childhood and English Society 1880–1990. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997: 37.

The establishment of School Boards brought women into local politics and there are many examples of women’s concerns with the nutrition of working‐class children in schools expressed in their election manifestos. Margaret McMillan, a pioneer in respect of introducing school meals, was one important example of those who recognized the link between good learning and sound nutrition. She began her practical experiments in her own garden while still resident in London, inviting children from the East End for tea after school followed by educational activities and sleeping in the open air.

Inter‐Departmental Committee on Medical Inspection and Feeding cited in Buckley, M. E. The Feeding of School Children. London: Bell & Sons, 1914: 37–38.

Differentiation between pupils in schools has continued to be associated with food. The postwar introduction of means‐tested free school meals and its association with poverty continues and acts as a social and cultural divide still in many schools. Spaces and places associated with free meals have included separate counters to receive the meal and separate eating spaces – an unnecessary apartheid which has, from the child’s point of view, often caused distress.

Selby‐Brigge, L. A. “Report on the Working of the Education (Provision of Meals) Act up to 31^st March 1909.” In Buckley. The Feeding of School Children, 83.

Craddock, M. E. “The School Lunch.” Texas State College for Women. College of Industrial Arts Bulletin 156 (1 July 1931).

“The Lunch Hour at School”, reported in the New York Evening Post, 10 July 1920. [My emphasis].

Buckley. The Feeding of School Children.

Stillman, C. G. and R. Castle Cleary. The Modern School. London: Architectural Press, 1949: 120.

The Builder 4 January (1890), cited in Clay, F. Modern School Buildings. London: B. T. Batsford, 1902: 160.

From The Review of Reviews April 1911. I am grateful to Kate Rousmaniere of the University of Miami in Ohio for references to early school meals provision in the United States.

Latimer, R. “Problems of Public School Cafeterias.” Practical Home Economics 13, no. 6 (June 1935): 178.

Ibid.

Ringshall, R., M. Miles, and F. Kelsall. The Urban School. Buildings for Education in London, 1870–1980. G.L.C. London: Architectural Press, 1983.

Stillman and Castle Cleary. The Modern School, 30–31.

UNESCO. International Conference on Public Education, 1951. Recommendation No. 33. To the Ministries of Education concerning School Meals and Clothing, 97.

Ibid., 98.

Ibid., Recommendation no.5, 98.

See Grosvenor, I. “ ‘The Art of Seeing’: Promoting Design in Education in 1930s England,” in this issue.

Donald Underwood (aged 11), 9 August 1944. The Prestolee Archive Collection, vol.1, University of East Anglia.

Moriarty, V. Margaret McMillan. ‘I learn, to succour the helpless’. Nottingham: Educational Heretics Press, 1998.

See Burke, C. “ ‘The School Without Tears,’ E. F. O’Neill of Prestolee.” History of Education 34, no. 3 (May 2005): 263–275.

Ibid.

Ibid., 123.

Stillman and Castle Cleary. The Modern School, 120.

Russell, T. M. Forty Years On. Life and Work at the Central Technical School, Sheffield. Sheffield: Pickard Communication, 2003: 107.

Bard, B. The School Lunchroom: Time of Trial. New York: Wiley, 1968: 48.

Ibid., 103.

Department of Education and Science. Children and Their Primary Schools: A Report of the Central Advisory Council for Education. England, vol 1. London: HMSO, 1967: 77.

Brosterman, N. Inventing Kindergarten. New York: Abrams Books, 1997.

Board of Education. Handbook of Suggestions for Teachers. London: HMSO, 1927: 385.

This practice is becoming re‐established in “edible school yard” experiments in both Europe and the United States. The best known example of this is the Edible School Yard in Berkeley, California.

Log book entry, Shurdington School, available from http://www.shurdington.org/oldschool.htm; INTERNET. During the Second World War in the United States, the Victory Gardens similarly employed children in growing food.

Shurdington school log, available from: http://www.shurdington.org/oldschool.htm# COCOA%2versus%20HORLICKS; INTERNET, accessed 28 April 2005.

I am grateful to Ian Grosvenor for this reference discovered among papers at Birmingham City Council Education Library.

Stitt, S., M. Jepson, E. Paulson‐Box, and E. Prisk. “Food Skills in the National Curriculum: An International Perspective.” Paper presented at BERA Annual Conference, September 1996.

For an account of the history of School Meals provision in Sweden, see Gullberg, E. “The Well‐nourished Child. Visions and politics in the history of school meals.” Paper presented at the ESSHC conference, Humboldt Universität, Berlin, 24–27 March, 2004.

See for example Burger King Academies in the USA; McDonald involvement in schools in UK; Pepsi sponsorship of exercise books; Tesco sponsorship of books and computers; Walkers crisps links with the National Grid for Learning.

See for example, Burke, C. and I. Grosvenor. The School I’d Like. Children and Young People’s Reflections on an Education for the 21st Century. London: RoutledgeFalmer, 2003: 30–43.