Anyone familiar with the "edible schoolyard" in Berkeley?

[Karmadillo]

Sounds like a good idea.

http://www.dailycal.org/article.php?id=17236

How do you get kids to eat their vegetables? According to Alice Waters, founder of world-renowned Berkeley bistro Chez Panisse, you get their hands dirty.
Waters has pioneered an approach to food education—one to get kids involved in every step of the eating experience, from planting to cooking, eating and cleaning.

“I hope to bring kids into a new relationship with food,” Waters says. “It’s a matter of developing a sense of pride, a sense of participation.”

The Edible Schoolyard is Waters’s answer to what she considers to be a lack of a “tradition of food” in American culture. A cooperative effort with Berkeley’s Martin Luther King Junior Middle School, the nonprofit organization integrates agricultural and culinary lessons into the academic schedule. Sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders plant and maintain a garden that used to be an asphalt parking lot, and prepare fresh food.

The daily classes in the garden and kitchen incorporate food and agriculture into lessons in core subjects like biology and history. The real advantage to the hybrid education is the level of hands-on practical experience the kids get, Waters says.

more...

[Southpaw Bookworm]

1. No time for that anymore

There are standardized tests for which schools must prepare, no time for getting kids excited about learning or having them learn anything that won't be covered on the bubble sheet.

[ashmanonar]

2. indeed

i'm glad i got out of the high schools in time, and got into college where we do real work and not fill out bubbles.

[Karmadillo]

3. Kick.

n/t