"It's Not Home Economics -- It's Food Technology!"

Myself and a good old school friend sat reminiscing about days gone by last night: the sort of thing which is highly enjoyable having just graduated after three long years at university. While Rick is now a Bachelor of Science after working damn hard for a First Class Honours Degree in Music Technology, I am a Bachelor of Arts having achieved a Second Class Upper Honours Degree in American Studies and Imaginative Writing.

The point of the above is not to brag and wallow in one's own successes, but to merely make the point that both Rick and myself went and studied a subject that interested us at university. I would venture a guess that if we had been able to, we would have studied these subjects all day, every day at school, as well. Sadly no school offers such an opportunity, and probably quite rightly so, but the problem remained that Rick, myself and a great many of our other friends were left to study subjects we found no intellectual stimulation in.

There was a stipulation at our High School that every pupil had to study a technology at G.C.S.E. level. The absurdity of such rule still fascinates me; I am sure it was in place to ensure the survival of certain wilting departments. Looking back now, I wish I had fought the system more and pushed to study History instead of 'Food Technology'. I would have liked to have learnt to cook, but that was never the ultimate goal of F.T.

Right from the first lesson I never cared for F.T. I never paid much attention in class, but from what I remember we were taught of the food industry: how to make food en-masse. "The production line". "Quality control".Personally I do not think such things are worthy of being taught in schools.

The thing which summed it up for me was Rick's front cover for his file. We had to produce large A3 sized dossier of work, containing what, I'm not exactly sure. I myself never even finished the front cover, and I am not sure whether or not Rick finally got it right either. By the first lesson he had finished his front cover, but instead of having "Food Technology" blazoned across the front, he had written "Home Economics" (The subject actually was Home Economics years seven through nine, but we were seldom cooking.)

Seven days later Rick's folder still had the same front cover. The teacher told him to change it. Twelve months later, at the start of year eleven, Rick's folder still had the same front cover, and every lesson the teacher (a large beast of a woman) shouted at him "it's not Home Economics -- it's Food Technology!"

And that typifies the problem, really. The name of the subject is not even right, never mind the academic content. It was understandable that the subject should initially change its name from Cookery to something else in order to distance itself from the sexist academic practices present in British schools in the 1950's and 60's, but it has certainly gone too far. In the lesson where we learn to cook, we do not even learn to cook anymore. When I was doing Food Technology, we were supposed to be making something every single week, but we had to cook as if on a production line. It was absolutely crazy.

Thankfully now, this Labour government seems to be correcting the problem. It recently suggested that every pupil leaving school should have good knowledge of ten to fifteen recipes. After my experiences, I consider that a bloody good idea! I left for university not knowing even how to make something as simple as pasta. Hopefully that will not happen in the future.

As for Rick and myself, Rick I think scraped a 'C' grade, though he probably lost marks for his front cover. I, however, did not fare so well. I was removed from the course, shall we say, about a third of the way through year eleven. I had done no work, had no enthusiasm for "Food Technology", and had no intention of making a career out of the food industry. I just did not care. If we had actually been learning to cook, the story would have been very different. I did, though, take one thing from the course. It was my one and only experience of getting shouted at in front of the entire class. The large beast of a teacher really let me have it. Over a twelve month period I had done absolutely no work. She shouted until she was red in the face. I just stood there in the middle of the room, and that experience strengthened the resolve in me to genuinely achieve some thing in my life, just so as I could stick it in the face of every person who ever suggested I would amount to nothing.

Yours, wherever you may be,
Daniel C. Wright