Children’s food maps: using social mapping to understand school foodscapes

This paper discusses the use of mapping as part of an ethnographic research project exploring food experiences in primary schools. Whilst the main data collection instrument was participant observation, the project made use of a creative social mapping activity. Towards the end of fieldwork, children were asked to draw maps of the food spaces at school. This paper discusses how the creation of the maps and simultaneous conversations that took place both around the maps’ construction and in relation to questions asked revealed particular knowledges and spatial perspectives of children’s food experiences. This paper argues that the appearance of certain spaces on the maps caused me to re-evaluate my understanding of the foodscapes at school. This paper concludes by highlighting some of the challenges encountered but argues that the mapping activity provided a wealth of additional information. This paper shows the importance of including children’s perspectives when examining questions of spatiality.     

‘Who likes fish? And I don’t mean fish fingers!’ Taste education,culinary capital,and distinction in a rural middle-class primary school

ABSTRACT

This paper explores how middle-class distinction is produced in a primary school by focusing on four different ‘scenes’. Using Bourdieu’s notion of distinction, this paper shows how children are educated on matters of middle-class taste. I argue that privilege is produced through food education in different formats. This taste education goes beyond what one should merely eat and consume. It is situated within a middle-class nostalgia for rural ‘villageness’. While this type of distinction is not in and of itself problematic, this paper discusses the implications for when these ideas are taken up in policy, and expected of all schools. I argue educators need to be aware of how these values are being rolled out as universal values, expected of schools in diverse areas. Educators should pay attention to how middle-class distinction and privilege is produced and reproduced in schools, in order to create a more inclusive food education.     

Three Stages of a School'S Moral Development

Through alternating waves of popular enthusiasm and disillusionment with formal development programs, the Talmud Torah of St. Paul Day School has persisted in its commitment to moral education. A review of the Day School's own stages of development and the development of its ethics curriculum over the past fifteen years may prove useful to other schools considering a similar commitment.     

EDITOR'S COLUMN

… the forces of corporate culture have adopted a much more radical agenda … . to transform public education from a public good, benefiting all students, to a private good designed to expand the profits of investors, educate students as consumers, and train young people for the low-paying jobs of the new global marketplace. Henry Giroux