'At school prefer cooking class to museum class'

Food For Thought

I fear I am going to vent an "unpopular opinion" here in this piece of prose. You have been warned, dear reader. I was, however, recently strengthened in my opinion because I held a small poll on Twitter about education in the Netherlands. My proposition was: 'At school I prefer cooking lessons to museum lessons. Agree or disagree?

Nearly three-quarters of respondents said they agreed with my fictitious policy measure. Nice! The initial support is there. So we would rather see children among pots and pans and healthy broccoli than among Van Goghs or meaningless "so-called uplifting" sculpture. Well, I know: culture is the lubricant of society. It connects. We feel one when we all look at the Night Watch or listen to a Claudia de Breij song. But what good is it if you walk through the museum gasping for breath with your obese body or can't even sing along to a chorus? Dutch society is rapidly Americanizing and so is all our obesity. 

Of course, I understand that "time" is a crucial factor. Because, where do the already overworked teachers find the time to also teach or organize cooking classes? Indeed, there isn't. That is why education has to make choices: we eliminate irrelevant subjects from the curriculum immediately. Math, language, geography, history and biology remain. Just like gymnastics. But museum lessons can exit. It is no longer a priority. We have to restore the well-being of our present and future society. No Van Gogh fits into that. Or sculpture. Or, Claudia de Breij.

So, we need to do something about that. 

Therefore, if we want to be able to halt rising healthcare costs in the future, we need to tackle this serious problem of obesity at its root. Literally, by the way. As far as I am concerned, we are going to structurally teach children what healthy eating is. And, because (unfortunately) many parents have too busy jobs and therefore experience the microwave quickies in the evening as a great convenience or because many families sometimes literally do not have a euro to dish up a healthy meal for their offspring, this is a clean task for education. We start in the elementary schools. Learned young is done old. For one thing, we all agree that gym class should always be a must. Exercise is healthy! On the other hand, we seem to have forgotten that developing a sensible diet is also necessary for that healthy life. Let's enrich the curriculum with mandatory cooking class. Yes, it is okay to put a little pressure on it. It will empower children. For all I care, we can add a pressure-enhancing CITO nutrition test. But above all, awareness of a healthy lifestyle is growing. And the knowledge of how to make that happen.

Time

Why am I calling all this out in Kitchen Construction? 

Well... just about all kitchen manufacturers own beautiful spaces where euro-spending consumers can attend fun cooking workshops to become even more enthusiastic about their chosen brand. So why not use those spaces to teach kids how to cook AND eat healthy?

It's not down to the equipment. In fact, every manufacturer continuously talks about "convenience and user-friendliness" in their marketing and communications, which is true, by the way! But every manufacturer also talks structurally about sustainability. And that is exactly my point: sustainability also means building a healthy society in as many ways as possible. By giving cooking lessons to children, for example.