Emma Goldman said that she wanted no part of any
revolution unless it included dancing. That’s good, but better yet is
Alice Waters’ idea that a revolution should be
“delicious.”
Waters — who is both a fabulous chef and a
pioneer leader of America’s sustainable-food movement —
believes deeply in the transformative power of having our communities grow,
cook, and share good meals. So she has launched what literally will be a
delicious revolution, focusing it squarely on America’s future
leaders: schoolchildren.
Ten years ago, Waters led an effort to establish what
she calls the “Edible Schoolyard” at Martin Luther King Jr.
Middle School in Berkeley, Calif., where she has her home and restaurant.
Rather than a burger-and-soda lunch, MLK’s 900-or-so students now
draw meals, lessons, and values from a one-acre schoolyard garden that they
pitch in to till, plant, maintain, and harvest. They also help prepare and
serve the food in the school cafeteria, enjoying the bounty of their own
efforts.
Not only do the children get meals that truly are good
and good for them, but they also absorb more from the garden and kitchen
about biology, health, the environment, science, history, geography,
stewardship, cooperation, and community than they can possibly glean from
textbooks and sterile classrooms.
This Edible Schoolyard has been such a success that
Waters and Berkeley’s school board are expanding it to all of the
city’s 16 public schools. But their revolution involves more than a
garden in every schoolyard: They are making lunch an academic subject,
integrating the entire food experience into lesson plans from K-12, thus
providing rich nourishment not only for children’s bodies but for
their minds and souls as well. Edible education, they call it.
For more information, call the Chez Panisse Foundation
at 510-843-3811.
This article appears in Aug 11-17, 2005.
