Final School Day 2009 - Ideas for 2009-2010

Ideas from different sections on topics/aspects-of-life/issues that would be good to explore using some of the skills and techniques we've developed in the last year.

Internet & Identity
Open discussions - Getting out of classroom
Masks - Projects - Online aspects
World of Lies - How do we know what is true? What do we do with lies we've seen through?
Self/Society
Perceptions of others - social roles
Collapse Pt 2
Our rights - rights - gay rights
What is a genuine person? Masks?

Conformity Unknowingly
Life itself
Living in the U.S. - our advantages
Education & Schooling
Historical Perspective on Preferences and how they change and how they ultimately appear insignificant (dress, music, etc)
Collapse Pt 2
Personal Health & Feelings
Personal Experiences
What is Meaningful? Outside and real life are better places to ask than the classroom
Music
Hidden messages of ads
Life is a big lie
Virtual Worlds
At home environments
Reading Techniques
Life is a game? Why is this perspective so common?

School
Animal Cruelty
Manufacturing
Religion
Marketing & Advertising
American Dream
Ocean Life (Sardines)
Sex
Race & Culture
Double Standards & Misogyny & Sex
Hip Hop
Life is a game
Technology
Fashion
Touching & Feelings
Listening & Communication
Music
Celebrity & Fame
Trends, Fads, & Conformity
Acceptability of Queerness
Public Transportation
Sex After Prom

American Way of Music
Education
Media & Advertising
Sleep
Critiques of Socialism
Sports
Clothing companies
Transportation
Crime & Punishment
Justice
News - Free Press?
Communication & Expressing Thoughts
Literature
Sex
Hands-on - Outside classroom world - reduce length of units

Bold indicates topics I can easily imagine building enjoyable and powerful units from.

Comments

Ali Jo,

Thanks for posting this debate. This is one of the cool possibilities that the blog format opens up, but you're one of the first to use it.

I think Omnivore's Dilemma will also inform the debate. I guess I have just 3 contributions to make;

1. You have to decide if you are arguing on "natural" or on "moral". You seem to go back and forth. The anthropological stuff I've seen shows that most human food is plant food but that most cultures (including indigenous cultures like Australian aborigines, Calusa in Florida, and !Kung in Africa) also highly value animal flesh. Like you say, just because lots of humans do it, and other animals also do, doesn't mean its right. But it does seem hard to argue that it isn't natural.

2. I agree with your distrust of overconsumption of soy. This year I quit being a vegan (after 15 years) partly around this. Rather than soy-yogurt 3-4x a week it seemed better to do pasture raised goat yogurt.

3. I think the strongest arguments in favor of vegetarianism/veganism are a) health - vegetarians live longer and healthier on average. You can see this, perhaps, in your own experience. But I don't think this argument can overcome Dylan's point about eating occasional and decently-raised animal food. The second major argument in favor of veganism (and less so in vegetarianism) is the non-exploitation argument - slavery is wrong and enslaving other animals to serve as food sources is morally dubious - perhaps even when the slaves are treated relatively well.

This was the main reason I became vegan - I saw it as a daily practice of resisting a culture that is based fundamentally on domination of the weak by the strong.

The argument can be nuanced though - are clams also exploited - are they really qualitatively more "there and aware" than a sunflower? If there are ways of eating that are more ecologically sustainable (pasture raised eggs, goat yogurt, perhaps even chicken flesh, beef) and more ecologically beautiful (wild honey versus sugar cane monocultures) what should our priorities be?

Food #6 - Response to Pollan

For this assignment please respond briefly to Michael Pollan's argument, in the first few pages of Omnivore's Dilemma, that we as a culture lack a stable food culture like the Italians or French, are obsessed with health, are confused and anxious about food, and therefore easily succumb to various expert-directed food fads.

What food experts do you and your family pay attention to - scientists, journalists, chefs, commercials on tv, doctors, nutritionists, health officials, book authors?

I find Michael Pollan's argument that much of the US lacks a stable food culture to be overstated. Certainly it is true that there are fads (Atkins diets), "trendy foods" (acai), and a superficiality of everday eating. But, on the one hand, isn't this precisely a sort of food culture with an emphasis on the "new"? And on the other hand isn't much of US food culture pretty stable - burger joints, french fries, pizzas, sodas? And on the 3rd paw doesn't Pollan's argument mainly apply to a selective-college-educated segment of the population who actually cares what the scientists are currently recommending while most of the continent continues crunching Cheez-Doodles?

It does, however (final paw), apply to me. I read books about food (including a lot before and a few after Pollan's) and think about different ways of eating (I've read manifestos and had conversations with friends who advocated vegan, vegetarian, paleolithic, sustainable, freegan, and raw diets). I switched to grapeseed and olive and flax and coconut oils at different times on being told by "experts" that one or the other were healthier (now a mix of all them). I was vegan for 16 years - largely based on the arguments and insights of anti-cruelty and anti-exploitation food philosophers - and recently added pasture raised eggs and pasture raised goat yogurt on the arguments of the sustainability philosophers (Gene Logsdon, Michael Pollan, a few others) and my experience seeing animals raised humanely at a commune in Virginia. I've been eating a lot of flax seed and DHA on reading that it might be a particular health issue for vegans and think I even see a benefit from it.

So I would have to say that I lack a stable food culture - that the corporate food culture I grew up in is insane and that abandoning it was crucial to my health - and that I don't miss it at all. When Catherine DeLaura tried to hold faculty dinners at places like "The Olive Garden" and "Outback Steakhouse" I never went.

Grocery Store and Habitual Food

Please write a post about how your family uses grocery stores and the variety of vegetables, fruits, roots, grains, and nuts that you eat in a typical week.

You should include your insights about how grocery stores "push" particular types of products, how you learned (or didn't) to eat a variety of foods, and information about your favorite meals and habitual diet pattern.

In our class exercise I counted approximately 45 vegetables, fruits, grains, nuts, and roots that I eat in a typical week. My favorites include arugula, broccoli raab, blueberries, acai, and quinoa. I'm able to buy most of these foods organically at the Park Slope Food Coop. Luckily, our food coop doesn't work the same way as most corporate grocery stores - it doesn't "push" chips and other unhealthy foods - it does provide a lot of organic/local/healthy foods at relatively low prices.

I didn't start out eating such a wide variety of foods. My childhood, as I discussed in an earlier post, was a typical American one. I ate meat and white bread sandwiches with mayonnaise and no vegetables. I remember consciously learning to eat tomatos and lettuce with the help of the McDonald's McDLT, around 12 or 13. When I decided to become vegetarian at the age of 15/16 I had to build my repertoire of foods because my main foods at that time were still meat sandwiches plus pizza and clam chowder from a can. I built my reportoire slowly - gradually eliminating meat (first hamburgers, then hotdogs, then beef in general, etc.) and gradually adding other foods (tofu, soy milk, more broccoli, etc.). By the time I got to college I was vegetarian and ate things like tofu sandwiches, apple-pie, baked potatos (got one version from The Secret Garden and invented another - baked potatos with fresh orange juice and tamari sauce), drank carrot juice, and enjoyed vegetarian chili (pre-made). In other words I was eating a lot the same way, but with different, plant-based ingredients.

I think my number of 45 would have been around 30 before I became a member of the food coop on moving to NYC. It seems that my taste-buds have changed - I can remember eating arugula in a salad during my college years and being surprised that people would eat it on purpose. And this wider variety of foods is much more accessible to me now.

May Day Response

In a previous life as a grassroots activist I used to feel strongly about May Day - the international day of resistance to capitalist domination. I was caught up in the feelings about it, the struggle over it, the united workers and the greedy bosses, brave anarchists and the oppressive state, the collusion of the liberals, the poignancy of today's ignorance, etc.

Today I still feel all that, but less strongly. Today I feel more descriptive about May Day, more like, "May Day has been hidden - what does that reveal?" Before I felt completely outraged by the fact that May 1 is now officially "Law and Loyalty Day" (since Eisenhower) in the U.S. Now I see the outrageousness of that but also how that fits the bigger pattern of bumbling and blatant oppression structures in the U.S. and that even resistance to May Day being "Law Day" tends to exhibit a certain cartoonishness that I also see as also typical of the American mentality.

24 Hour Food Journal

Woke up and drank a glass of filtered water. I usually do this while looking out the window and sitting on the couch.

Made a smoothie - almonds/flax-seed/banana/strawberries. Drank a glass of that. I often drink that while checking email and the weather before going to work.

Ate a blood orange there and drank water. Ate a prepared vegan burrito while teaching - I don't notice the flavor that much and I felt heavier and not-hungry. Those burritos are 500 calories and a lot of that is palm fat, which sits heavy in the stomach.

Didn't eat more at lunch because I was going swimming later in the day and didn't want to have more food sloshing in my belly. I did drink another 3 glasses or so of filtered water from my steel canister. When I got home after swimming I made a quick couple open faced sandwiches with arugula, vegan mayonnaise, organic whole grain bread, and tofu. I ate that quickly because I was hungry and I needed to prepare some food for my friend Heather to take to work with her for her overnight shift.

I walked her to the train and then ended up taking the subway to our community garden to make sure the little sprouts didn't die for lack of water. Talked to a couple people there so when I got home I was real hungry again. Made a salad of arugula, lettuce, tomatos, and a pasture-raised egg, with some flax-seed oil and white wine vinegar. I ate that while sitting on the couch by myself and looking out the window. I felt good doing that, since it was healthy food and I was in no hurry and didn't have to be interacting with anyone or with electronics. I had a glass of water a half hour later.

Later I ate a couple sandwiches of vegan sausage, mayonaise, tomatos, and arugula while sitting at the computer. For about a year or more I was good about paying attention to my food and not reading or web browsing while eating, but I have backslid in the last year. The food was good but I mostly was unaware of it while I plotted strategy for reforming the coop building where I live.

Around 9:30pm I had another glass of the morning's smoothie.

Around 10pm I made a dessert of some of the chocoloate birthday cake I'd made for Heather plus some pasture-raised goat milk yogurt, plus some bilberry jam. That tasted pretty good and I felt full but not stuffed.

This morning when I woke up I had my glass of water and made a smoothie - same almond, flax, banana, water blend but this time frozen acai, acerola, and wild blueberries as the flavor. And after I'd filled my steel canister with some filtered water and threw an orange in my backpack I was on my way to work.

All of the above food was from the Park Slope Food Coop and 98% of it is organic. I'm still vegetarian after all these years but not vegan at home, since this winter, after 16 year of being vegan. I am now willing to buy eggs and yogurt at the food coop as long as the animals are allowed to run around in a pasture and aren't given hormones and unnecessary antibiotics, etc. I still eat vegan for most of the day, and when I'm at restaurants because of habit and because I don't want to buy or consume the products of cruelty to animals.

Family Eating Versus Dominant Corporate Eating Versus My Eating

I grew up in a white upper-middle class family in a town in SW Florida. Upper class in the sense of having more income than 90% of Americans and 98% of the world, but middle class class since my father still had to work, we were regularly made fearful of bankruptcy, and we were "normal" Americans - played baseball and watched TV rather than polo and vacations to Zurich.

Our family's foodways seem typical of dominant corporate white food culture. We ate a lot of fast food from McDonalds and Wendy's and Taco Bell and Pizza Hut. For a while my grandparents even tried to supplement their retirement as owners of a Burger Queen franchise. Since you don't see those around anymore you can guess how that turned out for them. When we ate at home it tended to be fast too. I must have eaten several thousand sandwiches of sliced ham or roast beef from the supermarket, some mayonaisse, and a little salt, or maybe an egg salad sandwich - same ingredients but boiled egg instead of meat. I remember feeling like people who made bologna sandwiches from brand name bologna were poorer than us. I also ate a lot of ice cream, yogurt, and cereal. I don't remember us making food for each other, even though there were 5 kids.

My mother cooked once every week or two - usually boiled white spaghetti, browned meat with bottled pasta sauce dumped over it. Sometimes similar ingredients but instead of red sauce and white sauce and some onion - which made it stroganoff. My father cooked once or twice a month - but pretty much never in the kitchen - he would use the grill outside to broil steaks, hamburgers, or hot dogs as befits a man. We generally ate on our own - sitting on the couch watching TV shows like Star Trek or MacGyver. The occasional "family dinner" around the dinner table I remember as having lasted too long when they lasted more than 10 minutes and often leading to arguments.

I remember one effort my mom made for a couple weeks - she bought a wok and tried to get us to eat stir-fries and eat together regularly at the table. We hated it and she gave it up pretty quickly.

Today I eat differently from corporate dominant white culture. I often make food for my partner and eat together. I've been vegetarian for 18 years. We buy our food from a food coop which carries a lot of organic and local food. I eat more fruits (4-5 servings a day) and vegetables (4-5 servings a day). We drink a smoothie in the morning and usually eat a salad in the evening along with our other meals.

I can still see some vestiges of my old habits - I still eat sandwiches quite a bit, generally cook single pot meals rather than elaborate multi-course meals, and don't enjoy sitting at a table.

Internet Research 1

What are some of the obvious food choices people could make that would help them live better more meaningful lives? How many people would benefit from these changes?

• Rates of Obesity: Approximately 28% as a nation - with a particularly appalling animated map here.
• Death by Red Meat - According to the NYT - approximately 1,500,000 suffer death each year as a result of high red meat consumption.
• Vegetarians Live Longer - According to an article from an Australian Newspaper long-term vegetarians live, on average, almost 4 years longer than people who were vegetarian for a short time.

Refrigerator Assignment

Door - Top Shelf:

Refrigerator List:
Organic Bilberry Jam
Organic Flax Seeds
Organic Flax Seed Oil
Wild 'Sustainable' Palm Hearts
Organic Vegan Apple Sausage
Organic Italian Tomato Paste
Natural Red Wine
Vitamin B12 - Liquid
Organic Fair Trade Dark Chocolate
Organic Avocado