About the only thing I learned in the cooking part of my class in 8th grade--which had in a prior generation been called "home ec" and "shop" but was now "life skills" and "industrial arts"--was that everything I made myself tasted better than anything that came out of the school cafeteria's kitchen.
The part about putting the fork on the left and the knife (blade facing the plate) and spoon on the right was useless filler. When they added in salad forks and dessert spoons, I really had to wonder how many rich people just got tired of screaming at their servants for putting the soup spoon where the dinner spoon should go. A practical class would have graded us on our use of chopsticks, instead of the correct placement of the asparagus-tickler for a 15-course banquet.
They never taught us about peanut-butter burritos that require no cooking, water, or refrigeration--great for when you have no utilities turned on. They never mentioned the magical amino-acid balance of beans-rice-corn or ordinary potato, for when you can't afford actual meat. They certainly didn't say anything about the locked trash containers behind the grocery store or haggling over the coupon policy. They didn't go into any detail about how the remains of one meal can be used to stretch the next. That would have been useful stuff to learn for the bottom economic quintile we were to be dumped into after high-school graduation.
My own kids don't even have it as an elective. Future food comes from a box or a vending machine. I suspect that the last master chefs will be programming DLC modules for all the auto-cook robots.
The part about putting the fork on the left and the knife (blade facing the plate) and spoon on the right was useless filler. When they added in salad forks and dessert spoons, I really had to wonder how many rich people just got tired of screaming at their servants for putting the soup spoon where the dinner spoon should go. A practical class would have graded us on our use of chopsticks, instead of the correct placement of the asparagus-tickler for a 15-course banquet.
They never taught us about peanut-butter burritos that require no cooking, water, or refrigeration--great for when you have no utilities turned on. They never mentioned the magical amino-acid balance of beans-rice-corn or ordinary potato, for when you can't afford actual meat. They certainly didn't say anything about the locked trash containers behind the grocery store or haggling over the coupon policy. They didn't go into any detail about how the remains of one meal can be used to stretch the next. That would have been useful stuff to learn for the bottom economic quintile we were to be dumped into after high-school graduation.
My own kids don't even have it as an elective. Future food comes from a box or a vending machine. I suspect that the last master chefs will be programming DLC modules for all the auto-cook robots.