The Use of Food in Early Childhood Learning." (1979)
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University of Massachusetts Amherst ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014 1-1-1979 The seu of food in early childhood learning. Frank Self University of Massachusetts Amherst Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_1 Recommended Citation Self, Frank, "The use of food in early childhood learning." (1979). Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014. 3538. https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_1/3538 This Open Access Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014 by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. For more information, please contact [email protected]. UMASS/AMHERST 31EDtt.0].3S7^Ea3 THE USE OF FOOD IN EARLY CHILDHOOD LEARNING A Dissertation Presented By FRANK SELF Submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Massachusetts in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF EDUCATION February 1979 EDUCATION Frank Self 1978 Rights Reserved THE USE OF FOOD IN EARLY CHILDHOOD LEARNING A Dissertation Presented By FRANK SELF Approved as to style and content by: Ellis 01 im. Chairperson Robert L. Sinclair, Member Q iClO1 Mario Fantini/ Dean School of Education i i i To the children I have known and worked with, and Ludwig van Beethoven, Cornelia Goldsmith, Howard A. Lane, Mary B. Lane, Fran Moultrop, Wolfgang A. Mozart, Charles P. Palmer, Franz Schubert, Robert L. Sinclair. You, above all others, have nourished me. IV ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I wish to thank my students for teaching me, and to thank my teachers for helping me learn. I wish to thank my friends and colleagues at Saint Joseph College, West Hartford, Connecticut: Sister Mary Consol ata O'Connor, RSM, President, for keeping the pressure on; Sister Leo Joseph Divine, RSM, Dean of Graduate Studies, for making it possible for me to teach the graduate courses in food and cooking with children; the other members of the Child Study and Education Department, Joanne Cunard, Harriette Marti re. Sister Fay O'Brien, RSM, and Frank Salamon, for their support and their patience; Sister Fay O'Brien, RSM, for introducing me to the theory of Brian Hall, and Sister Margaret Crowley, RSM, who helped me understand it; Sister Muriel Adams, Librarian, and the entire staff of librarians, for their boundless and untiring assistance and especially Alice Angelo, for always solving my bibliographic problems and other book-related problems impossible for me to classify; and David Zandan, for his help with the video and audio tapes. dissertation committee, I wish to express my appreciation to my Matthews, Ellis 01 im. Chairperson, Robert L. Sinclair, and Gareth B. thanks go to for their invaluable advice and assistance. Special to write on my Ellis 01 im for his early and continued encouragement V experiences with young children and food activities and also for many fine discussions on food, philosophy, and language; to Bob Sinclair, for being hard as nails and forcing me to produce at a level of quality which I did not think I was capable of; and to Gary Matthews, who generously agreed to complete my committee and introduced me to phenomenology and Merleau-Ponty. I also wish to thank the Smith College Child Study Committee; Barbara Fischer and Kent Lewis, Co-Directors of the Smith College Campus School; Stephanie Schamess, Head Teacher, 3-year-old group; and Ann R. Roche, Secretary, for their many efforts— and even willingness to undergo great inconvenience— to enable the field test of the curriculum to be conducted successfully. At the risk of omitting names of people who have been especially helpful, I wish to thank those people who have supported me in my work with food: Katherine Adomeit, Kent Allen, Milton Akers, Ralphaella Banks, Nancy Bazilian, Joan Bergstrom, Alyce W. Bishop, Eva Bishop, Charles Blanchard, Lynn Boettger, Mary Bondarin, Sally and Samuel J. Braun, Florence S. Brown, Mary Ellen Burris, Bertha Campbell, Aria and Alan Capps, MaryLou Cobb, Claire Dalidowitz, Mary Daly, Nancy DeSalvo, Nancy Doernberg, Eloise and Eckler, Carol Ely, Marjorie M. Englert, Susan Farnum, Mary Gross, George Finley, Lorraine French, Mable Goshdigian, Barbara Holbrook, Barbara Hamlin, Hannah Hayman, Faith Hektoen, Pixie A. Jewett, Helen Harriett L. Horrigan, Phyllis H. Jack, Patricia Cornelia and Johnson, Maxine Kamanitsa, Hertha and Edgar Klugman, VI Allen Leitman, Nancy R. Messer, Kay Milling, Rose Mirenda, Jane Mulcahy, Norma L. Newmark, Frances Olson, Evelyn Omwake, Jeanne Quill, Jean Rustic! , Gregory Sacca, Barbara Saalman, Claudia Shuster, Jane S. Stevenson, Dorothy V. Van Buren, Ellen Weil, and Sadie M. Winslow. Ellen Bowman, Madelyn Ratches, Bernice Berman, and Charles Palmer have excellently typed my dissertation proposal and portions of the drafts of the dissertation itself. For the final typing of the dissertation, I am indebted to Bernadette McDonald, whose development in instrumental skills is beautifully revealed in these pages. Invaluable assistance has been provided by Ann Davidoff, who edited the entire final manuscript, and Jeanne Douglas, who proofread the final typescript. I am greatly appreciative of their abilities and concerns. There is one person who stands out from the rest. Fran Moultrop, who had worked with me in the Head Start Regional Training Office for Connecticut and Rhode Island when the activities which are described by this dissertation first germinated, moved in for the final nine weeks of the writing. Typing, discussing, questioning, suggesting, typing, supporting, pushing, came into and more typing — the entire dissertation took shape and happened being through and with her help. It never would have and without her rare combination of instrumental, interpersonal, vii imaginal skills, as well as her skill in adapting to my system of living and creating. Finally, I wish to express my appreciation to Louis Fischer, who was for many years my pivot of sanity, scholarship, and hope at the School of Education, University of Massachusetts. Without his permissive leadership I would not be this close to getting my degree. viii ABSTRACT The Use of Food in Early Childhood Learning December 1978 Frank Self, B.A., San Francisco State College Ed.D., University of Massachusetts Directed by: Professor Ellis 01 im Technology, large scale production, transportation, and the rise of affluence have enabled society to become consumers almost to the exclusion of our being creators and producers for our own and others' well-being. This emphasis on purchasing ready-made products is systemic in our society. The entire educational system is a part of and a contributor to the consumer society. Instructional systems originate apart from the school and, in prepackaged form, are offered to the children. Development is assumed to be alloplastic. Instruction and learning are conceived of as largely verbal in nature. All too often, activity by children is viewed as the means of expending "surplus energy" or as the means of teaching ideas important to subject matter disciplines. As a consequence, school is usually indifferent or hostile toward the subjective and phenomenological existence of children or, at best, provides only perfunctory support for children's needs and concerns with development, autonomy, creativity, and community. IX This study has attempted to accomplish two major objectives. The first is the formulation of a theoretical foundation for a phenomonological and experiential curriculum which focuses on the child and the central aspects of teaching and learning. Activity, perception, and experiences are viewed as central and intrinsic to the child's physical, cognitive, imaginal, and social being and to the child's world. Implicit and explicit in the theoretical foundation are the child's autoplastic development, the concept that the child's development of learning and capability takes place through the child's own actions, initiative, and perception, and that the child is intrinsically motivated toward self- actualization. The second major objective is the creation of a curriculum, a structured series of intended learning outcomes, which is based directly on the theoretical foundation. The curriculum is for children ages 3 through 8 and concerns activities with food and cooking. Such a curriculum is ideal for promoting holistic education, creative learning, and development. Indeed, this curriculum promotes autonomy, creativity, and development in both students and teachers. Beginning with the environment for learning and the role of the teacher as instructor, the curriculum is presented in four with sections: (a) activities with raw foods, (b) activities without processed foods, (c) cooking with recipes, and (d) cooking comments, recipes. In each section is the following: (a) some objectives. including rationale, selection, and use, (b) learning X (c) set-up of the classroom, (d) tools and equipment, and (e) some examples of activities. Feedback and evaluation are discussed and examples of possible instructional activities are provided. The aims of the curriculum are for the child to attain the following: (a) curiosity and delight in direct and active exploration and observation of foods and involvement with foods, (b) curiosity and willingness to risk extending beyond the familiar to the unfamiliar, (c) openness to make physical changes and alertness in observation of those changes, (d) trust and confidence in developing