Food System Education Among High School Students

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Food System Education Among High School Students University of New Hampshire University of New Hampshire Scholars' Repository Honors Theses and Capstones Student Scholarship Spring 2016 Food System Education Among High School Students Yussra MT Ebrahim University of New Hampshire, Durham Follow this and additional works at: https://scholars.unh.edu/honors Part of the Agricultural Education Commons Recommended Citation Ebrahim, Yussra MT, "Food System Education Among High School Students" (2016). Honors Theses and Capstones. 305. https://scholars.unh.edu/honors/305 This Senior Honors Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Student Scholarship at University of New Hampshire Scholars' Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Honors Theses and Capstones by an authorized administrator of University of New Hampshire Scholars' Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Yussra 1 Food System Education Among High School Students Senior Thesis in Sustainable Agriculture and Food Systems Advisors: Professors Jessica Bolker and Carrie Hall Yussra Mohammed Taha Ebrahim Fall 2015 - Spring 2016 :o) Introduction “What I learned about food in school is surprisingly little.” Until I got to college and majored in it. These words are scrawled onto one of the thirty or so post-its marking a passage in my copy of Carlo Petrini’s movement-inspiring book “Slow Food Nation.” Throughout my degree program in sustainable agriculture and food systems, I have found myself walking from class to class in astonishment at my own ignorance. How did I not know? How did they let me graduate high school without knowing, how did they let me loose into society without teaching me first this most basic, most relevant, most crucial of information? How could they waste my time like this? In her passionate book about reconnecting with food, Barbara Kingsolver writes, “Most people of my grandparents’ generation had an intuitive sense of agricultural basics… This knowledge has vanished from our culture.” 1 Michael Pollan’s evaluation of our culture’s current relationship with food is as follows: “… I contend that most of what we’re consuming today is no longer, strictly speaking, food at all, and how we’re consuming it… is not really eating, at least not in the sense that civilization has long understood the term.”2 There is an obvious unnatural disconnect today, for the first time in human history, between producers and consumers. “It’s good enough for us that somebody, somewhere, knows food production well enough to serve the rest of us with all we need to eat, each day of our lives,” writes Yussra 2 Kingsolver.1 She goes on to criticize our school systems for prioritizing our knowledge of colonial history over our knowledge of food, lamenting her city friends’ lack of awareness that potatoes “have a plant part” and carrots come from the ground.1 But she does not blame them for what they were never taught, what never used to have to be taught, and neither would Petrini; he too turns to the education system for answers: “The failure of schools to teach children about pleasure, gastronomy, food processing, the basics of agriculture, and the nutritional culture that is part of their identity is nothing short of scandalous.” 3 * I’m no farm girl, but I knew before my high school graduation that food grows out of soil. What I didn’t know about were the numerous complex scientific, societal, and ethical controversies regarding modern food production. Although many people no longer produce their own food, our education system has not been revised to fit this new reality. Students spend thirteen years in public schooling, yet often graduate high school, like me, without an awareness of the processes involved in producing the food they eat every day. The urgency of this pedagogical shortcoming is evident in the fact that, as students become consumers, they make decisions that impact production with each purchase. Considering their lack of knowledge on food production, what motivates these decisions? Unsurprisingly, one major factor is money; most Americans purchase the cheapest food options, regardless of how they were produced. 4 On the other hand, consumers who do avoid purchasing certain products, such as those containing GMOs, might do so for the wrong reasons; unfortunately, Americans’ distrust of GMOs is often founded on ignorance.4 There are those who do not appreciate that caution must be taken with genetic modification, and Yussra 3 there are those who overemphasize caution without correctly identifying the risks. To make educated decisions, consumers must be informed that the major concern with genetic modification is in the environmental imbalances it creates rather than the personal health risks it poses. But this distinction, being steeped in genetics, nutritional biochemistry, and agroecology, is so rarely made in public discourse--especially considering the fact that the GMO debate is riddled with the more easily accessible emotional arguments for and against, which are in turn used by corporations and politicians alike to manipulate the masses. Of course, genetic modification is just one example of a modern food production controversy, but it might be the most notable. On top of the fact that consumers today have been separated from food production processes, these processes have also become increasingly complicated, thereby requiring a stronger science background to be properly understood. Without such a background, consumers will continue to make decisions based on uninformed opinions and be at the mercy of manipulative media put forth by stakeholders with an agenda. This exploitation of ignorance is carried out by supporters of every stance taken on every controversial food production debate. As food production is no longer a requirement for the livelihood of the average American, as food production today can be rather complex, and as manipulative forces are readily lurking, food system education is a crucial part of the development of a conscientious society. This is what I fight for. In designing this study, I sought to discover how much high school students know about where their food comes from. I hypothesized that since food system education is Yussra 4 typically not even offered as an elective course at the high school level, many students are unaware of the controversial ways in which the food they eat is produced. “Nothing short of scandalous” indeed. Methods The study consists of an online pre-survey, an interactive presentation, and an in-class post-survey. A comparison of the data of the pre-survey to those of the post-survey can determine the effectiveness of a single lesson on food systems. Ultimately, given that my hypothesis is supported, the results of the study can be used to argue for the incorporation of an entire course consisting of such lessons into the general high school curriculum. In order to determine high school students’ educational background in food systems, I designed the survey to consist of the following types of questions… ● Questions meant to explore students’ familiarity and experience with various topics relating to food systems. ● Questions that test students’ knowledge on controversial food production methods. ● Questions asking students about their attitudes toward these controversies. See Figure 1 for an example of a survey question, and refer to the end of this thesis to read the full survey, which consists of 14 questions. Yussra 5 Figure 1: An example of one of the survey questions asked. The survey was given to two classes of sophomore biology students, a regular level class and a college preparatory class, at Portsmouth High School. It should be noted that the sample is not necessarily representative of the average American high school population. Portsmouth High School is a suburban public school. About 90% of the students are white, and about 80% are wealthy enough to be considered ineligible for free or reduced-price lunches.5 Additionally, the graduation rate is over 90%, and almost a third of PHS seniors take at least one Advanced Placement exam at some point in their high school career. 5 Overall, the sample population is a rather privileged one. 28 students took the online pre-survey, which was hosted by Qualtrics; 39 students took the in-class post-survey that followed the presentation given and the class discussion facilitated as part of the study. The interactive presentation, which took the form of a class discussion, consisted of visually intriguing slides designed to make students think (see Figure 2). Yussra 6 Figure 2: A few of the slides from the presentation. Yussra 7 Students were encouraged to ask questions and share their opinions with the class throughout the presentation, which covered both the societal and the scientific aspects of various food production controversies. Topics covered include… ● The Importance of Food System Awareness and Education ● Government Subsidies and Lobbying ● Monoculture, Polyculture, and Agroecology ● Natural Selection and the Different Levels of Artificial Selection ● The Pros, the Cons, and the Controversies of Genetically Modified Crops ● Food Labeling ● Alternatives to Conventionally Produced Food Crucial food system topics not covered (due to time limitations) include… ● Obesity ● Food Insecurity ● The Treatment of Workers ● Factory Farming and Animal Welfare ● Environmental Concerns and Global Climate Change Results Section 1 - Main Findings Most high school students did not know what GMOs are. Additionally, although most of the students
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