tv worth watching...

I am generally not an advocate of TV. I would prefer doing stuff, seeing it happen in my own hands and under my own control to watching it happen on TV. I would rather cook (and eat) than watch cooking on TV. But last night I watched Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution, and I really hope the revolution takes hold in America. You may not have to watch week after week for the same message. A word to the wise might be sufficient. We(as a nation) are unhealthy, obese, we pay too much for health care, and have tragic infant mortality. We are making ourselves sick.

Much of what we witness has to do with the hands. Rather than caring preparation of food to secure the health and well-being of our families and communities, we cheap and quick our way out.

There is a steel wedge in the heart of our educational system. We separate those who plan on college from those who do not. We send some to universities with their hands untrained, lacking the values that hands-on creative engagement provides. The graduates of those universities run companies whose only purpose is to generate huge profits for the few, by exploiting the many whose intellectual education has been neglected. Those college trained professionals often have little understanding of the dignity and value of labor.

When the manual training movement began its work in American education, women were taught the kinds of things that would lead to healthier families, and men were taught skills that would lead to industrial employment. We've taken some steps forward in terms of gender equality, but lost great ground in the health of our nation. No student, male or female should be allowed to graduate from high school or college without the capacity to prepare healthy meals for themselves and their future families. And none should graduate without some participation in skilled, creative labor.