In this video you will learn, as part of your Ayurveda daily morning routine how to pull oil and how to make a wonderful tea that will detox your body and therefore your entire body. (By the way, most good dentists would nowadays recommend their patients to pull oil on a daily basis).
Category Archives: Education
Ayurveda – detoxification
The first thing I did once I had read up on the subject of Ayurveda (see book recommendations in my last post) was to detoxify my body. I was keen to see if the Ayurvedic principles would work and, if they did, whether I would actually feel physically and mentally healthier. I was convinced by the argument that we are constantly putting toxic substances into our body on a daily basis: animal fats, pesticides and antibiotics, genetically modified produce, alcohol, coffee along with unhealthy bacteria in our water and air. Our bodies are sophisticated enough to adapt to the absorption and partial excretion of all these poisons to the point where we often don’t even notice any obvious effects from them. In reality, however, they all affect every person in different ways, be it in our sleep patterns, digestive disorders, inflammation, infections, mental sluggishness, mood swings and as the nefarious root of diseases such as arthritis, diabetes and cancer.
So I began with an ayurvedan three-stage detoxification process that starts from the moment you wake up until the moment you fall asleep. The three stages build slowly so that you have time to adjust your lifestyle and to incorporate new rituals into your daily routine.
Phase One
So let’s begin by taking a look at the best way to start your day during your first attempt at the first stage of detoxification:
- When you wake up, try to recall any significant dreams and begin your day with an attitude of gratitude for your sleep, health and the start of a new day. Stretching a litte is good too.
- Then go into the bathroom, evacuate as necessary and splash some cold or lukewarm water on your face. Better still, gently wipe your eyes with some pure rose water.
- From there you should go to your kitchen and drink 2-3 glasses of warm water, ideally with some freshly squeezed lemon juice, in order to activate your digestive system and re-hydrate your body after sleeping. You can at this point take any nutritional supplements you require and include the Ayurvedic herb TRIPHALA that can be bought in capsule form.
- In addition to TRIPHALA, which really promotes the detoxification process in your body, you should also make some “CCF” tea that you can pour into a thermos flask and drink throughout the day. This tea has a wonderfully detoxifying effect on your system. “CCF” stands for coriander, cumin and fennel. You simply put a small tea spoon of each of these spices into 1 litre of water and allow it to simmer for about 10 minutes. I also add some slices of fresh ginger and a tea spoon of fenugreek because of their additional flavour and health benefits.
- You should then pull oil. For me this took some getting used to, since I do not like the consistency of oil on my hands or in my mouth. But it is worth overcoming your issues. Pulling oil involves putting about a tablespoon of either sesame or coconut oil in your mouth and swilling it around, rather like you might do with a mouth wash, for 10 – 30 minutes. While you are doing this, you can be tidying up, preparing your breakfast, making your CCF tea, planning your day or whatever, so there is no time wasted. You should spit the oil out in the bin and not down the sink.
- Next, it’s back to your bathroom in order to scrape your tongue with a tongue scraper and then your brush your teeth. Oil pulling, tongue-scraping and brushing your teeth will help to get rid of all the toxins that have built up during the night, leave your breath smelling sweet and your teeth feeling as if you have just had a professional teeth polishing by your dentist. (By the way, as any good dentist will tell you, you should not clean your teeth for at least half an hour after your breakfast or any meal, otherwise you are actually brushing any residual sugars and food stains into the enamel of your teeth!)
- In Ayurveda, you get to enjoy two extremely healthy and detoxing breakfasts, if you have time. First, it is great to start with some fruit, for example, banana, kiwi, orange, mango, apple or berries. You should allow your body 20 – 30 minutes to digest these before eating your main breakfast. So this is the perfect time to have a shower and so on. Or you could use this time for meditation or yoga (more on these two subjects in a later blog).
- Before you shower, if you have time, spoil your body with a dry brush massage before you shower. This not only feels fantastic, but it also exfoliates dead skin that includes some of the toxins that are being excreted by the largest organ of your body. It can also help against the formation of cellulite and it moves toxins that have gathered in your body by “pushing” them towards your lymph nodes that vitally support your immune system. Concluding your shower with cold water is also medically proven to strengthen your immune system.
- After your shower, if you have time, massage your body with an appropriate oil, moisturising cream or body butter in order to feed and hydrate your clean skin.
To begin with, this whole process seems to take way too long, but after a few weeks, you will find ways to speed the process up and, as I said, to do two things at once. Furthermore, you will not only begin to feel so much better that your newfound wellness encourages you to invest the time, but you will also have more energy and be more efficient during your day, easily regaining the time you have invested in the morning.
For me, there were also several other very important consequences of incorporating these ayurvedic routines into my daily life, but more about those in a later blog.
Personifying Anxiety
In the last few weeks I have started using the Calm app in order to meditate. I can recommend it for anyone who is looking for guided meditation. I’m very new to mediation, though, and got into it as part of enjoying the Ayurveda way of life in recent months. When I used to pray, the focus was always either on worshipping God or praying for other people. In meditation, you get to focus on yourself, not just out of selfishness, but also with the aim of being in a better place to serve others.
This morning, the app’s very gifted Canadian main author and speaker, Tamara Levitt, encouraged what was effectively the personification of anxiety.
While I was sitting in a quiet place, first focussing on my breathing, she then encouraged me to think about a situation that causes me fear and anxiety. She prompted me to locate where in my body I could feel this anxiety, physically manifested, as it were. Once I had found it (it could be in your jaw, forehead, chest or gut, for example), I was encouraged to describe for myself its size, its shape, its colour, its intensity and so on. That’s why I’m calling it personification. I acknowledged it without judging it, giving it space and room to manifest itself as a genuine concern in my life – yet all the time aware that my anxious thoughts do not necessarily correspond to reality. I spoke to my anxiety, giving it genuine recognition, saying that I would address it at a future moment, but for now letting it drift away, like the leaves floating leaves on a nearby stream. At the end of just ten minutes, I felt so much more peaceful and even assured that the challenging situation I had been thinking about would one day be resolved. If there is one certainty about any situation in life, it is that it will not stay the same.
A clearer head left me better equipped to start work … at least until a different kind of anxious thought came into my head that would not leave me alone. Hence today’s unplanned blog.
I am referring to the battle raging between Jews and Muslims in Palestine and Israel as I write. I can’t stop placing myself in the minds of my fellow human beings who are living in an overwhelming fear of death. Back in 1997 I spent the night in Belfast and a bomb went off at the end of the road where my hotel was situated. Before the flight home, we all had to get off the plane and identify our suitcases that had been removed from the hold before we could take off because they suspected that we had a bomb on board. The tangible and unforgettable fear I experienced was existentially unsettling in a scary, new way for me, but it was nothing in comparison to what the people in Palestine and Israel must be experiencing right now, especially the children, elderly and infirm.
I’m tempted to take sides at this point, but that won’t help. You can guess what I think anyways. Plus the fact that we don’t have much of a right to say anything, since our countries are benefitting from the enormous wealth we have made by selling Israel and Palestine the weapons they are using to annihilate one another. What we can say, however, is that these war crimes, ethnic cleansing and genocide are being perpetrated because of the revolting and fatal division created by religion, or belief in a different, superior God. How many lives and despicable tortures would never have taken place, if , instead of a primitive, selfish belief in a non-existent God, human beings recognised their beauty, complexity and racial unity with one another and the universe. Even or especially when wrongful political decisions are made.
“If there is an omnipotent God – in the sense of a Creator of the universe, then he / she / they must surely be capable of communicating in a credible and unambiguous way with the entire human race. The absence of this reality, together with the culturally and geographically different accounts of who God is, is ultimately evidence that God is a human creation, invented in order to to justify oligarchical laws and to promulgate tribal superiority. The concomitant racial hatred results in division, untold suffering and unnecessary death.” Beyond Redemption – a shorty story by Nigel Dutton
This religious division does not start at the national or inter-faith level, but already within one and the same faith and ultimately in individual human hearts. When I was a member of the Newfrontiers sect, our church was invited to join in on certain ecumenical activities promoted by the Roman Catholic and Anglican churches across our town. Our church never joined in on the basis that we could not possibly be united with churches that did not believe the gospel and preach the Bible. My former mentor and pastor, whom I still fondly respect and admire, would say to me and even to the other church leaders, “Why would I want to put my race horse (referring to his church) along side your cart horses (referring to their churches)?” If such theological arrogance can exist within one faith, it becomes easier to understand how divisive fanaticism caused by such hateful division between different religions can lead to the appalling suffering that it happening right at this moment between Muslim human beings and Jewish human beings who live in the same street.
Faith really is, as Nietzsche said, a refusal to believe what is true. My hope and intention is that, as the world becomes more enlightened, religious differences might one day be put aside and that people will look first and foremost to the miracles that unite them.
I’ll end with probably one of the deepest lyrics on this subject ever written:
But if you only have love for your own race
Then you only leave space to discriminate
And to discriminate only generates hate
And when you hate then you’re bound to get irate, yeah
Madness is what you demonstrate
And that’s exactly how anger works and operates
Man, you gotta have love just to set it straight
Take control of your mind and meditate
Let your soul gravitate to the love, y’all, y’all
Black Eyed Peas
Post scriptum: today is Ascension Day, a day on which we remember that the resurrected Jesus Christ ascended into heaven in bodily form and now sits, still in his resurrected, new-order, imperishable human body on the throne of eternal heaven, ruling the world and the universe and sovereign over the control of the thoughts and actions of every single (even unborn) child, man and woman.
I think Nietzsche can probably rest his case.
Choose vegan: Update #3
Spanish “vegan” salad
I’ve just got back from a wonderful two weeks in Spain (Andalusia). It is so easy to relax there and I love everything about it: the people, the weather, the language, the culture, the music, the sea and the food. And they never seem to go to bed, not even families with young children. Ernest Hemingway wrote: “There is no night life in Spain. They stay up late but they get up late. That is not night life. That is delaying the day.”
Being a vegan in Spain was much harder than in Berlin. In fact, I failed to keep going. I had lunch on my first day in a chiringuito overlooking the Mediterranean. I asked the waiter for a vegan salad. He looked puzzled and asked for confirmation. “Just salad, please,” I explained, “maybe some tomato, cucumber, peppers and lettuce – nothing that has come from an animal.”
“Sí, señor,” he replied confidently as he went away to place my order with the kitchen. About ten minutes later, my vegan salad arrived (see photo above) complete with a mound of tuna fish and sliced egg.
I had a similar experience in the shops and supermarkets. It was so much more difficult to find almond milk or soya yoghurt and although I managed to buy some tofu, I could not find any seitan or tempeh.
There is a paradox here somewhere. It is currently harder to live a plant-based life in Spain where there is an abundance of fresh fruit and vegetables than it is in Germany where there is an abundance of meat and where we import so much of our fruit and vegetables from Spain. How can this be? Why is that veganism, rather like buying organic produce, is a privilege of the stronger economy?
Leaving the politics, power and lobbying of the meat and dairy industry to one side, I can only assume that we are dealing with a matter of culture and education. When your country is more than three-quarters surrounded by a sea teeming with fish, naturally it becomes part of the culture to enjoy paella, salpicón, fish soup and barbecued sardines. Yet we know that doing something for cultural reasons does not make it morally right. Were Spanish children to be exposed to the truth about the suffering that these fish and other animals in the meat and dairy industry endure, I am confident that there would be a gradual shift in the culture too. Then, countries like Spain would become the ideal place to enjoy a plant-based lifestyle.
And finally, what about vegans killing flies or buying down pillows, leather sofas or wearing wool pullovers?
Logically, if the primary motivation for a plant-based lifestyle is to prevent the unnecessary suffering of animals, then it would be better to avoid killing wasps and flies and so on if at all possible. I hope you get my gist. To go into more detail rapidly becomes absurd. For example, when I was in Spain, there was a plague of jellyfish. These fascinating animals have no eyes, no heart and no brain. Would it be okay to kill them? I’d still say, better not.
With down pillows, leather sofas and wool pullovers, the answer is easier. In order to produce these goods, animal suffering is nearly always involved. One glance at the videos contained in the hyperlinks above should be enough to convince you.
Now I’m back home, I am back on course with my plant-based diet and feel better for it. However, I am still a bit jittery about the latest Brexit statements coming for the UK. Apparently, it could happen that UK citizens living in Europe will no longer receive their pensions. Ah well, as my son said, at least I could go and open the first vegan restaurant in Torremolinos?
“I would sooner be a foreigner in Spain than in most countries. How easy it is to make friends in Spain!” – George Orwell
Choose vegan: Update #2
Mixed salad with tempeh drizzled in sesame dressing
Here’s another quick update on my new life as a plant-based eater, grouped under the headings of the questions you’ve been asking.
- Do I still feel healthier for becoming vegan?
Definitely. And on so many levels, even if some are subjective and I can’t actually prove them. For example, I still feel psychologically much happier in myself to know that nothing I consume is the result of any animal suffering. Once you know the truth about animal suffering, you can do nothing else. Yesterday on the subway I saw a guy wearing a t-shirt sporting the text: “STOP asking me why I am a vegan and START asking yourself why you’re not.” Nice.
Furthermore, my stomach feels lighter, I am coping with the heat better, I am sleeping better and I am losing weight.
2. Do I believe that eating meat is one of the main causes of global warming?
To be really honest here, I’m not sure anyone can know with absolute certainty what is causing global warming. The earth has gone through many weather cycles in its long history, so this could just be another one, but deep down I personally do believe that the current global warming can be attributed to our abuse of the planet. And if this is true, then eating meat is doing even more damage than flying by plane. To prove it, please watch this short video based on a recent study by the University of Oxford.
3. Why don’t you at least eat fish?
Well, long before I knew the truth about the origin of meat and dairy produce, I did think it was strange that some vegetarians would eat fish. This was based on my logic that one dead cow can feed many, but one dead good-sized fish can only feed one person. Now I am of the opinion that fish are not somehow lesser animals than dogs, cats, rabbits or frogs.
Sadly, the U.S. fishing industry alone slaughters more than 6 billion fish each year, and sport fishing and angling kill another 245 million animals annually. Without any legal protection from cruel treatment, these intelligent, complex animals are impaled, crushed, suffocated, or sliced open and gutted, all while they’re fully conscious.
Regardless of the method used to catch them, if the fish are still alive at the end of their terrifying journey to the surface, most have their gills cut and bled out or are tossed onto ice to slowly freeze or suffocate to death—a horribly cruel and painful death for cold-blooded animals, who can take a very long time to freeze or suffocate to death. Scientists estimate that fish endure up to 15 minutes of excruciating pain before they lose consciousness.
Click here for more information about the fish industry.
Or watch this surprising 4 minute film with Ewan McGregor.
4. Have I experienced any other positive or negative experiences since writing my vegan update #1?
I still find it hard to believe, after all these years of being a carnivore, that I don’t miss or crave meat. The only exception to this happened last night when I went to IKEA with my daughter and she ordered Köttbullar! For me, eating Köttbullar was a ritual. I always ate them when we went shopping in IKEA. My daughter left two on her plate. While we chatted for half an hour after we had finished eating, it was as if the Köttbullar were staring up at me and shouting, “Go on, eat us! We will only go to waste and then the cows and pigs have died in vain.” It was tough, but I managed to refrain. This morning I reflected on the fact that “Kot” in German means faeces. Not too far from the truth, then …
The other two issues concern my kitchen. On the plus side, it has been so much easier to keep the kitchen clean now that there is no more animal fat splattered all over the cooker. Cutlery and crockery are easier to wash (a soya-based yoghurt bowl can be cleaned much more easily than a dairy yoghurt bowl) and so your sink stays cleaner for longer too.
On the downside, the abundance of fresh fruit and vegetables in the apartment has led to a minor plague of fruit flies! Which leads me to your final question …
5. Is it okay as a vegan to kill flies, wasps and bugs? And is it okay to buy leather goods, wool pullovers and down pillows?
The answer to these questions will form part of Choose Vegan Update #3.
“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it’s time to pause and reflect.” – Mark Twain
Choose vegan: Update #1
A few readers have asked me whether I have managed to maintain a plant-based diet since I started just over three weeks ago. Answer: yes.
So I thought I’d give you a quick update as to the pros and cons. I’ll begin with the pros.
Pros
- It feels good to know that no animal has undergone unnecessary suffering in order to produce my meal.
I receive a weekly e-mail from challenge22@anonymous.org.il that provides me with recipes, encouragement and information. This week’s newsletter included news about what happens to chickens, in particular in free-range situations. The males are still killed at birth because they can neither produce eggs nor grow fast enough to be raised for meat production. The dairy industry really is as cruel as the meat industry.
2. Weight loss and a general feeling of well-being
Without changing my sport/exercise regime, I have already lost 2 kilos in weight. More importantly, my stomach feels lighter somehow, I am sleeping better and I generally feel healthier, although I know this is entirely subjective.
3. Not craving meat of dairy
This has taken me by surprise. Even though I still cook meat for three out of my four children, I so far haven’t caught myself wishing I could be eating what they are eating. On the contrary, especially when I have to scrape away congealed fat off their dinner plates!
4. Adventure and experimentation
Inevitably, I’ve had to become more creative with my cuisine, at home and when eating out. I’ve now discovered, for example, almond milk, soya yogurt, tempeh, saitan and tofu and my culinary experimentation has undergone a revolution. What’s more, my fridge looks less like a morgue and more like a garden. And talking of fridges, you may need a larger one in order to store all your fresh fruit and vegetables! On a personal note, I have also so far discovered that I prefer to eat dishes just with vegetables rather than with meat substitutes.
5. Most meals do take more time
I was about to put this in the negative section, but then realised that it doesn’t have to be negative if your food preparation takes longer. If you become a vegan, you will need to take more time learning about your new options and reading labels. You will need more time when you go shopping on account of trying to find new shops and new ingredients. And you will need more time for food preparation. For example, making a breakfast from muesli, soya yogurt and fresh fruit will take you a bit longer than jam on toast. Yet being forced to slow down your pace of life a little and savouring your food can surely never be a bad thing.
Cons
1. It’s a pain cooking two family meals instead of one
So far, the only real negative I can think of is that I often have to cook two meals per meal: one vegan and one non-vegan. If you don’t really enjoy cooking, then this is a little annoying, but it won’t go on forever since most children eventually leave home. Or else they might even follow your example and become vegan. Children do what you do and not what you say.
Conclusion: Some of you have also asked me how much thought, preparation and research I had put into become vegan before I got going. The honest answer is, almost none. Having watched a few videos about the meat and dairy industry, I just switched from one day to the next. For me, that was the best way, otherwise I would have made endless excuses about all the things I needed to do before I one day became a vegan. Now I am learning everything as I go along. I guess you have to decide what’s best for you.
Resources: “You will never look at your life the same way again.” and “A life-changing speech.”
“If you think that being vegan is difficult, imagine being a factory farmed animal.” Davegan Raza
Home alone
In a strange turn of events, my daughter has gone on a spontaneous, three-week trip to Cambodia (as you do!) and my oldest son has finally gone to New York for a couple of weeks, leaving me home alone.
I am so rarely on my own that this is a really strange experience. Yet it has given me time to think. On the one hand, it is right that parents let go of their children as they mature, but on the other hand you miss them and want to be there for them.
Parenthood is such a privilege and a challenge. No matter what we parents get wrong (which is usually an enormous amount!), the bond is still so strong. Even as I am writing, I am have just observed a blackbird on my window sill collecting as many dead twigs in its beak as it can in order to build a nest for its next generation of chicks. Outside I can hear the male birds singing their hearts out in order to attract a mate. This reproductive and parental instinct lies so very deep in us.
Today I feel like celebrating my four children. They are all so different, yet the same somehow. Replete with great strengths and weaknesses. A curious combination of both mum and dad, genetics and society, joy and pain, free will and predestination. They have been through a lot, some of which I have shared in this blog before.
A few years ago, we went through an enormous family crisis, and most unfortunately, we were involved in a Christian sect. This sect tried to split our family up. They set everything up to take my wife and children away from me, even paying for the flight tickets from Germany to the UK. Tragically, my wife and two youngest children went along with this evil charade. At first. I was even instructed by the leaders of the sect not to go to the airport to say good-bye to them, can you believe it?
I will never forget that day, 1st October 2013, when I nonetheless secretly went to the airport to watch them board the orange and white Easyjet plane, flanked by two members of the sect. As the tears flooded down my face, I said good-bye to them in my heart, never knowing whether I would ever see them again. A few days later, a leader from the sect met with me and had the audacity to reprimand me for being so rebellious, sinful and stupid as to go to the airport in the first place.
The consequences of the sect’s interference have been very long-lasting. My youngest son did not see his father for one fifth of his life. The emotional scars are plain in him for all to see. My middle son had, amongst other things, his entire education messed up. My poor wife, who eventually realized that she had been manipulated by the sect into abandoning her two oldest children, decided rightly to return to Berlin and was consequently ostracized not only by the sect in the UK but also the sect in Berlin who all had to do what the sect in the UK told them to do. Just like in “Enemy of the State”, existences were deleted from the web, Facebook sites were abandoned – the whole sect shut down and shut out. So-called Christians in Berlin for whom my wife had sacrificed her life and family. So-called Christian friends, together on a mission for Jesus, for whom she had given up countless hours of her life, caring for them and offering such generous hospitality in our family home. Every single one abandoned her and to this day has no contact with her.
Our two oldest children, who were street-wise enough to see through what the sect was doing, refused to return to the UK and remained with me in Berlin, even though they were told that police would forcibly take them to the airport. They hid and slept on the streets for a few days instead. They too have been unbelievably damaged by the reprehensible actions of this sect. And I am still trying to work it through with them four years on.
Thankfully, this courageous family bond and instinct cannot be broken by a sick sect. Okay, we are still picking up the pieces, but each challenging day feels like a victory for love, grace and truth.
Am I angry and bitter? Not at all. have I forgiven these people? Definitely.
So what’s my point? First, on this beautiful spring day in Berlin I wanted to write a eulogy to my wife and children. I love them very much and I am very proud of them. Secondly, I would want anyone who reads this to be preserved from having anything to to with the pernicious lies of religion. I can promise you, especially if you are going through a hard time, you will receive so much more insight, truth and grace from the world than you ever will from any church.
Erm, I think I spoke too soon about being home alone. My middle son has just popped by and is hungry. Why do I have this feeling that I am about to kiss good-bye to that tasty piece of filet steak on the second shelf of the fridge?
Seconds later: “Dad, could you cook me that filet steak, you know, medium rare with that herb and mustard topping that you did last time? That was the best steak I ever tasted. Oh, yes, and with some homemade chips (aka fries) too?”
Yes, that bond and instinct runs so deep. The closest thing to altruism I know. It’s time, once again, like the blackbird, to gather the dead twigs and build my family …
They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
Philip Larkin
Bad grammar
So, the latest UK budget includes £320 million to fund the return of the good, old-fashioned grammar school. Personally – and speaking as a teacher – I am in favour of a selective secondary education system – provided that it has some safety mechanisms built in so that, for example, late developers can switch schools if they need to.
There are, however, two issues that I find ridiculous about these latest proposals to mess around yet again with the British education system. First, there is still no hint of any politician with a passionate, innovative, forward-looking vision for schooling that better prepares young people for the unstoppable advances of technology and globalization. A vision that might include, for example, deconstructing the obsolete modernist division of the school timetable into discrete subjects taught in narrow blocks of time. Secondly, I am disappointed by the appalling way that the education system has for the whole of my lifetime been used as political football, demoralising educationists and screwing up the destiny of millions of children.
Hence, as usual, the conservative party blames the labour party for blocking the re-introduction of grammar schools and selective education, as if to forget that it was the conservative party that abolished grammar schools and brought in non-selective, comprehensive education in the first place!
Yet the politicisation of education in the UK is only the tip of the iceberg. The real issue – which seems to receive almost no attention – is that nearly all the children of politicians attend private schools, known actually as “public” schools. (See Footnote 1).
Even to this day, the majority of Oxbridge students still come from the private schools and go on to be senior politicians (e.g. David Cameron, Theresa May, Tony Blair), civil servants, journalists, diplomats, doctors, lawyers and businesswomen and men. For as long as this is the case in the UK, why should any politician be seriously concerned about the state education system? More than anywhere else in Europe, the UK education system is no more than a socially constructed set of keys that unlock the door of future financial security. It has very little to do with either academic or applied knowledge, applicable skills or life-enriching culture.
A very brief comparison with other European countries, where politicians’ children predominantly attend state schools, serves to confirm this opinion as fact.
Marx was right when he observed that capitalism can only thrive when there exists within its ranks an alienated underclass. Surely Theresa May must know deep-down that her pontificating about meritocracy and access for all is no more than empty, political posturing? Or maybe she doesn’t? After all she went to an independent Roman Catholic school and then on to St Hugh’s College, Oxford.
I rest my case. For today. Have a nice weekend.
Footnote 1: I hate to sound cynical, but maybe the reason this issue receives little attention has something to do with a) that fact that these private schools are called public schools as if to disguise their identity and to imply that they are accessible to all children and b) because many of the most successful journalists also attended public schools and are either blind to the issue or are happy not to disturb a stable, self-perpetuating status quo.
AN EIGHT-YEAR-OLD’S WISDOM
Last weekend my eight-year-old son wanted to do some cooking with me. I’m pleased to say that he likes my food and he understands that his dad loves to cook.
In terms of ingredients, I already had to hand some chicken breast, potatoes, broccoli and carrots. I also know that many children will eat more vegetables when they are smothered in Sauce Hollandaise, which my youngest son likes to call “Holiday Sauce”.
So, as a die-hard teacher, I decided first to show him what to do, then to let him do it while watching, and then to let him carry on without me watching.
From this experience I learnt at least three fascinating things.
First of all, how little many young people today understand about where our food comes from. For example, my son had no idea that chips (fries) come from potatoes! He had no idea that potatoes and carrots are roots. He had no idea that a chicken had to die to provide him with his meat intake or that the part of the chicken the likes the most comes from its breast. (As an aside, one day I will give him the book “Eating Animals” to read, which my oldest son has read and who is now a vegan).
Secondly, I learned that often the smartest creative ideas come from just doing things together. I suddenly realised that we could cut the potatoes into the shape of his name, which he did and then fried them, as in the photo above.
The final, for me more interesting, issue happened during the third of the three above-mentioned teaching processes. While I was deliberately busy doing something else, my son, while he was frying the home-made schnitzel, suddenly noticed that I wasn’t at all watching or paying attention to what he was doing. He suddenly commented, “Dad, why aren’t you watching me?” I replied, “Because I trust you and have every confidence in you at this point that you can do this on your own.”
He seemed really surprised and added, “But at school the teachers are always watching you and criticising you for getting things wrong. It’s as if they don’t trust you.”
I know as a teacher of course that school is different from home. Yet I suspect my son made an important pedagogical point.
He also ate more than I have ever seen him eat before during one meal, including his vegetables and holiday sauce. That was probably in order to impress. Be that as it may, I am unlikely to forget this culinary experience with an eight-year-old. And I guess too that we all learn better when we have the impression that our mentors trust in our success?