It’s National Farm to School Month and National School Lunch Month. In Wisconsin that means that some students are participating in the Great Apple Crunch and folks are advocating for healthy school meals. Here in Madison, a local campaign is trying to get free school meals for all MMSD students.

To talk about the ways that educational and agricultural programs meet, host Douglas Haynes speaks with Dr. Jennifer Gaddis and Dr. Sarah A. Robert. Their edited volume, Transforming School Food Politics around the World, is available for open access from MIT Press. They want to reframe school lunches as learning experiences and challenge the fundamental assumptions people in the US make about school food programs.

Their research shows that in many places around the world school lunches are learning experiences. In countries like Brazil and Finland folks are using school food programs to transform food systems. And in Japan, students learn about the labor that goes into their school meals by serving each other their school lunches. From examples like this, Gaddis and Robert find hope that schools can teach skills and values through their lunch programs. 

They talk about the collective work of changing public policy on food systems, research on the school food workforce, and Tim Walz’s track record on free school meals.

Jennifer E. Gaddis is Associate Professor of Civil Society and Community Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the author of The Labor of Lunch. She is an advisory board member of the National Farm to School Network.

Sarah A. Robert is Associate Professor at the University at Buffalo’s Graduate School of Education. She is the author of Neoliberal Education Reform; Neoliberalism, Gender, and Education Work; and School Food Politics. She is an Associate Editor for Gender, Work, and Organizations.

Photo courtesy of Sara Gabler/WORT News.

The post School lunches could be a learning experience for students appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.