The government's decision to make cookery lessons compulsory in secondary schools, announced this week by the children's secretary, Ed Balls, is a sensible one I think. Balls says that being able to "cook healthy dishes from scratch is an essential everyday skill all young people should have".
Absolutely. I'm with the people who say the decision should have been taken 20 or 30 years ago, and not just because there appears to be some sort of obesity epidemic, but because, as I discovered in prison, being able to cook is pleasurable and life enhancing. Like the Professional Association of Teachers general secretary, Philip Parkin, who also welcomes the decision, I believe that being able to cook and understand the importance of a balanced and nutritious diet are "key life skills".
It struck me when I heard about the announcement that the government should go a step further and introduce compulsory cookery lessons in prisons. After all the majority of people who end up "inside" have made the choices that resulted in their imprisonment due to a serious lack of precisely those skills.
I can testify to the benefits, as my own culinary education began in a makeshift prison kitchenette, a disused cell with a stainless steel sink, table and a couple of Baby Belling cookers. Initially my teachers were fellow prisoners, mostly Asian and black, though there was a Dutchman who made a memorable Stamppot I think he called it. That little kitchen was a tense place. Places on the two little cookers were coveted. Violent implementation of pots and pans was a regular hazard. The food we cooked came from tins bought from the the canteen, supplemented with ingredients that had been smuggled out of the kitchen under armpits or in crotches, and traded for with tobacco or sweets. The lengths we went to in order to end up two or three on the edge of a bed sharing a bowl of peas and rice or pilchard curry were exhausting, but satisfying in the end. It reminded us we were human.
Later in another high security prison the authorities gave the go-ahead for a formal cookery class in the education department. The teacher was a genuinely fragrant woman with a warm smile and gentle touch. She kept it simple at first, plate apple pie, beef and vegetable stew. The impact of her lessons on the prison was huge. Her students ranged from the longest serving prisoner in the system, (a man who needed help more than he needed incarceration) to several notorious gangsters and a couple of sex offenders. This was a group of people who would never associate on the wing, would barely acknowledge one another other than in conflict. Yet the teacher and her food brought them together, as fellow humans with a common purpose - to prepare, cook and share food.
Being in the teacher's company, chopping onions, mushrooms, peppers - hearing the sizzle of oil hitting a hot pan and savouring the aroma of freshly crushed garlic - was such a contrast to the rough and tumble of fetid wing life. Her students brought what they learned back to the wing - and not just the food - but courtesy, self-respect and respect towards others. The teacher brought weapons into her kitchen classroom, well, knives and rolling pins. No prison staff were ever present during lessons, yet none of the potentially dangerous cutlery ever went missing. And in spite of the high volume of stabbings and scaldings on the wings, not a single threatening incident was reported from her class.
The cookery teacher's influence was such that the prison governor would often send the most troublesome "control problem" prisoners to her class. "I don't know what you are doing in there," he told her once, "but please keep doing it." All she was doing in fact was treating people like she would expect to be treated herself, while preparing, cooking, and sharing food. She was simply being human.
Currently there are a number of prisons where cookery classes are offered. Others wait for "summer school" periods when the education department is quiet and special sessions can be laid on. But all depend on the good will of the prison governor, or the willingness of the education department, or the restraints the ever decreasing prisons budget.
Prison life generally is dangerously dehumanising. The introduction of compulsory cookery lessons for prisoners would help to counteract the negative wing culture and the impact they might have on reoffending figures should not be underestimated. Just like a school, a prison is a valuable community resource and in spite of the cost and the logistics involved I think in the long term compulsory cookery lessons for people in prison would be a wise and humane investment.
