How to Make Bread Taste Artificial

In our first food technology lesson of the term, we were told that the first thing we would be making was ‘bread shapes’. We watched as our teacher carefully weighed out ingredients and mixed them into dough. She then kneaded this dough and sternly informed us how to shape it. It then went into the grill – ‘a warm place’ – to rise.

The next week, we entered our kitchen-classroom to find the ingredients pre-measured and conveniently sorted into exact quantities. All we had to do was take the bowl and mix what was inside it.

Two weeks after that, we made flavoured bread. This time we entered the kitchen to find bowls containing, not only pre-measured, but pre-mixed and pre-kneaded ingredients. Our only task was to roll it out and add raisins.

‘Jam tarts’ consisted of another bowl of pre-measured ingredients, a minimalistic amount of strawberry jam, and a lump of lard. The week before – demonstration week – we had been led to believe that the lard was optional: lard, or something healthier. And vegetarian-friendly. But vegetarians, it seems, can eat anything. In the bowl: flour, lard. Mix.

‘Apple turnovers’ revealed, surprisingly, no bowl of ready-mixed dough – just some pre-chopped apple (in miraculously cube-shaped pieces) wallowing in some sort of apple goo and an unappealing grey block which turned out to be pastry.

It is not so very strange, then, to find that we are marked not on the quality of the food we produce, but on the way we plan – in short, writing down what our teacher has just written on the board – the way we sketch, and the way we ‘shade’ (colouring in). And our homework on how bread is made was levelled on our use of I.T.

You know how they say things always taste better when you make them yourself? Well now I know how they make things taste like they do when you buy them from supermarkets.

Why don't we talk about LGBT?

Well... Why don't we? In school we are taught a great amount about heterosexual relationships, but hardly anything about homosexuality or bisexuality. In fact I don't think we're taught anything on this subject. But why not? Surely there isn't nothing to teach?

Don't scientists have anything to say on this subject? Isn't this something we should be discussing in R.E. and Student Development? Aren't there any books we could be reading in English which involve relationships other than heterosexual? Doesn't this subject have a whole fascinating and important history?

The fact that this subject is not taught in schools is an interesting one. It gives the impression that it shouldn't be taught - an impression which walks hand in hand with the impression that it is WRONG; a fatal impression to give to people who are gay/bisexual/transgendered as it can be a big cause for low self-esteem and makes you feel insecure about yourself and what you are, and of course makes you a prime target for bullying.

As well as education we need role models. We need teachers who are gay/bisexual/transgendered and are open and unafraid of what they are. We need teachers who are comfortable with the subject of and not prejudiced against LGBT. We need to be told that IT IS NOT WRONG.

The English Teacher

I think that really I began thinking this way round about last September, maybe a little later than that. I've always thought that there are many things about school that are unfair, and wished I could do other things, but I never really understood quite what was wrong. Basically I just put up with it, like I'm sure many children in school do. I don't think we even realise anything is wrong - it's just the way school is. We just have to wait and count the years...

But last September I came back to school and discovered that I had been moved into another English class... Again. I had started in June and accidentally been put into the bottom set - it was called class one or something silly like that, and everyone believed I was being put into the top set. The bottom set kids were perfectly nice; they threw rubbers and rulers and screamed and asked me if I smoked. For most of the term I was stuck there, until about the last week before the summer holidays when it finally got sorted out and I was moved into a higher English class - though I'm not sure that was the top set either. I was happier in that class, and fully expected to return there the next term. But instead, I found myself sitting in a different classroom, meeting my third English teacher of the year.

He was called Mr. Stead. The rest of the class - apart from one girl who had been moved from the same class I had - had been his class since year 7, and they loved him. He was certainly the best English teacher I ever had. He showed us films like An Inconvenient Truth and took us to the library for whole lessons just to read and talk about books. He thought the curriculum was terrible. He was like a friend, really, not a teacher. But then again a friend is exactly what a teacher should be - someone you can talk to and laugh with and share your thoughts with. That's how proper teaching should be done.

I only had Mr. Stead as a teacher from September to Christmas. He said we were his best English class. None of us were sure if he was just saying that, whether he'd said it to all of his classes, but really I don't think it mattered. We all knew he was the best English teacher we were ever going to get.

I think it was on his last day that I really starting thinking. We messed around the whole lesson - putting make-up all over a boy's face, running about, laughing, talking - Mr. Stead gave the boy a note to take to his other classes - and Mr. Stead asked me if I was going to be a writer. Well of course I was. He told us that we had to fight against the curriculum to make it better for everyone. A few of us got very excited and I said, "We should protest!" We all started writing things on the board - PROTEST! big and bold in the centre; DOWN WITH CURRICULAR MONOTONY in smaller letters, lower down.

We can do it, if we work together. We can bring curricular monotony down.