viz.

Credit for Eedited Image of Leo Tolstoy: Sean Ludwig

Educators and everyday people alike have spent (at least) the last half of a decade in a state of ever-increasing turgidity as they speculate as to all of the amazing feats the e-reader (usually, “e-reader” means “iPad” in the popular discourse, so I might use both terms below) will achieve in the context of public education.  It is almost assumed that replacing every student’s bulky, quickly-dated paper textbooks with sleek, capability-rich e-readers is an unequivocally good, nay, downright imperative educational initiative. 

However...

Image Credit: screen capture from JamieOliver.com

In last week's post, I introduced chef Jamie Oliver's campaign for real ("proper") food in the US (complete with its own ABC television reality show), and I discussed Oliver's plea that we, as a country, begin cooking real food (as opposed to eating industrial food) in our kitchens at home. For many Americans, busy schedules and limited cooking experience make this call for planning, buying, prepping and cooking scratch food at home a rather tall order, but even this potentially daunting lifestyle change looks like (forgive the pun) a piece of cake compared with the second half of Oliver's initiative: providing scratch meals twice daily in public schools. More on Oliver, Chef Ann Cooper, mind-boggling bureaucracy, and hurculean tasks after the break.

Image Credit: Screen Capture from JamieOliver.com

Most Americans who recognize Jamie Oliver (most of whom are probably foodies or Food Network fans) remember him as the hip, charming, engergetic host of "The Naked Chef" at the end of the last decade. The intervening ten years have not noticeably reduced his energy, charm or verve, but they did bring him a wife, four children and a cause. I mention his family because families--first in the UK and now in the US-- are at the heart of the telegenic Brit's adopted cause. Oliver's new show (officially premiering tonight under the name "Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution") is part of a broader, trans-atlantic, multi-platform effort to change the way children and families eat. Oliver targets school lunch programs and home cooking as key sites of potentially revolutionary practices. His advice can (somewhat reductively) be boiled down to two words: cook something. More about food, families, schools, television, the internet and boyishly-handsome good looks after the jump.