Among the many debateable decisions made about education over the past 25 years, quite the most stupid has been the diminution of what used to be called home economics or domestic science - cooking, as I like to call it - into some corner of graphic design.
The simple fact is that food is at the heart of three or four fundamental parts of our existence. At every level - health, economics, well-being, social cohesion - not teaching cookery is stupid.
I think there’s a huge role for schools but only if food is made a central part of the national curriculum. If you can teach kids to cook and eat well, you’ve given a benefit that will last them for life.
But if you teach them, as they taught my children, to bend plastic I funnily enough, my children haven’t found any use for bending plastic since they left school - but they do eat every day!
