Are school gardens a crock or what? is the question writer Caitlin Flanagan asks in the latest issue of The Atlantic Magazine and its online site. Her basic theory is that the high-falutin' goal of Berkeley restauranteur and school gardening champion Alice Waters, to help children become "eco-gastronomes," is actually a fad that does nothing for students. It's just  a fad, a set of "pet issues of the volunteering set," as she so cruelly (and cleverly) puts it.

Flabagan wends her way through a detailed and leisurely attack on Waters, middle-class do-gooders, school gardens, and school districts that fall for this foolishness. She is particularly bitter about the waste it is to involve Latino students in school gardens, since, she reasons, their families have done so much "stoop labor" they know how to farm already (!).  She does point out, however, that black and latino students have better test scores at the more test-focused Cal Prep, where 92% of the student body is of color, than they do at Waters' Martin Luther King School.

The critical question of Flanagan's thesis--"What evidence do we have that participation in one of these programs—so enthusiastically supported, so uncritically championed—improves a child’s chances of doing well on the state tests that will determine his or her future (especially the all-important high-school exit exam) and passing Algebra I, which is becoming the make-or-break class for California high-school students?" is right on. 

We have absolutely no evidence that gardening improves state test scores.

But we also have no evidence that gym class, art class, homeroom, or after-school activities improve test scores. Should schools do away with them all so poor students can focus-as Flanagan suggests--on getting the scores that will get them into the schools that will get them to the jobs that will get them the money where, in her logic, they can pay someone else to grow veggies for them?

I don't think that's going to work.

Later in her article, Flanagan says that the fact that clients at the food bank in LA grab at the free candies on her desk is proof that they--like the down and out George Orwell--eat badly as a way to give themselves treats because being poor is so depressing. She writes "The solution lies in an education that will propel students into a higher economic class, where they will live better and therefore eat better."

Ah, income = healthy food choices? Girl, dream on!

Given how many Americans earning well over the poverty line are obese, unhealthy, and eating diets that scientists are beginning to question as totally miguided (see Good Calories, Bad Calories by Gary Taubes, for example), Flanagan's assertion that money equals healthy eating makes no sense. Are healthy eating (which means eating fresh fruits and vegetables and less fast food, soda and snacks) and school gardens really the problem that keeps kids from learning what they should? 

Or are they just another red herring she can use to vent her frustration with a series of school systems that are completely failing to teach far too many children how to master the essential skills and knowledge that they will need to graduate from high school--and have successful lives?

I agree with Flanagan that our state's schools are in a dismal state--this is especially true in Oakland, where I live--and where a huge percentage of students drop out or fail to graduate.

However, I think it's laughable to imagine that removing school gardening programs--along with the gym, music, languages, science, athletics and more that are already being crushed under massive city and state budget cuts--so that kids can focus on testing is going to help schools teach young people to learn better.

Were it so simple that removing urban gardening from an integrated curriculum in K-8 schools guaranteed students that they would have higher test scores.  Truth is, I have seen first hand, through visits to Waters' program back in 2005, that students working with her team spend time working on practical math and writing as part of their experience--these are essential aspects of The Edible School Yard curriculum. .

Fix the schools, make them work, but don't be a hypocrite about it. Don't impose massive budget cuts, increase classroom size, and then say it's school gardening that's the problem. Oh, pul-leeze!

Come to Oakland, Ms. Flanagan, and see how school gardens, urban gardening, farm to school projects, healthy corner store projects, and community gardens are bringing affordable fresh produce into neighborhoods that are food deserts.

Come to Oakland and learn about how urban gardens help connect immigrant families to foods they frequently eat, but have trouble acquiring without a car. Talk to PUEBLO, the Oakland Food Connection, Food First and the Oakland Food Policy Council and see what their members have to say about the connections between healthy food and learning. And ask some students and their families, who have a chance to step back from the fast food commercials--and the fast food cheap prices--how school gardening helps them add some fresh, affordable food back into their diets.

I don't think anyone you would speak to in any of those groups would say that the Oakland School District is doing the best job they think it could.

But I also don't think you'd find a single person who believes that cutting 90 minutes of gardening, nutrition planning and integrated curriculum lessons out of the school week is the factor that is keeping students from high test scores, good jobs, or the middle class.

Improve the schools, yes. Hold them accountable, yes. But don't make school gardens the whipping boy.

For further reading
Healthy Food For All: Building Equitable and Sustainable Food Systems in Oakland and Detroit

Food Policy Councils: Lessons Learned

Model Food Systems Policy Tools for Local Communities

Hope Collaborative: Microzone Assessment Report (download pdf)

Photo by David Silver, used under creative commons license, http://www.flickr.com/photos/davidsilver/4252389452/