The Humble Fritter.

The subject based and data driven curriculum, learning little chunks of information at a time so that they can be made into big bits later on, is not the way our brains work. However educators long versed in Subject Based Teaching have convinced ordinary folk like you and me that that is the way we should teach our children and teach our children we must, for politicians have to justify the massive expense of school to their electorate, for it is their monies that pay for the privilege of having an educated population to vote accordingly.  The trouble is that it doesn't work for thousands and thousands of kids and their teachers don't know why.  Kids are voting with their feet, and not all treading a pathway that is socially acceptable.  What if every child loved to go to school, loved to be involved in learning every day and flourished, every day?

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I give you a simple example of how all aspects of a curriculum can be covered yet at the same time engage one hundred percent of the participants in their learning journey.  I call it "The Humble Fritter Project" and one might say

"The kids have eaten the curriculum!"  

All you'll need is some cooking equipment, some tools and a few simple ingredients; well simple to get started anyway, codon bleu can be further down the track.

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The Simple Recipe.

A basic fritter recipe is flour, milk or water or both, chopped cooked meat, chopped tomatoes and onions, an optional egg or two, some mixed herbs, salt and sauces to taste.  Mix in a bowl to a runny consistency, spoon onto a hot surface to cook, turn when bubbly, remove and plate up and eat with relish. Delicious!

 

Making, cooking, data gathering.

1. We make many fritters and vary the recipes to include different meats, sauces, vegetarian, and so on, keeping record on a computer data base of the many variations and we work out costs per batch and than per fritter.  How much does the salt in a single fritter cost?

2. We record the best cooking temperature and the time before flipping.  How long will it take to prepare ten dozen fritters?  Can we automate the cooking process?

3. We hold tasting sessions and record the comments in our quest for the best consumer response.

4.  We look at ways of implementing quality control and a uniform product line.  How can we ensure that the onion is always cut the same size? We have industry leaders from other fast food chains to address us and tell us how they standardise their product.

5. We study shelf life and best used by dates.  We freeze them, we vacuum pack, we store cold and then we test them for bacterial growth, and when does food become poison?

 

So we have spent a great deal of time making and cooking and eating healthy fritters, tasty fritters, fritters that are not so healthy and we have recorded a huge amount of data relating to quantities, cost, time, temperature, fuel costs of gas or electricity or wood, milk or water or a mix or full cream as opposed to fat reduced and the variations are limitless. 

 

                                 Marketing

1.  We are now ready to market our product so we will investigate a number of corporate structures to best manage our fritter business.  We look at franchising, limited liability companies, share issues, and we draw on much community expertise to help us make our best decisions as we will be investing our own hard earned cash in the venture.

2. We will run a marketing campaign to get our product into the market place which may be a weekly lunchtime market by the tuckshop, as a product to be sold from the canteen, as a fritter drive once a month as for lamingtons, as a product in a local store and so on.

3. We will investigate all of the possible marketing media, the school newsletter, pamphlets, posters, radio and television, social media, the local cinema, telemarketing and the data gathered from many sources will determine our outlays and different campaigns will be measured in market sales analysis.  Does the weather affect sales?  Are more fritters sold on pension cheque days? and so on.

4. We write our own fritter jingles, advertising editorials, recipe books, articles to glossy magazines, letters to various authorities to get permissions to sell. 

5. We write our own dramatic operetta extolling the virtues of the humble fritter and perform it at the local shopping plaza with fritter give-aways. 

6. We write and present a Puppet Play stage production of a tragic tale with a mushroom laced fritter.  A whole strand of food safety and food poisoning might result, even finding historic cases of famous deaths by poisoning.  

7. We devise our own unique packaging after much experimentation with different materials and pay great attention to environmental issues and at the same time compare the packaging of a number of our other fast food competitors.

8. We manufacture tiny ceramic Fritter Critters that can be bought using wrapper coupons and $2, and run another marketing campaign to promote the fritter sales through toys.

9. We screen print fritter promotional clothing, caps, tee shirts, tea towels and so on.

 

Stop!  There is no limit to the activities that the marketing strand will provide for us.  All of the time we have real world products and services to compare and to learn about.  A high level of consumer knowledge will be an important outcome of this phase of the task.

 

Health and nutrition

1. We measure the calories, energy and fat in our fritters. 

2. We print labels that must go on packaging to indicate contents of each fritter and the various amounts of nutritional value, using labels from many supermarket products as our model.

3. We make specialised fritters for people with special food requirements such as gluten free, low fat, GI, low salt, vegetarian, low acid and non-dairy.

4. We ensure hygiene is a priority and investigate ways that the food industry ensures such a high safety record.

5. We devise the fritter that provides the balanced daily food requirements and deduce how many fritters a day an average person would need to eat to maintain a healthy lifestyle.

 

Further strands

1. There may be some of our learners who will do parallel studies on other food products such as pancakes, pizzas, burgers, omelets, crepes, various breads and so on.  

2. We might do a study into the origin of foods we include as part of our regular diet and hold some international food festivals.  

3.  Study of aspects of multiculturalism may lead this strand in directions we have never considered.  

 

In conclusion

The fritter project has taken us from a simple cooking lesson into a world of marketing and commerce all backed up by our own action research and data analysis.  We have studied mathematics, we have read and researched, we have written and composed music and advertising jingles.  We have created packaging and advertising wrappers, posters and brochures and used our artistic skills to create Fritter Critters.  We have written Fritter Critter super hero plays performed by puppet characters, accompanied by musicians and sound effects, performed before a real audience.  We have learnt a great deal about the world of business, companies, franchises and marketing and advertising. We have had real life comparisons with other fast food manufacturers and have come to realise ‘there is nothing keeps you fitter than a yummy, yummy fritter’.  Of course if you’d prefer to make cup cakes, or muffins or biscuits or donuts or…., it works just the same.

 

So if you had such a dream how could you do all that in a lock step curriculum based classroom with assessment as the over riding reason to learn?  Well you might find it much easier in a multiage classroom where a wide range of learners can share their expertise across a wider spectrum, the youngers playing second fiddle to the olders, the smarters leading where ever their expertise might shine, despite their chronological age.  The classroom management factor of such classrooms ensures that small groups, five or six, operate on different aspects of the project at different times.  Any given group might only cook once in a weekly cycle.  Fritters are not occupying everyone at the same time as the structure of a menu driven classroom allows for a wide range of topics being worked on simultaneously, for that is the nature of a Multiage Classroom, where Copycats, Stickybeaks and Scallywags can all shine.