Who Is Caitlin Flanagan's The Edible Schoolyard

Instead of presenting her thesis up front, Caitlin Flanagan uses the strategy of pathos to provoke sympathy from the audience by devoting much of the first part of her argument looking at the issue from the perspective of a foreign immigrant worker. She tells the reader to “Imagine” themselves “as a young and desperately poor Mexican man” who “made the dangerous and illegal journey to California to work in the fields” (Flanagan 418). To introduce her topic, she goes on to explain, that what made the work “bearable was the dream of a better life” for himself and his family (Flanagan 418). However, the dream of an educated life for his family seems to take a turning point, when his child is forced to go out in the school garden and pick vegetables …show more content…
Although this may be true, a much more important lesson is being taught to students through school gardening programs. Alice Waters, chef, author, and the proprietor of Chez Panisse, is an American pioneer of a culinary philosophy, created The Edible Schoolyard at Berkeley’s Martin Luther King, Jr., Middle School. She is considered one of the most educational innovators in nation and has won many awards including, Excellence in Education Award from Senator Barbara Boxer and an Educational Heroes Award from the U.S. Department of Education. The Edible Schoolyard is a model public education program that instills the knowledge and values we need to build a humane and sustainable future. Children are learning the importance of ethical values, such as, responsibility and work ethic from school gardening programs. These lessons will take them further in life than “higher math”. These children will learn how to grow food and the value of fresh food. Counterintuitive, “how food grows- a lesson, that our farm worker’s son might have learned at his father’s knee” (Flanagan