elfs | Home Eating

In 1890 Edward Bellamy wrote Looking Backward, a Rip-Van Winkle story in which our hero mysteriously falls asleep in 1887 and wakes up in 1999. He is amazed by the advent of technology. He is astounded at the "rational" way in which the world is broken up. Everyone is paid the same, from a government pool. Everyone eats at massive, government-sponsored cafeterias. Everyone receives the best education the state can give at government-run schools.

Bellamy thought that private schools were a menace, preventing his idea of the "New Collective Man" from being a reality. He thought (as did John Dewey, the principle architect of modern schooling) that the primary focus of schooling should be to train the student to be a social animal, part of the collective, and not an individual. Education and excellence are secondary to the goal of making the student a viable cog in the machinery of modern life. Education is not there to serve the child's best interests, but those of society, which in this case is completely congruent with the government.

Unlike Dewey, Bellamy thought that private kitchens served a similar purpose. He wanted people to eat in big collective cafeterias, where individual differences emphasized by familial cooking, most importantly ethnic differences, would be wiped out. He wanted family bonds to be weakened and replaced with bonds to the community and the State.

Probably part of the reason the homeschooling movement so sticks in the craw of the inheritors of the Dewey system is that it turns the clock back and permits parents to emphasize the individual differences that are their children's birthright.

Having read both Bellamy and Dewey, imagine my delight when I saw someone else make the same association. If Bellamy had had his way, this is the battle we'd be waging now:

Home Eating a Threat to Public Kitchens? State Allows Growing Trend of Eating At Home