Haha, WTF. It's just food, nothing more than that. If these parents want to teach their kids about other cultures, there are much better ways to do that.

How do you feel that Juicy Juice should be teaching diversity to 6-year-olds?

And, I'm not sure why it's "going to far". Food is an aspect of culture. So food can teach about (some types of) diversity.

Once can teach about (some of) the promise of diversity by instituting "dinners without borders."

Even then, the text you quoted seems like food is being used as a way to segue into talking about other aspects of culture.

I think a distinction needs to be made between this approach with younger and older kids. There is a fair amount of cognitive development research about how kids come to be aware of race/ethnicity (Lawrence Hirschfeld is a good person to start with). For the younger ones (toddlers, pre-K) their cognitive skills are complex, but still rather concrete - not just with ethnicity, but across the board they tend to equate outward appearances with inward essences. Its not just that eating Italian food is what makes someone Italian at this age but, say, wearing the right uniform is what makes someone a police officer. Moreover, if you ask the child what makes them a member of their own ethnic group, if they have an answer it will probably involve food. I think its easy (and usually correct) to knock the equation of culture to food/dress/holidays when teaching kids, but I also don't think its particularly obvious the best way to teach more complex ideas about ethnicity to a six year old.

I don't think sitting down to a dinner of tacos is going to make your grade-school child say "Oh! The promise and perils of diversity--I get it now!" On the other hand, I think dishes from around the world can serve as a point from which to start that kind of discussion (and if you look at the article, that's pretty much what they're suggesting).

oh my, what if a kid thinks: "I hate sushi, so I hate Japan!" ... no seriously. When I was a kid we had a "like we cook at home"-day in school and I remember enjoying it very much. Here in Berlin we have a very mixed population. So I was eating russian, polish, italian, arabian, turkish or chinese food while the particular classmate told us of the country his parents come from (beacuse most of them were born in germany).

Now, as a father and a teacher I think food is the best way of teaching kids of other cultures. Kids love to eat. Kids are courious about things they don't know. Bingo.

I think that it's sad, but finefin is right about the kid who hates sushi hating Japan. I have seen many people associate their dislike of a certain ethnic food with a dislike for the entire culture. It's also often associated with negative stereotypes about "those people"- "those people are so gross, can you believe the icky things they eat?!?!" Introducing kids to foreign cuisines at a young age can teach them that, yes, other people eat differently and that's OK, and some of it is really delicious even if you don't like all of it.

What I'm always most interested in is the label of "ethnic" attached to foods -- which foods have ethnicity and which don't? While presumably all dishes originated from someone with an ethnicity, it's another great example of how non-white/non-American people have ethnicity, but the white American is the blank, ethnicity-less slate against which others are compared

i like that the "ethnic" meal suggestions are the ones that are the most americanized and far from their true "ethnic" roots as possible. tacos? baked ziti? what's next- chop suey and hillshire farm brats for chinese and german?

The problem with 'ethnic foods' is it encourages a lot of stereotyping, especially for kids who may not be thinking critically about such issues (let alone the parents). It's hard to see what's wrong with the approach taken here, until you see it done properly. In 1971 the Alberta Government funded a set of social studies curriculum resources (the Kanata Kits) that tried to introduce the idea of family to Grade 1 students. So the first thing they got right, was not to define 'family' as white middle class nuclear family, but to show a fair bit of diversity in the examples. The second thing they got right, and the one that I confess took me by surprise was that when they showed each family sitting down for a 'special meal' (birthday, anniversary, sunday supper, etc.) they showed the Chinese family eating pizza, and the First Nations family eating in a Cantonese restaurant, etc.. Well, duh! Welcome to the real world.

The danger of many curricular materials is that they define 'cultural diversity' as those few visually representable differences -- food, dances, national costume -- and ignore or gloss over differences that actually matter: worldview, interpersonal relationship rules, language, etc. etc. So what you often end up with is the 'dancing minority trick' which is when people believe they are promoting diversity by including a picture of some minority dancing a traditional dance -- preferably as it was last danced in the old country in 1812 -- but portraying 'current', 'modern' in ways that equate to the dominant group. As soon as you hear someone saying they want to 'preserve' some culture, they're trying to freeze it as it was a 100 years ago, cutting off any possibility of it influencing modern power relationships.

Or have I wandered off topic again?

Did the Mayans actually eat tacos? I don't see anything ideologically wrong with the concept, but educational value doesn't really work when you're making up the facts.

Actually, I think food is a terrific way to teach young kids about all kinds of things - cultural diversity, the environment, local farming, chemistry, biology, art, shapes, colors, you name it. It wouldn't take much effort to put together a few easy, kid-friendly recipes or workbooks that help parents discuss the cultural roots of familiar dishes in context. Knowing that virtually all our eating habits are imported from a wide variety of cuisines might actually help kids understand how our lives are shaped by the contributions of so many cultures.

But throwing the word "ethnic" around seems to have the opposite effect. To add a bit to what Woz said, I think it creates the distorted idea that "brown n' yellow" people's foods are culturally specific, whereas white people's food is somehow neutral.

Ha, "ethnic" meals. What food isn't "ethnic"?

also, a lot of people think of the chinese food they eat at american chinese restaurants... Which is completely different from what people in Asia actually eat. It just teaches kids to be ignorant and to think that they are the neutral while everyone else is "ethnic"

Yes, terrible american bastardised "ethnic" food. I find the notion that americanised cuisine of any culture would have anything to do with the real ethnicities and their cultural heritage degrading. Just another example of how multiculturalism breeds racist attitudes and ignorance. Immigrant melting-pot multiculturalism and the ethnic tensions it creates do not have anything to do with really understanding and respecting different cultures but more like just understanding the dilemmas the multiculturalism inherently has.

Angie, we might be operating on different definitions of "culture" (it might even be a slight linguistic subtlety). What kind of things do you believe would constitute "compromising" your culture?

I ask because I use the word to describe something that is in constant flux. As new ideas, experiences, and objects enter a community, its Culture - and the many ethnic subcultures within it - is fundamentally altered. One thing that has radically changed your culture is the internet, but in your lifetime you and your peers have changed your ways and habits to adapt to it and make it useful and relevant to your own lives.

Ethnicity - the cultural, linguistic, and religious traits that groups carry over borders and distinguish, say, a German Jewish family from an ethnically German one despite living in the same culture - seems to be more precisely what you are talking about. But wouldn't a sentence that reads "I am not willing to compromise my ethnic existence for anything" make you a bit uneasy?

Yes Andrew, such sentence does makes my person feel uneasy. I hope you truly understand that I in no way what so ever am saying that ethnic groups should not be mixed. Undoubtedly ethnicity can be a part of cultural experience or even definitive quality of it as in Jewish or Roma traditions if I understand correctly. By this compromising thing I simply mean that people living in a certain culture would not have to compromise their way of life.

I am talking about culture in the sense it is understood in ethno-national context as opposed to national multicultural societies. And you are correct Andrew, culture is in this constant flux and all kinds of things influence it over time. I would not claim that all of this influence for the better. One surely could do without the americanisation of western cultural groups, for an example. But it is clear that this type of development does happen. Then again, I you scrutinise history you can clearly differentiate different cultural societies and their individual progression over time, culture is like a historical continuum.
I take that you would like to problematise this or the terminology in general? I do not truly agree with this supposed relative take on culturality so that path for this little debate is a dead end.