Food for the soul - religion in the curriculum

"Our life is made by the death of others." Leonardo da Vinci

I have been avoiding moving on through my food curriculum recently because the next subject on the list I originally made was Religion - or Scripture as we used to call it at school. It seemed to me that it was such a big subject that I kept on deferring it.

However, this week's picture in my Redstone Family diary was this one by Nicole Eisenman called Seder, which depicts a Jewish family at the traditional dinner for Seder - Passover to those of us who know very little of Jewish tradition. Now I don't particularly like the painting - I find it a bit grotesque, but nevertheless it was a prompt.

So religion in the food curriculum - represented at the top by Leonardo's Last Supper - to which I shall return. With respect to the curriculum I suspect that no state school teaches any form of religion these days. Obviously the Catholic schools do and maybe the nominally religious schools such as PLC (Presbyterian Ladies College). Indeed I just checked the curriculum at my grandchildrens' high schools and as far as I can see there is no mention of religion unless it crops up somewhere under the banner of humanities, philosophy or sociology. Let's assume anyway that actually religion is not part of the school curriculum these days. However, I included it because it was indeed part of my - state school - curriculum, with a mini religious service every morning and a weekly (I think) scripture lesson, which was really Bible studies I suppose. And I actually think that we should definitely include religion in the curriculum.

Now I am not at all religious but there are two reasons I think it should be part of our education. One is that just about every society's way of being is founded on religion, even if the religion has become redundant in the public affairs aspect of life, and almost disappeared in most people's lives. Secondly religion is still such a divisive, problematic thing - which is why it is not taught in government schools I think, and also because it is probably considered to be a kind of brainwashing. However, that very divisiveness is a reason that it would be wise to teach our children the fundamentals at least of what the main religions of the world stand for - comparative religion I guess. With understanding comes less division. So yes religion that is not religious should indeed be part of the curriculum - in some ways it is vital even.

Interestingly in all religions one of the last things that lingers is food. Food is life, and some would say religion - or a belief system at least - is also life. I think there are probably two main aspects of the food and religion partnership - one is traditions and the food associated with them and the other is the rules that derive from religion that apply to food, and of course the two are interrelated and they both linger even after the decline of the religion.

So traditions. Since the beginning of time man has sought to explain those big questions of Where did we come from, Who are we and Where are we going? - not to mention Who is responsible for everything we see and experience? And so they invented beings who controlled it all. Sometimes it was the thing itself - the sun, the moon, the sea, a powerful animal ... Sometimes they invented supernatural creatures like this Lion Man from the Ice Age, some 40,000 years ago, or whole pantheons of Gods, each with a particularly responsibility. Having invented these supernatural beings whole systems of appeasement and worship began, as well as rules about how to live in a way that these individuals would appreciate.

Early traditions were divided into appeasing and thanking the gods. Appeasing involved mostly pretty gruesome sacrifices of some kind - the worse the scenario the more valuable the sacrifice - including children. Well early man didn't understand why there was drought, flood, fire and all the other disasters that hit us from time to time, and so they thought they'd done something wrong and so the gods had to be appeased.

I suppose over time they realised this didn't work but the tradition of sacrifice continued with gifts of food. To this day. On the one hand by giving gifts of food to the gods themselves, or their servants - the monks, the priests, and so on they demonstrate their allegiance and on the other hand they also keep the gods happy.

And so a way of learning about the traditions of different societies in the world, would be through the food that is made for such purposes and how it is used in daily life, in religious festivals and on occasions such as birth, marriage and death. For food is often fundamental to all of these things and the particular chosen food often has some religious origin.

There are numerous religious festivals around the world. Seder - which began this post is just one, and is just an example of all of the others. Ceremonies are performed, the table setting has to be just so and only particular foods are eaten. So it is with just about every other religious festival and each one of them requires a post of its own - in my case - and a lesson of its own in the case of education.

Most importantly perhaps one should learn about the religious traditions that lie beneath the structure of the society in which we live. Christianity may be in decline, but there are so many ways in which it is still part of our life from Easter eggs, and hot cross buns to literary symbols laws, and moral codes. If you study literature as I did, sooner or later you will come across some form of religious symbolism and it will often be associated with religion - apples, lambs, bread, fish, wine ... If you have no religious education you will miss them.

Jesus himself is often described in terms of food - the Lamb of God, a Fisher of men, and that last supper is at the root of the Christian service of Communion or Mass, with its ancient origins in human sacrifice when the body and blood of Christ are consumed in symbolic form.

Then there are the rules around food - the food that must not be consumed - either ever - pork, all meat, alcohol ... - or just sometimes - fish on Fridays, the Sunday roast, hot cross buns, pancakes... and in the process of learning about these prohibitions and celebrations you would learn a lot of history and sociology along the way. And geography, agriculture ... And you could make it more fun by cooking some of the food as well.

Although all of the above is interesting and although as irreligious as many of us are we still take part in various religious events - like Christmas and Easter, I am indeed very conscious that religious teaching is very definitely not encouraged in state funded schools because of potential offense. Surely however we cannot move forward as citizens of an increasingly multicultural world without understanding and respecting the customs, traditions, the way of being of other societies. Food would be an excellent entry point. We all enjoy food, and increasingly we are all interested in the foods of other cultures, so use it to understand.

"Food to a large extent is what holds a society together, and eating is closely linked to deep spiritual experiences." Peter Farb