Where schooling culture & diet culture meet.

Radical Mothering No. 36

It’s Back to School week for many of us - and Not Back to School for others!

And it feels like a good time to talk a bit about the culture we build around schooling - schooling culture.

Schooling is not only a thing we do, it is also a culture. Because schooling is ubiquitous, and for many it is seen as “the norm”, the authority on learning and education - it has, in the process, unintentionally (or some might say intentionally) created a culture attached to itself. One that is common enough to all schools and all ideas around learning and education, and is rarely questioned, that it therefore deserves to be named “schooling culture.”

This culture serves to affirm its values and sort of self-legitimise its existence. It is upheld by the education system in several, if not all, Western, industrialized countries. But it is also pervasive in society at large.

I don’t mean to bash school (we need it, many of our children enjoy it, etc etc), but that doesn’t mean the culture surrounding it is immune to criticism! We are all subject to it, in fact, whether our children go to school or not.

If we take the dominant paradigm of schooling, what Pasi Sahlberg calls GERM (the Global Education Reform Movement), we see parallels between cultures of mainstream schooling across many industrialized countries. So while each individual school might have their own culture, research shows us we can begin to talk about schooling culture as an intentional, Western movement that promotes universality, accountability and metrics and aims to spread its own set of beliefs and assumptions on a global scale, through policies, testing and rankings.

Schooling culture has its roots in a neoliberal movement that is intimately linked to ideas of hierarchy and systems of power over, viewing children as empty vessels to be filled, and policies to bring capitalism and Western ideas of success and education to the majority world.

It places these ideas as superior to creating an understanding of knowledge and learning that is culture-specific, fluid and shifting, and something that children co-create with each other, the adults around them, and their environment (I’m including references on this topic at the bottom, if you want proof/want to dig deeper!).

Once we begin to see this.. we also begin to see a lot of parallels here, with.. well, diet culture.

(I am not going to write about how diet culture is perpetuated in actual schools - that is a related, but separate, topic. And one others are talking about already here, and here.)

Diet culture, defined by Nadia Craddock on NPR, is a collection of assumptions "telling us that there's one way to be and one way to look and one way to eat and that we are a better person, we're a more worthy person if our bodies are a certain way."

Virginia Sole-Smith, author of Fat Talk, defines diet culture as “the whole set of systems and beliefs that teaches us that a thin body is the best body. It's deeply connected to, and a byproduct of, White supremacy. It’s baked into our larger institutions and systems, our public health communities and initiatives, the way food and weight and health are talked about in schools.”

Schooling culture may be defined as the perpetuation of a set of values, assumptions and beliefs about education, learning and childhood, by the institution of school but also by society at large (because our society is, overwhelmingly, a schooled society.) Through school and society, we internalize cultural expectations and assumptions about whiteness, productivity, success, consent, trust and more.

These two cultures are not the same. In fact, there are stark differences. But there are also worrying overlaps.

Let’s start with Whiteness.

Both schooling culture and diet culture perpetuate white supremacy partly because they create an ideal that we must all adhere to, and this ideal is rooted in Whiteness and privilege, and upheld by schools and the diet and wellness industry.

Research has tracked the very beginning of discrimination from the school system and teachers towards children of colour as early as preschool. A study that asked teachers to watch videos of children and point out any “challenging behaviour,” demonstrated that teachers are more likely to spend more time watching black kids than white kids, especially boys. Research has shown the complexities immigrant and latinx children face in preschool and school, including teachers who don’t understand their language or culture, and stereotyping.

Bettina Love lays the blame squarely at the feet of what she terms “the educational survival complex” aka the US school system. She dispels any ideas we might hold that education is somehow immune to racism and white supremacy, and writes, “education from the outset was built on White supremacy, anti-Blackness, and sexism. America’s first public schools.. were only for White, wealthy males.” She goes on to narrate how any group outside of this minority that fought for inclusion in the education system, encountered what she terms “White rage.”

“Education is one of the primary tools used to maintain White supremacy and anti-immigrant hate,” says Love.

Diet culture, too, is rooted in Whiteness. Chrissy Taylor writes about her struggles to try to fit her body to a white ideal: “I could never achieve long, flowing blond hair or blue eyes or white skin, but I could try to be thin. I spent a lot of time chasing thinness. But what I finally realized as an adult is that no matter how much I changed and contorted myself, I would never be able to attain Eurocentric standards of beauty, which are rooted in white supremacy and racism.”

I recognise this parallel between schooling and diet culture can be hard to read for those who need or want to send our children to school. And although it’s messy, and the relationship between school and schooling culture is enmeshed, I think we can separate school itself from schooling culture. We can, as Nikolai Pizarro says, “decenter schooling” in our home, and still send our children to school, in the same way you can work to dismantle diet culture and still cook, talk about, enjoy and eat food.

We can dismantle the harmful culture, and build inclusive ones instead.

I repeat: homeschooling is NOT a guaranteed opt-out of schooling culture. Schooling culture is pervasive just as diet culture is. It is found in schools, and in most other institutions, as well as within us and in society at large.

Colonisation & Power Over.

Both cultures are deeply entrenched in our systems of colonization, patriarchy and power over.

Mass schooling was conceived as a hierarchical system, only possible because governments and industry hold more power than citizens, and adults hold more power than children.

Akilah S. Richards talks and writes about how school is a colonizing force, and how stepping outside of “schoolishness” can be liberating. She is an advocate for the liberation of children from adultism (the systemic discrimination of children), and forced schooling.

Diet culture too, is a system of power over and to some extent a colonizing force that upholds systems of oppression: this happens through the co-opting of indigenous foods by whiteness, the labelling of food traditionally associated with BIPOC as “unhealthy”, the restriction to food access for those who are marginalized, and the labelling of expensive, inaccessible food as “healthy”, while cheaper, more easily accessed food is “junk.” It happens through the policing of bodies that do not comply to the diet culture “ideal,” and the ways we obsess and self-police our own bodies.

Constructed Hierarchies

Which brings us to the constructed hierarchy of foods within diet culture - some foods like colorful (all the colors of the rainbow, possibly!), organic, plant-based ones are seen as “good”, and others like fatty, sugary, processed foods are seen as “bad.”

Its mirror-image in schooling culture is the way we rank children’s interests, hobbies and academic pursuits. In schooling there is a hierarchy of subjects. Academics are good - if you do well at Maths, Science, and English, it’s seen as a good thing; if your interest lies in other topics, perhaps even ones that aren’t taught in school (because they’re not seen as being part of a “good education”), like carpentry, or cooking, to name just two, then you might be the most talented carpenter of all, but you might still fail at exams, and therefore fail in the eyes of schooling culture.

Both diet culture and schooling construct hierarchies of food and learning, that are simply that - social constructs that serve to support a specific culture and agenda.

You cannot separate them from capitalism

Journalist and critic H. L. Mencken didn’t mince words when he said that the goal of public education was never to raise critical thinking, knowledgeable, aware humans, but “simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality.” In other words: schooling and education (one and the same at this point!) was seen as a form of social control. The aims of maintaining social classes and providing skilled workers for industry were intricately related.

Diet culture, too, is sustained by economic interests and thrives within our capitalist system: ultimately, it is about money and control. The global “wellness” market was estimated to be at $1.5 trillion in 2021, and growing fast. And so is schooling culture: curricula, testing and competing on a global stage are supported by economic interests, both in the form of testing and school curriculum companies (see Sold a Story for how the ways in which children in the US are taught to read are steeped in economic interests), and in the form of GERM - an increasingly global movement that sees children as economic units and “adults-in-the-making”, and education as a way to further a nation’s economic growth, and position on the global stage. The US education market was estimated at $1.4 trillion in 2021, and estimated to grow to $3.1 trillion by 2030.

There is only one way to be

Our dominant educational paradigm is pushing for increasing uniformity in schooling: what is meant by this is that, increasingly, there is one right way to be educated. There is a curriculum, and there are “standards” that are applied across the board. Many, many children and young people fall through the cracks, as we know from the appalling literacy rates in the US (54% of adults in 2023 have a literacy rate below 6th grade level), and the well-documented school to prison pipeline, among many other indicators. Increasingly uniform education systems create a schooling culture that children are forced to fit inside of, rather than one that sees children for who they are, and takes their voices into account.

This is also what diet culture does: there is one, or at best a small selection of, ways to have a “good” body in the world - which is often white, non-disabled, neurotypical, wealthy, and thin. These are the images we see on billboards, online advertising, social media, children’s movies and more. The message to our young people is: either you fit this mold, or the body you inhabit is somehow wrong.

Both cultures mean that many children will be square pegs trying to fit into round holes.

It’s about results

Schooling culture is a productivity-first, results-driven culture. Teachers are increasingly told that their careers depend on their student’s results. Even early childhood education in many countries is now under fire about getting children as young as 2 and 3 ready for school. And schooling culture itself, is about your end of year results, moving onto the next grade, and ultimately going on to do something “worthwhile” with your life.

Diet culture, too, is all about what you look like at the end. No-one is enjoying the process of dieting! It’s all about - did you get the results you wanted? Did your child lose weight? Were they successful at the diet?

One Truth

Both cultures are metrics-based. We measure how “well” children do in school through grades and exams. We measure how well you’re performing diet culture through weight, and other metrics. We assess and evaluate children on their minds, spirits and bodies.

Not only do we have an obsession with measuring and policing, but the metrics themselves are skewed because much like IQ tests or SATs are inherently biased to favor the people they were created by and for (white men), diet culture metrics are also created by a white, patriarchal system for the benefit of that system. There are no “objective” measures for intelligence or talent, as much as there are no “objective” measures for beauty or health.

Both schooling and diet cultures are cultures of One Truth - and the reality is that learning and existing inside of a body do not look one way only, but many. They are often specific to place and culture, to individuals, to their environment, their genetics, their families, and so much more.

External validation

Both cultures rely on our desperate need for external validation, to feel like we are worthy, and we belong.

To some extent, seeking validation from external metrics is human - we all want others to see us as good, smart, funny, and all the things!

But no child is born hating their body, quite the opposite in fact; and no child is born not knowing how to learn.

What is insidious is that both diet and schooling cultures play on our need to feel seen and loved, and construct ways we can and should seek praise and acceptance from others, by adhering to certain standards - eating and looking a certain way, or performing well in a schooled society. Both cultures introduce the idea of conditional acceptance; our worth is now dependent on the ways we make our minds and bodies conform to an ideal.

The myth of Scarcity

Schooling culture thrives on competition and comparison, pitting children against one another for grades, competitions, exam results, entrance to college; diet culture also thrives on comparison and competition (who is more beautiful, thinner, healthier?).

They are both cultures of scarcity: where our social, political and economic systems conspire to persuade us that we are never enough. Scarcity culture tells us that we are constantly competing with ourselves and others. We must always do better, we must always progress. The internal narrative is, “I never have enough time/energy/money/friends/love.”

The opposite of scarcity, says Brené Brown, is enough: in other words, worthiness. It is the internalizing of the belief that from birth and throughout our lives, at all times and circumstances, in all places, in all versions of ourselves, we are worthy of love and belonging.

Neither diet culture nor schooling culture support this belief. In both cultures, the overwhelming assumption is: you are a work in progress, you are not enough, you can do better, you must earn your worth.

Coercion v. Trust

Both cultures are rooted in coercion & restriction, rather than trust. Both claim they have our children’s best interest at heart, and are upheld by expert adults who tell us what our children need: how they are to eat and exercise, how they are to learn and develop.

Schooling culture assumes that children need to be told how, when, and where to learn. It erodes our trust in our children’s innate abilities, sets arbitrary timelines for learning, and makes top-down decisions about the things worth learning. We know that intrinsic motivation requires a sense autonomy, and yet we continue to force, manipulate and cajole rather than trust our young people.

Diet culture sets out arbitrary timelines for growth based on a presumed “average” child, tells parents how, when and what to feed their children, and overrides children’s innate sense of what their body needs, when they are full and when they are hungry, when they need to move and when they need to rest. It erodes our children’s sense of ownership of their bodies by routinely telling them what their bodies should look like and what they should be doing with them.

Both cultures are fundamentally adultist cultures, where adults wield their power over young people under the guise of needing to protect and care for them.

But wait.

But diet culture is literally harming, even killing, young people, you might say - and schooling culture is not!

That’s where you’re wrong. The school-to-prison-pipeline is a well-documented reality for Black and brown youth. Suicide, post-school restraint collapse, school refusal, body shaming and harmful “healthy eating” advice, and increasing mental health challenges and pathologising of children are all linked to schooling culture, and are actively harming young people. Failing to teach children to read because not all children learn at the same time, in the same way, is harmful. The erasure of marginalized youth by a schooling culture that seeks increasing uniformity is harmful.

But some children love and thrive in school! And nobody thrives in diet culture. True. Some children, in some schools, do thrive. But I don’t believe children as a group thrive within a ubiquitous schooling culture, which upholds a limited set of beliefs and applies them to every single child.

We can have physical schools without imposing schooling culture on everybody, in the same way we can be in relationship with men, and still want to dismantle patriarchy; we can eat food without imposing diet culture on everybody.

A Personal Note

I emerged from diet culture and schooling culture not knowing who I was or what I wanted. It could have been a lot worse - I was privileged enough to have access to material and emotional support when I needed it. The common thread, in the end, was that I lost my sense of self, and whatever remained of it I learned not to trust.

Our school system can do better. Our “wellness” narrative can do better. Our entire society can find more authentic, empowering ways to talk about education, learning, health and success.

Sonya Renée Taylor writes in her book, “Children’s bodies are not public property,” and they aren’t their parent’s property either. Children deserve ownership over their minds and their bodies.

Perhaps we could begin by framing young people’s resistance to schooling in the same way we frame their resistance to diet culture: as a legitimate, courageous act to break free of an oppressive system.

References

Adair, J. (2012). Discrimination as a Contextualised Obstacle to the Preschool Teaching of Young Latino Children of Immigrants. Urban Education, 13:3.

Escayg, K. & Daniel, B. J. (2019). Introduction: Children, Race, and Racism: Global Perspectives. Journal of Curriculum, Teaching, Learning and Leadership in Education, 4:2.

Moss, P. (2014). Transformative Change and Real Utopias in Early Childhood Education: A story of democracy, experimentation and potentiality. Routledge.

Cameron C. & Moss, P. (2020) Transforming Early Childhood in England. https://www.uclpress.co.uk/products/128464

Sims, M. (2017). Neoliberalism and early childhood. Cogent Education. 4(1)

Giroux, H. A. (2020). Neoliberalism’s War on Higher Education. Haymarket Books.

Black, C. The evaluative gaze. Found at: https://carolblack.org/the-gaze