Abstract
The objective of this paper is to establish a theoretical foundation for food education in schools. Amartya Sen’s capability approach (CA), an ethical theory concerning the freedom required to achieve one’s well-being, was applied to define the previously unchallenged ethical nature of food education. The analyses were informed by foundational CA concepts, Sen’s own perspectives on ‘food’ and ‘education’, and CA-based education studies. Through these analyses, the fundamental nature of food education was defined as follows: ‘Capability to eat well’ is the freedom to convert commodities (such as food or pocket money) into the ‘functionings to eat well’ that constitute children’s ‘well-eating’ (Definition 1); and the objective of food education as public policy is to expand such capability to eat well (Def. 2). However, if an appropriate pedagogy is not employed, children’s capability can be reduced (Def. 3); therefore, to avoid this, the pedagogy has to enable them to perceive more ‘associations’ (in a Deweyan sense) between related conversion factors (Def. 4), as well as to choose and participate in the educational process (Def. 5). This theory not only elucidated the ethical nature of food education but also expanded the scope of the application of the CA to food issues.
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Notes
In Japan, following article 25 of the Basic Law on Food Education, an extensive research on food education policies in other countries was carried out (Cabinet Office 2007, 2008). This research is rich in information about 12 countries (US, UK, Australia, France, Italy, Germany, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Singapore, and South Korea), but there might have been further progress and change for some counties since 2008.
Generally, there have been two academic traditions concerning quality of life (QOL) since the 1980s: The medical tradition of developing QOL indicators specific to each disease; and the economic tradition of developing alternative indicators to traditional Gross Domestic Product (some of which relate to Sen’s capability approach). In Japanese food education research, there have been a few attempts to parameterise food-specific QOL in a total sense (that covers not only nutrition but also pleasure in meals, socialisation with others, etc.) (Takemi 2001), but all of these belong to the medical tradition. In contrast, my approach in this paper is aimed at connecting these two traditions.
I scrutinised several Japanese textbooks for nutritionists and verified that there was no so-called education theory. Theoretically, Japanese nutrition education owes much to American health and nutrition education, but both types of representative textbooks do not also include any education theory (Contento 2010; Glanz et al. 2008).
At this stage of theoretisation, it would be methodologically dangerous to mix formal education with informal one. This is because, as Dewey (1975) highlighted, the former is ‘planned’ and requires professionals, pedagogies and institutions, all of which are not the prerequisite for the latter. However, the focus on formal education does not mean to deny the importance of informal pedagogical effects, and the application of Deweyan theory will rather emphasise their connections in the fifth definition, in which children’s daily food experience is respected for the purpose of formal food education.
From the perspective of ethical theories, the commodities generally refer to what ‘the person’ possesses. However, given that children’s well-eating largely depends on their parents’ (or gatekeepers’) decisions, I included here the ‘household income’ in the commodity catalogue, though the children do not directly possess this.
Particularly in Japan, ‘freedom’ has been dominantly interpreted as ‘selfishness’ due to the Confucianist tradition or, more recently, as ‘natural rights’ imported from Western philosophy during the early modern period (Wang 2015). It is still quite rare for freedom to be interpreted as in a wide sense as Sen understands the term.
After distinguishing two meanings of freedom, Sen prefers to formulate effective freedom in a wider sense (i.e., in which control can also be considered as a part of the consequence) in order to refute the limited libertarian control view. However, as far as food education is concerned, it would be preferable not to dilute the meaning of control (even on the language level) in order to avoid the misunderstanding of freedom by advocates of food education (including the state) or to provide legitimate values for food choices in eating lives (as we will see in the second analysis). Indeed, Sen (2009, 295–296) himself reminds us that the merit of capability is for evaluating the opportunity aspect of freedom, but not necessarily for its process (control) aspect.
Sen (1982) most convincingly developed this aspect in his analysis of famine. In this work, his entitlement concept shares its focus on ‘relationships between commodities and individuals’ with capability, while the latter puts more focus on a wide range of beings and doings (not just having access to commodities as in the former).
It must be admitted that the discussion here is culturally sensitive and it might reduce the universality of following definitions. Nevertheless, a combination of vigilant stance to postmodernist theories and positive evaluation of Deweyan democratic education is necessary given the historical background of Japan characterised by the ultranationalist educational policy during the World Wars, the post-war integration of Deweyan education under the American occupation (1945–1952), and increasing revivalism of wartime anti-democratic educational policy since the mid-1950s (in fact until present). For other countries, postmodernist theories could be more easily reconciled with the CA and different definitions concerning appropriate pedagogies could be derived.
Not just the theoretical affinity, these scholars claim that Deweyan theory can also reinforce some insufficient aspects of Sen’s CA, particularly in terms of its social and temporal interaction of agency with the environment. I shall keep in mind such complementarity in deriving the fourth and fifth definitions.
While Dewey uses ‘connection’ in his early work, he prefers ‘association’ in the latter work. Association here represents a wide range of connections between humans, knowledge and things. It can refer to political associations, as well as non-political ones (such as friendship), both of which are the prerequisite for democratic societies (Uno 2014). I prefer the association concept which implies the possibility for social reform, to that of connection which is more politically neutral.
To take an example, food system theory (Niiyama 2020) already has high potential for complementing food education, because this agricultural economic theory can provide a systematic and structured understanding of associations among business operators (producers, distributors, manufactures, retailers etc.) and consumers.
This relates to a more fundamental problem concerning curricular consistency in current elementary schools. During the early post-war period in Japan, this consistency was supposed to be ensured within children’s own experience in the Deweyan ‘problem-solving’ education. However, along with the rise of economic development since the mid-1950s, it was gradually replaced by ‘systematic’ education, whereby educational content was upgraded with an uneven emphasis on mathematics and science, while neglecting the importance of curricular consistency (Yamamoto 2014).
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Ueda, H. Establishing a Theoretical Foundation for Food Education in Schools Using Sen’s Capability Approach. Food ethics 6, 6 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41055-021-00086-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s41055-021-00086-9