Putting Public Health To Rights Through Education

Where as pharmaceutical companies have a mission statement that wants citizens on an average of 4 prescribed drugs from cradle to grave...we want Education Reform from cradle to grave, as it's much better for Public Health 

Changes in Education Policy Please 

At school:

Start with the basics and keep Environment and Food competencies and Ethics in the curriculum, from the beginning to end, not dependent on what subjects are chosen for examination.

1) How To Identify Beneficial and Harmful Insects, without fear or distaste. They should not be rounded up as bugs or pests...as it plays into the hands of those who will want to sell them pesticides later in life.
2) Consider, decide and prepare food. The question what to eat? should deal directly with the four reasons people eat meat:
They like the taste. It's traditional (everyone does it). The belief that it's necessary for nourishment.  The question, what else is there to eat? These four give ample room for developing thinking skills, cooking from scratch with whole foods, the acquired taste for those flavours, growing skills and developing altruism and empathy; with discussions of what does everyone else get to eat in areas where there is not enough water or countries like India where they believe, for example, that cows are sacred. Each child must decide for themselves whether they think it's right or wrong to eat meat or wear leather and all those considerations of how to live their lives in future.

There are many pieces to the jigsaw and if children have a developed kindness and disposition to animals, interest in their unique attributes and sympathy with what happens to them as farm animals, it will help us transition to a society that eats less meat. If there continues to be pandemics, the next generation won't have to be told to 'be kind', 'protect their grandparents' , cover their mouths when they cough and wash their hands before they put them to their face or eat.

3) Relational Development. This is a quote I came across in my diary...I was going to crop it but all my writing around it shows how busy life is, even in a lockdown. Maybe that should be a fourth topic to teach;
4) Valuing, organising and prioritising your time!

The Get Up & Go Diaries are great to keep you engaged in your career and social plans, with many inserts of wisdom of its own

5) We need sensory, healthy, playful green spaces - commonly known as a garden. It's not rocket science but massive school projects are ending up with only tarmac forecourts.

Universities

Ethics for all and Nutrition for Those That Need To Know

All university degree routes must include an Ethics module each semester. It is empowering as well as crucial that students recognise the impacts of their actions and future work and learn how to weigh them up and make good decisions. In educational leaders, in Europe, Belgium, Philosophy is attached to all courses, meaning that students develop their thinking and moral standpoints too.

All Medical Degrees must include Nutrition. There are a multitude of physical and mental health indicators connected to diet. There are a multitude of physical and mental health diseases connected to our diet. Minority through addictions and over eating but mainly through agricultural and industrial chemicals and other toxins accumulated in the body. Even the over-cooking and preservation of foods that destroy the vitamin and mineral profile and the mass-production of food that has altogether diminished the nutritional value of even original ingredients. If doctors were talking about organic food, whole foods, including raw foods in your diet and the connections they come across between various cancers and mobile phone use and pesticides with celiac disease and dairy with respiratory problems then the public would listen, learn and adapt. Vijay Joshi on Diet, Reversing Diabetes, Thyroid, Hypertension
This is a friend of mine, now a nutritionist in India, who used to think that the western diet was best until he got diabetes and needed to put together exercise, medication, other lifestyle changes, manage stress. It is a fascinating story that encompasses the whole fear and experience of being caught in the illness and in the hands of doctors and hospitals. Most importantly for health, he learnt that Diabetes is not a one way street, there is a way out through diet. This is the message we need to give; Not just medication for ever but full recovery. We should not be leaving it out of doctor's training.

Most importantly for a Policy on Education, though, it describes how he was told to give things up! And he did it. He gave up animal ingredients, he gave up tea and coffee and artificial sweeteners. This is the power of doctors. We need doctors to advise people to make changes to their diet and what changes to make. That is the only way to push the green transition and save the environment. People need to be told by those seen as professionals that clean foods (not chemically grown), whole foods, organic diets and limiting exposure to toxins are the way to Health too.
My Organic Vegan Raw Meals On Wheels Menus
Light-hearted Lifestyle Content on Diet and Health

Adult Education

In Ireland we have Fetac which is an alternative qualifying system, mainly in vocational and practical skills with academic components. However, Fetac levels 7&8 amount to an undergraduate degree. A few years ago, there was a sudden rush on qualifying all the carers we have in Irish society. Courses were offered in social care, nursing care etc. They weren't just offered, you could no longer do your job, even if you had 30 years care experience, unless you subjected yourself to two years back-to-basics and college, theory and assignments for one of these qualifications. Maybe they're good, maybe not but they are geared towards a clinical, safe, under stimulated and under nourished care package as before. Again, no food and nutrition section. Food in residential care settings is notoriously conventional, with little response to dietary requirements or nutritional benefits to the particular residents.

My experience qualifying in Horticulture three years ago   

"This says it all, as I sit down to write some proposals to move towards Food Security in Ireland. I was the only Horticulture student graduating that day, many in Care. There were 500 applicants to manage pig farms - Fetac Level 5 - the next term and not enough to put together a class of 6 in Horticulture.

No wonder biodiversity is in so much trouble! It had even crept into our course. Very last thing, they added a compulsory Monsanto spraying module, biohazard suits, back pack, learning the concentrations. Still not a word about poisoning pollinators and actually any alighting insect be they beneficial or not - birds too. Never a word about organic growing methods. Not a word about how the rushes and weeds just go brown, they don't miraculously disappear, you still have to pull them out and meanwhile you've rendered the soil and surrounding area inert.

Acceptable Pesticide Levels In Food
Not a word about how the safe levels of pesticide traces in our food has been deemed higher and higher. And I don't remember any elaboration on public health. Even the fact that agri sprays accumulate in the body, we don't break them down and they disable our digestive enzymes and WHO says they could be carcinogenic. Do you remember when all MEPs gave a urine sample and 100% were found to have over this level of glyphosate in their systems!

And even the gardeners and council worker's don't know and haven't been told (even since Kilkenny County Council declared its own Climate and Biodiversity Emergency: Spraying away, butchering habitats, inspecting and granting licenses to farm operations that are 100% destructive to the environment.

Labelling

Furthermore, it's the hard grafting natural farmers and growers that have to find extra money for labelling and certification. The conventional farms can kick the crap out of their animals, confine them indoors their entire life, feed them genetically modified grains, spray their potatoes 30 times (average, no exaggeration) and every other crop in their short sowing season, preserve every product with refined sugars or synthetic E numbers and consumers are not told on labels about that.
Still, at least now during the lockdown everyone has been growing vegetables and planting fruit! Yes!! But let's get the education in line with the needs of society. Organic food and responsible technology.

Me graduating in Horticulture, later that year with a Masters too, of sorts...Master Composter, run by Stop Food Waste. Now that would be amazing to adapt to schools and businesses.

Managers and Industry Leaders - Individual Consultancy

All managers must undertake a course to effect system change, specific to their operations. We have the Business Continuity Grant and other Covid 19 recovery resources. There are plenty of informed and competent mentors who would be delighted to be paid to work one to one over five weeks and the minutes and actions taken recorded and collated centrally. The course should investigate, analyse and provide ways to stop waste, resources use, contamination, pollution, use of harmful cleaners or components and include total transparency and assessments of supply chains. 

Plans for manufacturing plants that must be repurposed altogether can be helped with by their environmental consultant too. 

We have lots of high tech military operations here in Ireland which we shouldn't really as we're a neutral company. Our military technology could be required to shift to meet Civilian and Environmental needs, now that we have the climate emergency to deal with. Ireland's Arm Trade

"The MEDACT webinar on Arms Conversion "The Arms Industry in the Era of Covid 19" at home. It gives a fascinating insight into the truly visionary Lucas Plan project in the 1970s when the workers drew up plans to produce useful equipment instead of war planes and weapons. The plan included an amazing 150 products, not only hybrid car engines, wind turbines and microprocessors, but also home dialysis machines, portable life support machines and mobility aids. None were allowed to be made. What a different state our economy would be in now if it had been accepted" 

Covid 19 Corporate Plan for Recovery
  
Tech Giants though have suddenly been made heroes by the pandemic and substantially richer!