ABSTRACT
The development of a perfect body and the attainment of right attitudes and sentiments towards work and the community necessitate, says Charles Fourier, the introduction of two resources quite foreign to the civilized methods of education: the Opera and Cookery. Fourier gives the ‘opera’ and ‘cooking’ wide meaning and he intends there to be an immense variety of experience and work to be available in each. Fourier is clearly tremendously excited by the opportunities he sees in cooking as a method for education. Cooking, says Fourier, is particularly conducive to the formation of groups and hence is, for him, an educative process. Again Fourier hopes rather optimistically that interest in food will create curiosity in the ingredients required, in the vegetable produce and in animal breeding. Two-thirds of our gardens contain little plants, shrubs and flowers which, says Fourier, are eminently suitable for cultivation by children and women.
