Thursday, November 27, 2014

NCTQ: NATIONAL COUNCIL ON THANKSGIVING QUALITY (Part I) …and Yes, Virginia, there is a part II + III

from  NCTQ http://bit.ly/1vprgsh - reblogged by from Diane Ravitch's blog

Who We Are: 

We are a bi-partisan, not-for-profit established to reform current Thanksgiving Dinners.  We believe that every child deserves a high-quality Thanksgiving Dinner, and we advocate for raising standards and ensuring best Thanksgiving practices for all children in the United States.  We are supported by for-profit groups that seek to change the Thanksgiving-Industrial-Complex in a manner that moves profit from individual Thanksgiving laborers (your moms & dads, grandparents, and aunts & uncles) to shareholders who will standardize Thanksgiving Dinners, so they can all be considered highly effective.  Our board members combined have hundreds of years of experience in eating Thanksgiving Dinners, and thus they are experts.*

 

Why Our Work Matters:

No one would deny that every child deserves a high-quality Thanksgiving Dinner.  Literally millions of dollars are spent each year on Thanksgiving Dinners, and yet there is little tangible research pointing to the best ways to prepare Thanksgiving Dinner.  We seek to address this gap.  We also seek to report on the quality of Thanksgiving Dinners currently being offered to the nation’s children.  We already know that compared to other nations, American Thanksgiving Dinners are low quality.**  In fact, everyone really knows this, right?  We mean, come on: this fact is reported endlessly by the press, repeated constantly by politicians, and it’s denied by your moms, dads, and other family members.  Do we really have to provide evidence here?  Really?  You may like your own family’s Thanksgiving Dinner, but you know in your heart that the Thanksgiving Dinners of others in this country are of shamefully low quality.  Especially when compared to the Thanksgiving Dinners of other nations, as stated above.

We are also pleased to announce NCTQ’s not-for-profit partner, Thanksgiving For America (TFA), which uses government and private donations to replace moms and dads with elite college graduates with high grade point averages who will cook Thanksgiving Dinner for families in high-needs neighborhoods.  TFA offers a highly-intensive, 45-minute Thanksgiving Dinner training course, so you can be sure they will bring best practices to their cooking.***

(Continued in next post http://bit.ly/1tRqezP )

Remember, when you think NCTQ, think ‘Turkey”!
Footnotes, because there have to be footnotes.

* Few of our experts have actually cooked Thanksgiving Dinners, but they have read a lot of recipes.

** Other nations do not celebrate Thanksgiving, so we substituted other national holidays for the purposes of this report; thus, our research compares turkey to goat; dressing to Koshari; green beans to Jiaozi; and, apples to oranges. Note also, that in many other nations, only the food of the very wealthy was reported; thus the average American family’s Thanksgiving meal was compared to the holiday meals of the highest classes of other nations.  The gaps in quality between the meals we researched from other nations and US Thanksgiving Dinners was highly significant.

*** TFA fellows will use the kitchens and foods available in the host family’s kitchen.  If there is no stove, the dinner will be served cold.  If there no food, dinner will be replaced with standardized Thanksgiving Dinner Conversation™

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