Genius

Close your eyes. Picture a scene inside a cooking school. Odds are you will see students learning how to chop vegetables, make bagels, wash dish, or prepare a kitchen. Perhaps even more bottom job.
 

Isn't it the right way to learn cooking? It's hard to think of better ways to learn.
 

Impractical ways of learning, such as staying in library chock-full of French culinary books, are funny when you think about it. Silly, in fact.

However, I repeat, we are in a funny society where silly things are more often than not. So when I heard about a real funny cooking school, I am not surprised at all. That school - in case you're interested to know - pays great efforts to improve the safety. Before the students learn the ropes of being a cook, they are taught safety first. They have to attend fire drills, infection control class, and data privacy ordinance lecture. The school head keeps wondering how one could do without those certificates.

After the monumental achievement (of getting those certificates), I suppose, the students will move on to learn cooking. But wait. The school head gets pretty upset about the kitchen accidents. Two students cut their fingers when they were preparing carrots last year. No more bare knives in the kitchen cupboard. Not any more. After lengthy discussion, the cooking school decides to introduce a knife with special safety design like Swiss Army knife. Here's how it works: using a digital lock, the knife won't unfold until you've keyed in the user-defined password. Truly otherworldly and brilliant.

Did the students find the new knife a success story? Alas, I never get the answer from the students because it has been decided that students are not granted access to the password at the cooking school. Not any more. Not until they graduate and become a chef. But what if they could go back to the traditional knife and learn the knife skills? No. Those knives are unsafe and banned in the school. Period.

This scenario probably sounds bizarre to you. Of course it does — you've never been studying or teaching in that school. Pity those, like me, who have to.