No, kids should not be gardening in school either:
Imagine that as a young and desperately poor Mexican man, you had made the dangerous and illegal journey to California to work in the fields with other migrants. There, you performed stoop labor, picking lettuce and bell peppers and table grapes; what made such an existence bearable was the dream of a better life. You met a woman and had a child with her, and because that child was born in the U.S., he was made a citizen of this great country. He will lead a life entirely different from yours; he will be educated. Now that child is about to begin middle school in the American city whose name is synonymous with higher learning, as it is the home of one of the greatest universities in the world: Berkeley. On the first day of sixth grade, the boy walks though the imposing double doors of his new school, stows his backpack, and then heads out to the field, where he stoops under a hot sun and begins to pick lettuce.
Eh, Japanese schoolkids do a little gardening at school and it hasn’t stopped them from learning math and science. A little perspective is in order.
Do the Japanese structure their curriculum around it, like this progam is designed to do? I have a suspicion that they aren’t measuring their flower beds for math class.
If you want kids to garden, start an after-school gardening club. If you want have nutritious food in school, then don’t serve junk for lunch. If you want kids not to have type-II diabeties, there is a class called gym (hopefully).
Thankfully, this garden nonsense seems restricted to California.