James Cameron is reportedly preparing to launch America's first vegan/plant-based elementary school in Calabasas, California in Fall 2015. The school is called the MUSE School, and will serve an all-plant cafeteria menu.
"The average person would say vegan, but we say whole food, plant-based. It's about raising kids who don't think it's strange or exotic or worthy of a pat on the back to be doing the right thing for the living biosphere," Cameron said.
The MUSE School was launched in 2006 by Cameron's wife, Suzy Amis Cameron, and her sister, Rebecca Amis, when Amis Cameron was fed up with the schooling options available for her own children. Today, the MUSE School is a nonprofit which educates children from age two through high school on two campuses.
This has been a topic since June 2014, when NPR's The Salt covered the early efforts. "We are gradually moving toward a plant-based menu because we do call ourselves an environmental schools," Amis Cameron told The Salt. "Within the next year and a half, we will be plant-based."
"Already, the school has a strong seed-to-table program that's producing fresh fruits and vegetables grown by its 140 students," reported The Salt. "They're guided by the school's full-time, year-round gardener and educator, Paul Hudak."
Amis Cameron admits it hasn't been easy to convince parents that the meat and dairy products at the MUSE school need to go.
"People have their cultural reasons for eating meat, their traditional reasons, their likes and dislikes. But slowly we are offering educational programs through MUSE, for not only the children, mainly for the grownups, because the children, they live and breath [the environmental way] already," Amis Cameron said.
By Samantha DiMauro, Education World Contributor
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