Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner With Uncle Sam
This morning Trace alerted me to an article in the Washington Post that describes the impetus for the D.C. school system's decision to provide schoolchildren with three meals a day:
Officials describe the dinner initiative as having three goals: hedging against childhood hunger, reducing alarming rates of obesity and drawing more students to after-school programs, where extra academic help is available. It is also part of a broader effort, mandated by recent D.C. Council legislation, to upgrade the quality and nutritional value of school food with fresh, locally grown ingredients.
My first reactions to the story are rather conflicted. On the one hand, you hate to hear about children going hungry. But with the affordability of food these days, with the generosity of churches and food banks that provide food for the poor in the community, and with a generous taxpayer funded food stamp program, no one in America should be going hungry. And yet, the cruel reality is that many children -- like those in D.C.'s schools -- grow up in households with overwhelmed, frantic single mothers who just can't manage to feed them.
So what do we do with these hungry children, or children who suffer from malnutrition because their diet consists of doritos, oreos and sugary soda? Is it the taxpayers' job to take over the diets of schoolchildren, if parents are failing at the task? Anyone want to take a stab at outlining the conservative response to the problem at hand?
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Aug '10
Re: Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner With Uncle Sam
How can the same program achieve the twin goals of "reducing hunger" AND "reducing obesity"?
Are those two problems not mutually exclusive?
Jul '10
Re: Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner With Uncle Sam
Let's see....um...tax responsible, hard-working citizens in order to feed the children of mothers so feckless that they do not provide adequate nutrition?
Nope. Doesn't sound like the conservative approach to me.
First, let's question the basic premise that substantial numbers of kids are going hungry. Sounds like a straw crisis to me.
Secondly, if, in fact, there are some small numbers of children who aren't being adequately fed at home, let the school officials and teachers identify those children and have the social-welfare system remediate each situation individually.
But creating an entire new entitlement - taxpayer funded dinners - for an entire class of citizen - the school children of DC - is in no way conservative. It's classic nanny-state liberalism.
Aug '10
Re: Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner With Uncle Sam
If the incentives to have so many children out of wedlock are taken away, one result will be less children and more weddings. We all know that wedlock is a much better and safer place for children.
If we recognize the neglect of these children for what it is: abuse, and jail the offenders, one result will be less children and better care.
If we force the solutions back into the community and it's internal support structures- family, friends, churches, and other societal constructs, one result will be less federal government intrusion. Remember one budget begets the next years budget, and they NEVER get smaller. Paring back rarely works, only program cessation works.
Re: Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner With Uncle Sam
Misthiocracy: How can the same program achieve the twin goals of "reducing hunger" AND "reducing obesity"?
Are those two problems not mutually exclusive? · Oct 19 at 11:07am
The problems are probably mutually exclusive for an individual, but not for a poor neighborhood. I imagine that you'd have some children that are underfed and other children who subsist on a whole lot of cheap junk food.
Re: Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner With Uncle Sam
Does it make me a cold-hearted conservative that I hate this idea? Since when is the state responsible for feeding children? The lunch meal I sort of understand -- it's simply inefficient to send children home for lunch, as they used to, and it doesn't reflect the reality that for most kids, there's no mom at home during the day. What's amazing me, though, is that the DC school system -- which just last week saw the departure of the only bright spot in its sorry galaxy, Michelle Rhee -- which fails in every respect, at every task, is now adopting more tasks, more areas of future incompetence.
The problem with the DC schools isn't that the kids are hungry or fat, it's that they don't teach kids how to read, or write, or do simple math.
Sep '10
Re: Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner With Uncle Sam
When I was a kid it was a source of shame having to accept the free or reduced price school lunch. Everyone knew who the kids were that came from the broken homes with the absentee parents. My guess, is that this stigma no longer exists. I see that as a bad thing.
May '10
Re: Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner With Uncle Sam
I don't disagree with anything said above. The one point I would note however is that this may be largely about keeping kids in school in the afternoon -- the other issues maybe layered on for self-righteous effect.
When my kids stay late at school they are highly focused on what is being served for "second snack" which is a larger, warm snack that comes out at 4PM. Kids like to eat and if they can bribe the kids with food to hang around and receive more instruction or just do their homework, maybe this is neither as nefarious nor as beneficent as it sounds but simply about boosting attendance.
Plus I just like Michelle Rhee and she's still there through 10/29 so this is on her...
Edited on Oct 19, 2010 at 11:24amAug '10
Re: Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner With Uncle Sam
Up here in Soviet Canuckistan, only high schools had cafeterias. In elementary school, we all brought our lunch to school with us. The idea that schools paid to keep you fed was completely foreign. I've never quite understood what it is about American culture that prevents families from packing a lunch for their kids.
Jul '10
Re: Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner With Uncle Sam
Yeah, that's what We need: a government institution not only teaching Our children, but also teaching them that everything comes from the government, and their parents are worthless. "See kids? Government good. Home bad."
A Conservative solution? It's called charity.
May '10
Re: Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner With Uncle Sam
Well... we just don't go in for quite so much pickled fish as you guys, so it makes the task more challenging...
Aug '10
Re: Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner With Uncle Sam
Misthiocracy
I've never quite understood what it is about American culture that prevents families from packing a lunch for their kids.
And I never realizes that it was part of American culture not to pack lunch for your kids. That is, at least, what nearly all the moms where I live did. I guess whether packing lunches is American or un-American depends on where in America you grew up.
But seriously, there is a problem with further encouraging children to take all their meals away from their parents. Sharing meals together is a basic -- probably necessary -- part of family bonding. Children who grow up without a culture of family meals are less socialized (I mean socialized in the good sense).
Eating together at school provides some surrogate socialization, I'm sure, but it's a poor substitute for the real thing. Besides, it'll only teach the kids that when they have kids (which may well be all too soon), it's not their responsibility to feed them.
What happens when you teach a whole generation that feeding your own children is not a basic adult responsibility?
May '10
Re: Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner With Uncle Sam
This may shock some of you, but I have some experience with food stamps (unemployment and medical bills, let's not discuss). The point is, they're the easiest thing in the world to do. You get a swipe card, of all things. You don't even have to check in with anybody. They are so easy I actually worry about getting too used to them.
And good Lord, fresh local produce is not only inefficient, it has no nutritive benefits above produce produced in areas ideal for production.
Jul '10
Re: Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner With Uncle Sam
Sorry, see next entry
Edited on Oct 19, 2010 at 3:02pmJul '10
Re: Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner With Uncle Sam
Ragnarok: Providing breakfasts, lunches and dinners is not about eliminating hunger. Needy parents already have food stamps, WIC grants, farmer's market vouchers, etc., etc. Lunches apart, this three-meals-a-day programme is about infantalizing a population so that it need not exercise any responsibility for its behaviour. I have rights but no moral obligation, others, I don't care who, have a moral duty to care for me and my children. If the goal is to demoralize the family even more and to create economic delinquents of as many people as possible, this is a good way of going about it.
Why stop with food? Since some children have nicer homes than others, why not provide luxury accommodation so that all children feel equal? Initially, children may stay only on school nights and spend weekends with their parents, provided parents find it convenient to have them for the two nights. Won't that be more salubrious for the children and after all, it's all about the children, innit? · Oct 19 at 2:59pm
Aug '10
Re: Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner With Uncle Sam
Midget Faded Rattlesnake
Misthiocracy
I've never quite understood what it is about American culture that prevents families from packing a lunch for their kids.
And I never realizes that it was part of American culture not to pack lunch for your kids. That is, at least, what nearly all the moms where I live did. I guess whether packing lunches is American or un-American depends on where in America you grew up.
Ok, maybe it was unfair of me to paint all of the United States with the same brush. It's just that's the idea I've always gotten from consuming decades of US television.
Every show that features children in elementary school has scenes where the kids are in line at the cafeteria, waiting for the lunch-lady to give them a scoop of mystery meat.
Growing up, part of the mystical allure of the USA was that you guys had these sophisticated cafeterias, and we had to sit at our desks and eat from our brown bags.
Of course, it never occured to me that the cafeterias on tv might merely be a convenient set for hack television producers, and not actually reality.
Edited on Oct 19, 2010 at 3:27pmAug '10
Re: Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner With Uncle Sam
Trace Urdan
Well... we just don't go in for quite so much pickled fish as you guys, so it makes the task more challenging... · Oct 19 at 11:26am
Actually, if Canada had a "national food" it would be Kraft macaroni & cheese (known up here as Kraft Dinner). It's a culinary institution. Ex-pats overseas pay good money for boxes of Kraft Dinner on eBay.
Jul '10
Re: Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner With Uncle Sam
Misthiocracy
Midget Faded Rattlesnake
Misthiocracy
I've never quite understood what it is about American culture that prevents families from packing a lunch for their kids.
What you need to understand is that school lunches in the US are part and parcel of farm subsidies. In order to buy votes from farmers, Congress propped up the price of farm commodities by doling out food to schoolkids.
That's why schools keep pouring milk down kids' throats - not just at lunchtime, but for snacktime in lower grades: dairy farmers are a highly-organized group. They even got the Feds to insist that un-opened cartons of milk cannot be stored for future consumption; once they're put in front of the kids, they either have to be consumed or disposed of.
May '10
Re: Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner With Uncle Sam
The problem with this kind of program is its shotgun approach. In 2008 our local school system received a federal grant that enabled them to provide "breakfast in the classroom" for every elementary child in the district. Apparently it has been shown that low income students perform better when they have a healthy breakfast in a classroom environment rather than in the cafeteria. As a school volunteer I saw firsthand a huge waste of school cafeteria labor and food because they had to follow federal guidelines exactly or be penalized. Breakfasts were counted in the lunchroom, distributed in coolers to classrooms, counted again by teachers, who then distributed them to any students who wanted them. The entire breakfast had to be distributed to each child even if they just wanted a breakfast sandwich or a glass of milk. A "share" table was set up for any extras, but teachers were NOT allowed to put any extra fruits, milks, sandwiches, etc. into classroom refrigerators. So each day all that extra food HAD to be thrown into the trash. It made me furious.
May '10
Re: Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner With Uncle Sam
If students didn't claim sandwiches or other foods they were returned to the cafeteria where the cooked chicken or eggs were then also trashed. Then all returned breakfasts were counted again. There must have been some noise at the state level because our governor did sign an authorization to allow the extra undistributed breakfast food to be given to charities, though I didn't see whether that was accomplished in our schools.
Daily academic warmup activities were replaced with breakfast time, and elementary teachers spent the first 20 minutes of class cleaning up spilled milk and monitoring the "share" table to make sure one student didn't take 3 sandwiches or 5 juices. And I'll admit that by mid-year I sometimes depended on the free school breakfast because it simplified our morning routine and enabled me to just get my daughter dressed and out the door instead of having to fix and clean up breakfast. I justified it in my mind because the food was being cooked anyhow and if she didn't eat with her classmates she just sat and watched them eat. This program was the worst example of bureaucratic inefficiency I've ever seen.
Edited on Oct 22, 2010 at 9:35amMay '10
Re: Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner With Uncle Sam
So now the school system is to become some form of socialist Kibbutz for incompetent parents.
We in the west eat better than many renaissance princes. Have we reached the nadir of citizens of the wealthiest countries on earth not able to manage a single daily meal for their children? (Single mothers do indeed have it tough, and where exactly are all those dead beat dads when it comes to feeding their children?).