Friday, February 24, 2012

Should Schools Really Be Doing This?

Now we have schools in Sacramento serving dinner. That means all three meals a day for some students come from school. I think it's a bad idea.

Darren, you heartless conservative! How can you even think of starving these poor children?

I don't think they're hungry. And rather than just allowing bad choices on the part of (some of) their parents, we're enabling those bad choices with these programs. The linked article mentions "food security" much more often than it mentions actual hunger, and here's what it says:
The number of Americans who lived in households that lacked consistent access to adequate food soared last year, to 49 million, the highest since the government began tracking what it calls “food insecurity” 14 years ago, the Department of Agriculture reported Monday.

The increase, of 13 million Americans, was much larger than even the most pessimistic observers of hunger trends had expected and cast an alarming light on the daily hardships caused by the recession’s punishing effect on jobs and wages.

About a third of these struggling households had what the researchers called “very low food security,” meaning lack of money forced members to skip meals, cut portions or otherwise forgo food at some point in the year.

The other two-thirds typically had enough to eat, but only by eating cheaper or less varied foods, relying on government aid like food stamps, or visiting food pantries and soup kitchens...

Though researchers at the Agriculture Department do not use the word “hunger,” Mr. Obama did. “Hunger rose significantly last year,” he said...

The report measures the number of households that experienced problems at any point in the year. Only a “small fraction” were facing the problem at a given moment. Among those with “very low food security,” for instance, most experienced the condition for several days in each of seven or eight months.
Again, we're not talking about actual hunger, we're talking about being concerned about food or having to constrain what you buy. (Heck, I've been there, although admittedly not for many years.) Schools are now starting yet another program that will never go away.

Would it be reasonable for "our betters" to say something like, "We're feeding your kid, so you have to do this"? In other words, is government's feeding your child a right, an entitlement, or a gift for which you must pay by somehow living "better" in a manner determined by the governing class? It seems I just wrote a post on this topic.

On the other hand, if the school is feeding kids then we'd never have to worry about the wrong kind of lunch sent from home.

5 comments:

Rose said...

So, if someone on food stamps signs up for dinner at school, can we cut their food stamps/WIC vouchers accordingly since they no longer need to furnish those five meals a week.
This is insane.

Anonymous said...

About a third of these struggling households had what the researchers called “very low food security,” meaning lack of money forced members to skip meals, cut portions or otherwise forgo food at some point in the year.


Children are skipping meals or being given insufficiently large portions. But no.. they are not hungry

Darren said...

"At some point in the year." So if it happens once, government steps in and you and I feed them 3 meals a day?

Rhymes With Right said...

Given what portion size is in America, is cutting portion size really a crisis?

allen (in Michigan) said...

About a third of these struggling households had what the researchers called “very low food security,” meaning lack of money forced members to skip meals, cut portions or otherwise forgo food at some point in the year.

Meaning a lack of money forced members to skip meals?

I understand a big problem among the poor, including poor children, is obesity. Care to explain how you can be obese and suffer from the scourge of "low food security"? Unless, of course, low food security doesn't actually result in hunger which I suspect is the case.

In fact, I'm pretty sure "low food security" is one of those typical, lefty misrepresentations to which you're so often forced when the facts refuse to adhere to the script.