The providing breakfast to school students may seem like a noble and caring act but I contest that it is in fact anything but. I came to this realisation some years ago when I had the good fortune to receive a long term subbing assignment at the Samson Elementary School. Naturally when I got this assignment I was very happy to have steady work for the foreseeable future. Little did I know though that part of my teaching duties, in addition to lesson delivery, would be the daily dispensing of breakfast to my homeroom students. Now this was a job that I had to perform everyday after having gotten my own children up, fed and then either off to school or a babysitter.
One of the ironies of the whole situation was that the parents of these children weren't so busy with work that they couldn't feed their own children. Actually quite the opposite was true. The truth was that few if any of these parents actually had work. All of this led me to conclude that I fail to see why if the feeding of their own children is not a priority for these parents, than why should it therefore be a priority for those of us who are responsible enough to work and feed our own children?
There are many naive arguments that are put forth in support of both school breakfast and lunch programs. I will attempt to deal with two of them here. The most prominent of these arguments is that "students will not learn on an empty stomach". Therefore it is necessary that if we are to avoid wasting the school day that we provide the missing meal at school. This statement is true but it only focuses on a small part of what is actually a much larger problem. My own experience with the above school breakfast program showed me that students who do not have food at home will not become good students, who are willing to learn at school just because they are served breakfast. The reason for this is that the fact that there is no food at home is indicative of a much more serious problem, that cannot simply be compensated for with a meal of cereal at school. The more telling truth is that students who do not have access to food at home are invariably living in a situation where there is an absence of any responsible adult(s) to give structure to their daily life. A constant lack of home stability is in reality the most influential factor governing a student's ability and willingness to learn. It may also be added that such homes tend to be characterized by a lack of the internal supports that foster intellectual development and they are the ones where there invariably is no food.
Another liberal fallacy is the notion that the dignity of the child must be protected at all costs. Therefore it is necessary that these breakfast be offered to all students. Again I must say that as noble as is the intent, the truth is that attempting to level the children to the lowest common denominator is counter productive. This argument is at its heart a Communist argument which says that material differences between people are bad and lead to oppression. What the system is conditioning the children for is a socialist utopia where any individual achievement that differentiates you from those achievements that are sanctioned by or are attained by the group are frowned upon. When seen in this light the best thing that can be done by parents who feed their children at home is to instruct their children that they are not to participate.
Next I would like to deal with the proposition that these children have no food at home because the families are too poor and cannot afford to buy food. I contend that this argument is totally false. In Canada only
10 % of our income is spent on food that is cooked and eaten at HOME. This is the same percentage as is spent by Americans and people from Great Britain. Our society has done an excellent job of making food affordable at a level that is unprecedented in the history of man.
Next I would also like to point out that this seemingly kind act inculcates in our children the idea that no matter your level of irresponsibility someone will step in, at their own expense and at the expense of their children, and save you from yourself or your children from you.
If there is anything that our schools need to do at 8am it would be for the school to offer a reading enrichment program. The free breakfast might be easier to tolerate if it were actually tied to the receiver doing something rather than nothing. Maybe attendance in such an enrichment program should be mandatory for those who want the breakfast. We need to avoid completely giving young people the ideal that they can get something for nothing. In our province it is a travesty to know that 44 percent of the adult population is functionally illiterate. It would therefore seem that the school system has not been able to even accomplish its primary job which is the education of our children. Maybe it is time to get rid of the educational group think that rules our classrooms and bring back individual accountability along with individual achievement?
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