When I read that a school in Utah took food away from kids and literally threw their trays away in front of them because they owed money, I was not the least surprised. Definitely, it lacked tack, but state governments all over the country are so scared that one little piece of food might get eaten without being paid for that something like this was destined to happen. Fortunately, we haven't gone to this extreme in our school, but the Tennessee Legislature and National Government sure do make sure that our kids are either paying for food or suffering for it.
More below.
We're fortunate to have a program that gives kids free breakfast in the mornings. The National Government finally listened to scholars who told them that kids who haven't eaten the entire weekend don't care about learning if their stomachs are empty. However, if a student gets some food or something to drink in the morning, it has to be cataloged precisely or we can get into major trouble. We teachers get it easy, though, we just get nasty letters. If Cafeterias come up short, workers get fired.
In the morning, as children take milk, juice, and whatever it is that passes for food in the morning (One day it was a hot dog wrapped in a pancake with some kind of syrup!), they have to highlight their names and mark what it is they took. If they take food, they HAVE to take milk or juice. Even if they don't want it, they have to take it and throw it away. No, they may not give it to someone else. No, if we have Cheerios and the other classroom doesn't, someone may not come and take one from our batch (though we teachers are really good at cheating on that one). It gets so tedious that instead of spending our morning time with the kids talking about their day, going over homework, helping with issues of homework, we have to guard the food bags like a hawk so that our numbers don't come up short.
It extends beyond Breakfast, too. I received letters this week that HAD to go to parents informing them that their child does NOT qualify for free lunches, and has been eating without paying for them, and if they do not pay up, their child will be sat by themselves and given a cheese sandwich. (At least we do still feed them, thank goodness, but I've eaten one of those cheese sandwiches, and I'm not sure they count as food.)
Some days, I sit with my kids in the cafeteria and eat with them because it's just kind of fun to sit with them in a non-classroom setting. The food really has been awful for a very long time. It's not Michelle Obama's fault, I remember food being terrible back in the 90's. But I'm so used to seeing a kid take a bite of food, getting an ugly look on their face and gently setting the food down like it's poison that I don't even think of it, any longer. I tried the cheese pizza last week. Sorry, it was wet cardboard with some cheesish substance sparsely scattered over it.
I don't blame the cafeteria workers, either. I've been back there. When the government sends pizza in a giant can and pays $2 for it, one is just not going to get good pizza.
One of my "friends" asks me why he should care. Bad cafeteria food is a right of passage, and why should HE pay more for someone else's kids' food? Stupid me, I try to explain Bloom's Taxonomy and how smarter kids will make a stronger economy and make him more money, but that takes more than two sentences to explain and my words don't start with "Rush says..." or "Glenn Beck says..." so I might as well be talking with a brick wall.
I don't want waste in our government. I get what we're trying to do with these programs. I wish our governments would stop being so scared about wasting a penny or three on our kids and get a little more scared about how much money is wasted in tax write-offs and military expenditures. It'd be nice to go into the Teacher Workroom and not see signs from the Tennessee Government encouraging us to call them if we see someone not doing their job correctly. It'd be nice to see kids who felt like their government and community cared about them. But then, I guess I am "brainwashed" by the liberal elite media as my friend tells me. Well, them and "teh Blacks."
