Comments (10)

• NYT shows there is hope.

• No matter how hard the NYT and the education bureaucracy works, they still can not get the capitalist bias against accepting what you have not earned.

  They have beaten down the old folks into accepting the Anti-Social In-Security super Ponzi scheme but they just can't seem to break the young folks.

  I guess the athletes and actors with their forced similes as they work off their community service don't help either. Good news comes in strange places.

• Published: March 1, 2008 10:44 AM

• Yancey Ward

• Jeffrey Tucker,

  That was a fascinating article. The problem arises, of course, due to the following idiotic government regulation:

  Most of the separation came into being in response to a federal requirement that food of minimal nutritional value not be sold in the same place as subsidized meals — which have to meet certain nutritional standards.

  Of course, being children, when given a choice, they will invariably gravitate towards the food that tastes good, and that they love to eat, with no regard to its nutritional value (even most adults do this). Note one of the proposed remedies- elimination of the ala carte menu for the paying students. As a former student and child in the United States public education system, I can tell you authoritatively that this remedy will simply mean that fewer students actually eat lunch at all- even if you make it free to all and force them to take a tray. Few really want to eat the nutritional meals served by public schools- they are horrid and uninteresting.

  The other notable issue in this article is the desire to remove the stigma of accepting welfare. If these were adults, I would be opposed to any such attempts- it creates moral hazard. However, I see no real reason to stigmatize children- the circumstances of their parents and guardians are no faults of the children themselves. It seems the most pragmatic alternative here is to use a debit card system for paying and to eliminate the stupid, do-gooder regulation of separating the menu items with concrete walls.
  

• Published: March 1, 2008 12:01 PM

• Jim Fedako

• Yancey,

  So, you propose that the children should NOT have to recognize that the food is being provided by coerced taxation (with debit card being the veil)? These children are to believe that there IS such thing as a free lunch.

  When the Church used to provide these meals, the children knew that folks in their congregation paid for the food. I assume that those children were appreciative that someone gave for them to eat.

  This is true: For a child to get a lunch, someone else likely went without one.

  So, you propose that the child be shielded from the elderly lady on a fixed income, the woman who is paying for the lunch?

  The result of shielding in attempt to remove stigmas: Today, we have folks given free (to them) trailers by FEMA. These folks then have the nerve to complain that the ovens are too small to cook a 15-pound turkey (true NPR story), all the while forgetting the child whose parent was unable to afford a doctor visit due to the taxes that support FEMA.

• Published: March 1, 2008 7:36 PM

• Yancey Ward

• Jim,

  The children know it is welfare, whether one pays with a debit card or not- this was the point of the article.

  I don't see a really good reason to stigmatize children for the circumstances of their parents, regardless of the reasons for those circumstances.

• Published: March 1, 2008 8:41 PM

• newson

• i don't doubt the searing humiliation felt by children obliged to accept subsidized meals, but so what? these early, formative experiences are the path for later achievement in life. many of society's most distinguished have had impoverished childhoods, memories of bleak st. a constant spur to go the extra mile.

  children will always be ranking themselves anyway - who's got better toys, who lives in a better house, who holildays where, and so on. yobs vs. snobs is a schoolyard thing, and nothing the social engineers do will alter this.

• Published: March 1, 2008 9:25 PM

• Jim Fedako

• Yancey,

  It is not the circumstances of the parent that is the problem, it is the willingness to accept state aid.

  My father grew up impoverished in the coal mining region of eastern PA. He will talk about going without lunch most school days, the same situation faced by his 9 siblings and neighbors.

  His siblings all became functioning adults.

  It used to be the case that my grandmother would chase government do-gooders off her property armed with a broom. Now the do-gooders force their way into homes, encouraging folks to sign on to any government program available -- handouts and wealth transfers.

  You are justifying the Great Society's war on poverty -- a waste that destroyed the families of the inner cities and rural regions.

  Tell my father that children need to have breakfast or lunch provided by government in order to succeed in school. You'll get an earful.

  Read more at here

  It's not that I don't feel for children. In fact, as I am currently doing my taxes, I see that I haven't given to Church and charity as much as I planned.

  Shouldn't we be discouraging folks from using government and, instead, encouraging folks to rely on the Church and other such institutions? Why should we destigmatize government aid at any level?

• Published: March 1, 2008 11:01 PM

• useless spectator

• The New York schools conduct regular promotions, including inviting players from the Mets, Giants and the Jets — and high school football players and girls’ softball players — to eat the subsidized fare in their jerseys.

  Amazing how far they will go to make public assistance look glamorous!

  But Carlos Garcia, San Francisco’s superintendent of schools since July, said the system needed to change. The separate lunch lines should be combined, Mr. Garcia said, and, despite cutbacks in school financing from the state, the district should spend the money to wire its cafeterias to accept debit cards.

  Your tax dollars at work!

  What most troubles me is the Orwellian effort by public schools the change they way the students think and interact with each other, and their understanding of politics and society. Mises.org post more stories about that.

• Published: March 2, 2008 6:22 PM

• Eric Quackenbush

• I am a senior now in high school and we have a system that requires you to use a PIN number at checkout. They switched to the system so they can record you what you are eating in case parents want to know about your diet (I don't think any parents do this). It also allows a more streamlined system for "free lunch" or reduced lunch recipients by having them simply enter the PIN to get their lunch and not having to use any type of card. I have a friend who gets the "free lunches" and he could think nothing of it-- his parents are liberals and this is what he has been taught as 'right'. My dad grew up with strong republican ideals and I believe in them; only take what you have earned and use what you need, give the rest to charity.

• Published: March 2, 2008 10:59 PM

• David Spellman

• Our school district implemented a debit card system for lunches. If you pay for lunch, you can add to your child's account with your credit card, and if you are getting free lunches, no one knows (at least in theory).

  Our kids didn't like taking lunches because it made them look poor since we live in an affluent suburb where most kids buy their lunch as a social status. So we decided to let them guy lunch and started using the debit system because it was convenient.

  BUT CHILDREN ARE SMARTER THAN ADULTS! Our kids asked to take cash every day to buy their lunch. Why? Because paying cash demonstrates that you aren't a free lunch student. Its a pain to collect all those dollar bills and quarters, but I understand why they want to pay cash--to establish in front of their friends that they come from a family that can pay their own way. They also ask for extra money to buy any a la carte item no matter how cheap so that it is even more apparent that they are not from a "poor family."

  So even though making everyone pay with a debit card system will hide the source of the meal, kids are smart enough to understand social status and how to avoid as well as place the stigma of being a ward of the State. Its interesting that the adults can't figure out the game, but the kids see it from miles away.

• Published: March 3, 2008 1:00 PM

• Fephisto

• Spellman: Children are usually the wisest in general.

• Published: March 3, 2008 5:09 PM