Chapter Three – The Broken Body of Our Education System – Hurry Up And Eat A Little
Food. It does a body good. If it’s good food. If you get enough of it. If you get a chance to eat it.
It starts small, with little inconsistencies. For instance, on one nacho day, the kids get plenty of cheese. On the next, they get a little sprinkle of cheese but can have a bit more if they throw in an extra quarter. A child at an elementary school gets four cheese sticks with his meal, while a child at the junior high gets two. Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought these meals were supposed to be nutritionally balanced. How can that be when there are different portion sizes from meal to meal? And speaking of portion sizes, I have talked to at least a half dozen parents who say their kids either go through the day hungry or purchase extra portions so they can feel full. I’m no mathematician, but by my calculations, when adding the cost of extra portions to a student meal, an adult meal costs less for the same amount of food. Sounds a little sour to me.
In addition, at the junior high, kids are cutting in line at lunch not only because it’s the only way that they can eat in time not to be tardy for their next class, but also because if they wait at the end of the line they probably won’t have any selection left by the time they make it to the front. Is it too much to ask that our kids, first or last in line, get the same selection as everyone else, and enough food so their stomachs aren’t rumbling through the rest of the day? Is it too much to ask that our kids be given enough time to eat their food without having to stuff it down their gullet? I was taught that it wasn’t healthy to eat like that, so why is it part of the required curriculum at our schools?
