Now, I'm reading the actual text of the article:
When students in Warwick, R.I., line up in the cafeteria next week, they’ll have no shortage of lunch options. Do they want a chicken Parmesan melt? Hummus and fresh vegetables with tortilla crisps? Pizza? Sweet potato tater tots? A burger? Something from the deli bar? Or, in the popular all-day-breakfast category, pancakes with a cheese omelet and a side of bacon?What?!! A sunflower seed butter and jelly sandwich instead of hot food! It was never a jelly sandwich at all. It was one-up on a peanut butter and jelly sandwich: a sunflower seed butter and jelly sandwich! Well, what is the problem??!
But for some, making a decision won’t be necessary. Starting on Monday, any student with unpaid lunch debt will be automatically given a sunflower seed butter and jelly sandwich instead of hot food, the city’s school district announced on Sunday. Officials told the Providence Journal that the policy is necessary because the district is owed tens of thousands of dollars in lunch money, on top of contending with a budget deficit in the millions.
But critics argue that since children have no control over their parents’ finances, they shouldn’t be penalized or potentially subjected to public humiliation because of their inability to pay.It's not that it's a bad lunch, it's that it's a stigmatizing lunch. Having a sandwich for lunch is humiliating, embarrassing? A sandwich is the classic American lunch. A sandwich is what I had for lunch at school every day throughout childhood. I brought it from home, like nearly every kid in the school. But in the framework of Heather Vale, it's embarrassing because the child is deprived of choices that were available to other kids. It seems to me, every kid is eating one lunch and the lunch a child is seen eating doesn't scream out this child is eating this lunch because he had no other choice. So how can it be embarrassing?
“I just don’t think it’s fair to hold the kids responsible,” Heather Vale, who has two children attending a middle school in the district, told WLNE. “I think it’s embarrassing to the kids because now everyone’s going to know why these children are receiving the lunch that they are.”
Here's an idea for the deep empaths of the Vale variety. Make a nut butter and jelly sandwich for your child, wrap it up and put it in a bag, and send the little darling to school with it. If the kids with conscientious parents are eating sandwiches too, they'll provide camouflage for the the kids with school-imposed sandwiches. And here's another idea for you empathetic parents: Pool the money that you're saving by not buying school lunch, and see if you can accumulate the amount that will eliminate the tens of thousands of dollars in shortfall, and then donate it to your lovely city of Warwick, which has been patient with your deadbeat neighbors so long and has been charitably handing free lunches to kids who are not even low-income enough to get in the free-lunch program.
Anyway, I'm irked about the headline. I spent a lot of time thinking about how bad it was to offer a child a mere jelly sandwich as a lunch, but that was not the case at all. There's so much difference between a jelly sandwich and a sunflower seed butter and jelly sandwich. Fake news!
ALSO: It's funny to say "cold jelly sandwich." No one wants a hot jelly sandwich. There's just this idea of "hot lunch." You see that in the phrase "a sunflower seed butter and jelly sandwich instead of hot food." But what is important about hot food for lunch — or for any meal, really? This is a separate issue, the emotional meaning of hot food. I'll just gesture at it for now.
IN THE COMMENTS: I am informed that I am out of step with the times: You can't have peanut butter in school anymore. Of course, that's why it's sunflower seed butter. And note that I did say, "Make a nut butter and jelly sandwich." Make a nut butter sandwich that's not the dreaded peanut.
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125 comments:
The kids can hunt and the school district can dress and cook the meat, if sandwiches aren't acceptable. Or the kids can be given jobs in the mine until the debt is paid.
Maybe they should offer them marmot sandwiches instead.
A tablespoon of peanut butter with no jelly or sandwich is fine too.
But critics argue that since children have no control over their parents’ finances, they shouldn’t be penalized or potentially subjected to public humiliation because of their inability to pay.
“I just don’t think it’s fair to hold the kids responsible,” Heather Vale, who has two children attending a middle school in the district, told WLNE. “I think it’s embarrassing to the kids because now everyone’s going to know why these children are receiving the lunch that they are.”
I think the school should give them a new bike, too! Sheesh.
If a parent's ethics allow him/her to spend their kid lunch money on a long weekend in Las Vegas, those ethics should be able to stretch to include filling out an application for the school lunch program that includes some information about income that is (let's say) hypothetical. And there is no checking of the information submitted on these forms, because who wants to nit-pick about a few bucks for a child's lunch.
Since lunch stigmatization is the biggest social injustice since Jim Crow, RI could always try to find some extra money by cutting teacher and civil servant pensions.
I think Meadhouse has been out of school too long. So many schools have banned peanut butter, because a very few kids are harmed by it. When we were younger, of course, that was the standard lunch for everybody. There is really no substitute for it, unless you count sunflower-seed-butter, which I don't; what in the world is that like anyhow?
By now the medical profession has switched sides, of course: it's important for kids to be exposed to things like nuts and peanuts in their youth or they might grow up to be dangerously allergic to them. Huh.
HOW do you end up OWING money for your free lunch? Isn't it FREE?
Aren't the Only Kids Owning Money the kids with parents SO RICH that they aren't eligible for free lunch?
Peanut Butter?!?
Clearly you haven't had a kid in public school in at least a decade.
I mean, you might as well suggest that the cafeteria hand out assault rifles...
In Era of Trump's America, students who owe lunch money will be rounded up to toil in the underground sugar caves.
Lets get down to brass tacks, at the end of the day, when push comes to shove...
The issue is between the parents and the school. All kids should have the option of being fed the same. Do not penalize the kids. While this may be a 'life lesson' it's not one the kids should be learning (or maybe it is - your parents and the school don't have your own interests at heart?)
Sounds like one or a few new tags are needed:
Stigmatized food
Low-status lunch
Sunflower butter
Lunch Lady Land
Would a hot jelly sandwich be any better?
I think kids are more resilient than adults think, especially when it comes to being "victim" to their parents' fiduciary actions.
"Trump Starves Children" would be better.
DEMOCRACY DIES IN DARKNESS
(weeping Hillary-lost journos hardest hit)
One word: Jellyroll.
Microwave the sandwich.
Love how they project their values on the kids they don't know.
I spent more than 37 years dealing with and many times arresting adults who were raised by parents who believed; “I just don’t think it’s fair to hold the kids responsible,”
Parents of children who owe lunch money should be forced to make public their tax returns going back 10 years.
btw - when I was a kid, I had a punch card for hot food and the rest of the time I was at the mercy of my health-freak mother. While other kids were eating chips and pies and pudding cups, I had PB&J and a baggie of carrots and celery. (To this day I cannot eat a stick of celery)
I also had to walk to school up hill both ways.
Oh, the humanity!
Not sure how these kids view it, but at that age I would have much preferred a nut butter and jelly sandwich than the stuff they served in the school cafeteria. But my mother made our lunches and they were nutritious and tasty. Thanks, Mom!
In the new, socialist America, the plan is not to give the child who owes lunch money a jelly sandwich instead of a lunch buffet. Instead random children will be given jelly sandwiches and subjected to the scorn of their peers. The good, lunch-money paying "alpha parents" will then be incentivized to harass and perhaps assault the lunch-money scofflaw "beta parents" until they pay their fair share.
Any problem can be solved by the right type of socialism.
Raw rats aren't good enough for them?
"Blogger Meade said...
Parents of children who owe lunch money should be forced to make public their tax returns going back 10 years.
5/8/19, 8:43 AM"
You don't believe that Trump will get caught in that trap? Think again.
I suspect that many of the lunch-paying scofflaws are not in dire financial straits at all. We sometimes forgot to replenish our kids’ lunch money accounts—with the consequence of cold sandwiches for lunch until we remembered to pay up. We were not poor, just poorly organized. The kids’ bitching about lunch resulted in lunch account replenishment. The school’s strategy worked.
I'll have the nut butter and jelly sandwich. Hold the stigma. I had stigma for breakfast.
I bet those childrens that Trump sticks in cages would just love to have a jelly sandwich instead of cold, watery gruel.
But they can't.
Everyone needs to pay something, even if it’s 50 cents. It’s disenfranchising if you don’t.
"You can't have peanut butter in school anymore."
Yep. Too many kids have deadly peanut allergies. For some reason it's much more widespread nowadays. We have friends who had to rush their 11 month old to the emergency room after they gave him a first taste of peanut butter. Nobody in their family has a peanut allergy.
There is an Israeli puffed peanut snack you can give yours when they are infants; early exposure makes it less likely the kids come down with the allergies.
"And note that I did say, "Make a nut butter and jelly sandwich." Make a nut butter sandwich that's not the dreaded peanut."
We understand. You are never really wrong. Even when you are a tiny bit wrong, you aren't really wrong.
But then, you also said this:
"we both agreed that a peanut butter and jelly sandwich would be an unassailable solution."
Which turned out to be assailable. And a tiny bit wrong. But only a tiny bit.
Or minimum $1. This is a Basic Economics lesson.
seems like today's question is:
Which is a better lunch?
A Cold Jelly sandwich (for free, and with nut butter)?
Or
B Plague ridden raw marmot liver?
I'm a hardass. I would ask the lunch lady for a second and then a third jelly sandwich. "Think you are shaming me, bitch? I love this shit. Uh-huh. Rockin'."
Wrt. Peanuts
I was on a flight which was a ‘nut allergy flight’. I opened up my bag of nuts, anyway.
The best possible option would be to make them eat a Michelle Obama approved lunch. Now that would be cruel.
When I was in school, I remember that there was a stigma against people who brought lunch, as opposed to getting it from the cafeteria. I’m not sure why. I don’t think it was related to economics, because the kids who got free lunch got it from the cafeteria.
To those commenting that "I was on a nut allergy flight and ate nuts anyway" or "kids need to be exposed to peanuts". I would like to suggest that you try to look at it from the other side and have some empathy.
Kids become allergic to peanuts when they're babies. My son has been allergic since he was 8 months. No idea why. It's not genetic. If he picks up a nut on, say an airplane and, out of curiosity, puts it in his mouth he will have an anaphylactic reaction and possibly die.
I know it seems ridiculous. I thought it was silly too before it became my problem. But it's a really difficult situation. Sending a small child to school and being afraid that he's going to try a piece of his friend's sandwich, because he's too small to understand the consequences is hard.
How about this? If one kid owes money, then everybody gets a cold jelly sandwich. And they put up pictures of the kid who owes. Problem solved.
Send the unpaid lunch bill to Michelle Obama. She can afford to pay it.
I worked in the cafeteria to pay for my lunch, since there wasn't anything free - not even a sunflower seed butter sandwich. Of course, that was back when a work ethic was important, and gaming the system to milk the taxpayer wasn't considered ethical.
I long for the days when I got a complimentary bag of peanuts on Delta flights. Pretzels just aren't the same.
stlcdr said...The issue is between the parents and the school. All kids should have the option of being fed the same. Do not penalize the kids. While this may be a 'life lesson' it's not one the kids should be learning (or maybe it is - your parents and the school don't have your own interests at heart?)
Sure, I agree the problem is between the parents and school, but as you say, let's get down to it: how do you suggest the school collect the debts owed and not go further into debt? Presume they've already tried stern letters and phone calls and the parents are simply ignoring those. Now what? You seem to say the school has an obligation to keep providing the "premium" lunches to the kids no matter what. That's not sustainable and, as lessons go, is probably one of the worst that could be taught! "Everyone should have the same outcome as everyone else regardless of whether they pay" is a bad, dangerous ethos.
I'm sure no one wants to make kids feel bad for no reason.
The threat of having your child face minor social stigma if you don't pay your debts doesn't seem unreasonable to me, though...but if it does to you perhaps you can suggest a better alternative?
I grew up on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch and doubt I would have given it up for whatever shit they serve hot, no matter what they call it.
A lot of this is projection into the minds of others by liberals who have probably never been poor. It’s not that bad. It’s like the people who live in Florida who think that snowflakes inflict unbearable pain when they land on your cheek.
And peanuts aren't even nuts, they're legumes so I'm not putting anyone in danger when I open my personal package of actual nuts (hazelnuts, walnuts, almonds, cashews, and brazilnuts).
Rather than refuse lunch to those that cannot pay they choose to shame them. Horrible behavior, by the supposed mature adults.
When I was in school, I remember that there was a stigma against people who brought lunch,
Maybe that’s why I never ate in the cafeteria, I just took my brown bag from my locker and wandered around the neighborhood with a friend or two. The horrors!
Some parents are stupid. I can't fix stupid.
The solution to supplant the parents with government, is worse than stupid parents. Government has been proved a failure at parenting, in any form.
The School district where 2 of the grandkids go, the entire population qualifies for free lunch.(and breakfast). It is Fed $'s if more than half the population hit a certain level. Kids still go hungry. Parents are too stupid to get the kids up in time to make the free breakfast.
Again, I want to help, but I have given up trying to fix stupid. Darwin will aways win
While we're on the topic isn't being a deadbeat/not paying your bills when you can SUPPOSED to be socially stigmatized? We're supposed to hate Trump in part because he cheats his suppliers and racked up debts he couldn't pay--that makes him an unethical, bad person and brings shame to his whole family. Right??
Feeding your own children seems like the most basic obligation of any parent. Refusing to take care of your kids when you're able to should be one of the most shameful non-criminal things a person can do.
As I think of it now, I was sort of a poverty snob in high school.
I think it has something to do with the pollen count. Sometimes I start sneezing after eating peanut butter......There's not much schools can do to compensate for feckless parents. Sometimes God gives the children of the very poor greater reach and they can beat up the children of the very rich if such children give them a hard time. That helps, but it doesn't truly compensate for the indignities of poverty.
"Keep him out until he understands how to be safe"
Haha. I remember being 16 and doing stupid crap that I knew was bad for me and you expect self control from a 5 year old?
I appreciate the principle of your statement, but it seems like the old libertarian fixation on the law against seatbelts. People should be smart enough to know better. We don't need a law! Hardly anyone agrees with that, and for good reason. Sometimes you have to protect people from themselves when it can be done with negligible cost to anyone else.
Give them Campbell’s Tomato soup and 1/2 grilled cheese.
So, dietary choice is the basis for the claim "one in five".
The rise of nut allergies is a surprisingly fascinating topic. It has gone from something like .2% of the population to over 2% (not exact, since it has been a week since I googled) in just the last couple of decades. The suggestion is that it's an affluence allergy, showing up where things are too clean. By protecting kids from little sicknesses, they might have to deal with much worse problems. It's not an issue of bad parenting, just the opposite.
I grew up eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches at school for lunch. It was much better than the hot crap they shoveled on your plate at the cafeteria. And I don't remember killing any of my classmates who sat with me at the lunch table.
I did pay the 3 cents for chocolate milk, though.
The obvious answer to "the free stuff isn't good enough" is to eliminate the free stuff. Because, truly, the free stuff will never be good enough, because those who receive it will invariably assert they deserve something better.
Further, if the free stuff is consistently good then the inevitable result will be that those who were paying will stop doing so, as paying when everyone else is paying is different than being the sucker who pays for what everyone else gets for free.
Even aside from the never-ending pressure for schools to provide breakfast as well as lunch because (of course) it's not the kid's fault if the parents can't or won't handle this task. Surely schools can provide this as well- to some at first, but eventually to all?
And, well, children need shoes, and warm clothing when it's cold and it's hardly their fault if the parent(s) don't provide these things, is it? Surely schools can provide these as well- to some at first, but eventually to all?
Further, school's closed during summer, but children still need to eat. Surely schools can remain open for free breakfast and lunch during the summer, can't they?
After all, if schools don't actually teach much anymore (or at best teach what to think and not how to think), can't they at least be the world's finest "Everything's Free Everyday!" store?
Fun anecdote.
My son in collage asked if he could bring home 3 of his buddies for a long weekend to "study" We said sure, love to see them, we'll stock the fridge and thaw out some meat.
First meal, one of the boys passed on the pot roast and all the fixings, for creamy peanut butter on white bread. That was his diet for the entire time my son knew him in college.
"My son has been allergic since he was 8 months. "
Yeah they don't understand this allergy is a lot more common nowadays. Nobody wants a baby or toddler going into shock on a fight. It's horrifying to hear your friends had to take their baby to the emergency room. I'll change my kids clothes if they've eaten peanut butter and we're going to be around any children with peanut allergies.
Skippy or Jif as a child; peanut butter and Bama jelly never got old. Switched to Laura Scudder unsweetened as an adult, then swore off peanut butter forever when I went keto. I still miss it. My teacher collected lunch money in the classroom, and we all knew who was paying and who wasn't. Nobody cared, as I recall.
"
'I just don’t think it’s fair to hold the kids responsible,' Heather Vale, who has two children attending a middle school in the district"
Repeal the 19th Amendment already!
There is the theory floating around that the epidemic of peanut allergy could be related to vaccinations.
"...vaccines and vaccine adverse events. The IOM has concluded in its 2011 report that “Adverse events on our list thought to be due to IgE-mediated hypersensitivity reactions Antigens in the vaccines that the committee is charged with reviewing do not typically elicit an immediate hypersensitivity reaction (e.g., hepatitis B surface antigen, toxoids, gelatin, ovalbumin, casamino acids). However, as will be discussed in subsequent chapters, the above-mentioned antigens do occasionally induce IgE-mediated sensitization in some individuals and subsequent hypersensitivity reactions, including anaphylaxis” [11]. Ovalbumin would of course result in sensitization to egg. Casamino acid is derived from milk proteins and results in allergy to dairy.
Allergens contained in vaccines
Vaccines and injections contain food proteins such as chicken egg, casein, gelatin, soy, agar etc. [12]. They also contain ingredients such as Polysorbate 80 and sorbitol which are manufactured using food sources. Checking with a few suppliers, Polysorbate 80 is sourced from various food items such as coconut, palm, sunflower, tapioca, wheat, corn etc. Other vendors could be using other vegetable oils, legume oils and nut oils as the source for oleic acid used in the manufacture of Polysorbate 80. It is impossible to guarantee that these products do not contain residual allergen proteins from these food sources."
Seeing Red said...
Give them Campbell’s Tomato soup and 1/2 grilled cheese
That was only for when the Queen was visiting!
Another instance of means testing where it pays to have minimal reported income.
Add those benefits together and you’ve got a working class after-tax income, without the work.
God bless those who do work to earn their keep.
This is how children suffer in Trump's America!
Food insecurity has little to do with being "poor".
“Food insecurity” is so broadly defined, I don’t think you can make any kind of generalizations.
Kay recalls: When I was in school, I remember that there was a stigma against people who brought lunch
Not in my high school, anyway. The only day everyone bought lunch was on pizza Friday. I did supplement my homemade lunch with a chocolate milkshake most days. Fortunately, I never had a weight problem. School lunches probably got much tastier in later years. In the medieval times when I was in school they were pretty grim. Lots of casseroles. Eeeuuuw!
Our town's public school is having the same problem. We don't have that many poor people in our town. It's a solid middle class suburb, though I wouldn't describe it as affluent. When someone told me about this, I had trouble comprehending what was going on. She was outraged that the school wanted paid, and I thought she was telling me the school was forcing kids who qualify for free lunches to pay the money back. But no, it was this exact situation. Kids who show up without money at school and get food on a tab. I bet the parents don't even know the kids are doing that. How many do you suppose are spending their lunch money on other things? Candy, cigarettes, dope?
Eating a nut butter sandwich would probably be embarrassing to children these days. They'll read that as something that Ann wasn't thinking.
As for the issue of the free lunch, my wife and I just got back from the grocery store. Among other things, as we prepared for more days of bad rains and floods in Houston, we purchased supplies for peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. That's the type of lunch I used to bring to school. If my mom knew I could get one at school for free, that would have happened.
"In the new, socialist America, the plan is not to give the child who owes lunch money a jelly sandwich instead of a lunch buffet. Instead random children will be given jelly sandwiches and subjected to the scorn of their peers."
Kind of like the TSA.
roadgeek said...
Skippy or Jif as a child; peanut butter and Bama jelly never got old. Switched to Laura Scudder unsweetened as an adult, then swore off peanut butter forever when I went keto.
Have you tried macadamia nut butter? I like cashew butter; it's only a little better carb-wise than peanut butter but a little goes a long way. I think pecan or walnut butter would be ok for keto as well but you'd probably have to make your own.
Kids don’t use money. I sent checks and the card was filled. But letters were sent to the home that the account was in arrears.
By now the medical profession has switched sides, of course: it's important for kids to be exposed to things like nuts and peanuts in their youth or they might grow up to be dangerously allergic to them. Huh.
Peanut allergy, like Polio and asthma, is created by cleanliness. In the case of the peanut, parent hysteria over rare instances of allergy has led toi increasing incidence as fewer and fewer kids are exposed and their immune system is moderated by early exposure when they are more tolerant of new antigens.
Polio appeared first in isolated villages in Sweden where few children were exposed to the virus. By the 1940s, when tests were available, it was discovered that kids in Mexico City slums were all immune. Exposure to the virus in early childhood created immunity, and no paralytic disease.
Asthma is rare in European dairy farms. Kids are exposed to the allergens and do not become sensitized.
Now, we are creating peanut allergy where there was none. Progress.
There is the theory floating around that the epidemic of peanut allergy could be related to vaccinations
Because the disproven theory about autism and vaccines had to be replaced by something so idiotic no-nothing parents could say something to defend their decision not to vaccinate their kids. "We read on the internet that...."
You are really stupid to push this theory.
"Meade considered letting them go hungry — they'll learn something — and I was proposing that schools just give free lunch to everyone — that's how we skew here at Meadhouse..."
TANSTAAFL
One of the things we try to do in Scouting is teach young people how to properly plan. A few years back the Scouts of my troop prepared a menu and a shopping list for us to get. The adults were going to prepare our own food that trip. Which we sometimes, but not often, do. Their menu included several meals with bread, but bread wasn't on the shopping list.
I purchased their shopping list. Another adult had looked and noted they hadn't put bread on the list. On the day we left he brought a few loaves for them to ad to their supplies. He thought it was cruel to make them suffer the consequences of poor planning. Whereas I thought it would be a planning lesson they'd never forget- pay attention to details.
Adults in the troop were equally divided on the issue. Years later, any of the young men who earned Eagle rank were sons of the people who thought it was a good planning lesson. Could be pure coincidence.
I would ask - how much food gets thrown out from school cafeteria?
What is the budget $$ value of same.
I don't mean by students.
My son has a severe peanut allergy.
He's never gone to a school that banned peanut butter outright.
But I don't think the cafeterias ever served peanut butter.
@Gospace -- In our troop, the motto is learn by mistakes.
There have been camping trips where a kid totally forgets to bring their contribution to the meal. Sometimes the main contribution. The adult leaders are always ready with a backup plan, after the mistake is made.
"First meal, one of the boys passed on the pot roast and all the fixings, for creamy peanut butter on white bread."
My son's best friend in HS was a skinny kid who could and would eat vast quantities of any food you put in front of him. He would eat at 4 or 5 different homes every Thanksgiving; he'd get to our house after 2 or 3 meals and put away two plates of turkey, dressing, and potatoes. He'd rest up for a little while and then head to the next stop.
But his favorite meal was white rice sandwiches. He'd take a piece of bread, put a little butter on in, and fold it in half like a taco, putting as much rice on it as it would carry. He didn't play any sports, but he's one hell of a guitarist. I have no idea how he keeps from getting fat as a town dog.
I get something different from this story. I wonder if getting 87 different varieties of school lunch doesn't help explain why we have so many adults who can't function as...you know...adults. I mean even kids from solidly middle class and even upper-middle class families normally take a step down the socioeconomic ladder when starting out on their own. If you've grown up being catered to such that even school lunches had to be a gourmet experience, how do you handle it when all your food budget can afford is ramen six days a week?
Mike
There is the theory floating around that the epidemic of peanut allergy could be related to vaccinations
I'm pretty sure it's related to peanuts.
Seeing Red said...
Give them Campbell’s Tomato soup and 1/2 grilled cheese
In my high school there was a cafeteria that no one I knew used for lunch. We all had brown bag lunches. One reason nobody used it was that it always featured a watery tomato soup that was served by an old lady with a red wig. We all swore she made the soup by dipping the wig in hot water.
One kid in our lunch group came from a poor family, I think a widowed mother, and he had the worst looking sandwiches, usually a single slice of bologna with mustard. We would share our sandwiches until all were about equal. He became a missionary,
That well has no bottom.
We were not poor-poor growing up. Always had a roof over our heads. Always had some form of food. (Another cup of water in the soup pot as it were.) We just had no spare money.
PB was a staple. PB&J was a treat. Never felt like I was deprived. I was a bit envious at those who had cake snacks with their lunch. I suspect it made me want a better life and work for it.
I teach Taekwondo, and we have a rule that if a student is late for class, they are assigned pushups - 5 pushups for every minute they're late (10 per minute for advanced students).
Now, we're talking about kids as young as 8. It's pretty much never the kids fault that they're late, but rather their parents'. Doesn't matter. And doing pushups is arguably more of a "punishment" than a nut butter and jelly sandwich.
We don't let the kids blame their parents for anything, even if there's no punishment involved at all. Whenever a kid tells me, "My mom forgot my belt", I immediately ask them, "Is it your belt or your mom's belt?"
Fuck these ne'er-do-well kids and their lazy-ass parents. No soup for you!
Anonymous Steven said...
To those commenting that "I was on a nut allergy flight and ate nuts anyway" or "kids need to be exposed to peanuts". I would like to suggest that you try to look at it from the other side and have some empathy.
...
Too late. That boat sailed. If we lived in an 'empathy' world where people who want to be left alone, are respected and left alone, then it would be only fair to respect the situation of others.
However, people (like you) want to use the force of authority to impose your needs and wants on others. So, sadly - even though I can empathize with your specific situation - fuck you and your special needs.
You know, kids are capable of bringing their own lunch to school. Are we seriously pretending that there is no food in these houses? These houses that don't qualify for free lunch? Seriously?
We've never been at a peanut free school.
But critics argue that since children have no control over their parents’ finances, they shouldn’t be penalized or potentially subjected to public humiliation because of their inability to pay.
But what if their mothers dress them funny?
Parents are the masters of embarrassment. In this case, they're just outsourcing it.
However, people (like you) want to use the force of authority to impose your needs and wants on others...
Like forcing kids to go to school? For pete's sake, everything about public school is an example of the force of authority imposing.
And as the parent of many five year olds, I would say, yes, I'd expect my kid with a severe peanut allergy to resist his curiosity. He's not a toddler.
I’m not sure kids think in terms of being stigmatized. One time the school called me to tell me my daughter had a zero balance which was a surprise since I’d given her a check the previous week. I questioned my daughter and it turns out she held onto the check so she could get the pb&j they gave to the kids who had no lunch money.
One way to have your toddler with a severe peanut allergy learn not to eat peanuts is to feed him peanuts and then take him to the doctor after he vomits them up. I speak from experience. My son has never been tempted by peanuts.
@Kelly. That's a great take.
So what is the school supposed to do? Abolish all notion of personal or parental responsibility? There may be another answer, but it doesn't come to mind. Of course, there is no tuition at public schools, so maybe lunch should be free too, i.e. added to everyone's property taxes. But then be honest about it.
Also, re peanut and other allergies: how much results from small children being swaddled and insulated at an age when nature intended them to be crawling around on the ground eating bugs - and developing their immune systems? Of course, every now and then one would get a bad bug; nature is profligate.
The comments are too long and I didnt read them. But I searched for fried and grill and no mention of a grilled PB&J?
Make a PB&J sandwich and spread butter on top and bottom. Put in a warm skilled and cook until golden brown.
Yummy!
Caligula—In Seattle area, schools actually do hand out free lunches in the summer, at several local parks. No questions asked, and they are Subway sandwiches with chips and fruit and milk!I got them once with a friend, but I’m ashamed to admit it—it’s hard to turn down free stuff but of course it’s not free. It seems like the choice is to be a sucker who pays or a leech who doesn’t — in healthcare or schooling or any other handouts.
I'm 48, and I still will bring PBJs to work for lunch. I make my kid's lunches every morning, and they eat breakfast at home.
I'm a bit mystified as to why schools feel compelled to provide lunch for kids. It enables some of the worst behavior in parents, and caters to this stigmatizing behavior.
If I remember my school cafeteria, we had to pay cash on the barrel head for lunch. No one got "credit".
And I brought my own sandwich all through Elementary school. A lot of times I would trade it for someone else's sandwich because I didn't want to eat the same thing again.
"Give them Campbell’s Tomato soup and 1/2 grilled cheese"
OMG, its coming back to me. Those horrible grilled cheese sandwich and rubbery green beans our cafeteria served. Plus, awful "sloppy joes" and spaghetti that always tasted like it came out of a can.
Toasted PB&J sandwiches are better than cold ones.
I have often wondered why the the lunch and breakfast programs aren't just rolled into the overall school budget. Surely the cost is a fraction of the cost of everything else the school pays for during the day.
Human ingenuity at its finest.
We will never run out of things to complain about!
"I had stigma for breakfast."
Stigma! You were lucky to stigma for breakfast! I used to have disgrace with a side of reproach each morning! You were lucky!
When I was 14, my athletic friend Rich and I planned to crash our church camp in Williams Bay for the week, because we couldn't afford the usual fee. Since we couldn't afford to pay for the food either, we each made and packed 21 PB&J sandwiches, one for each meal. I stuck it out, but Rich gave up after two days, then went on to win the "all-around camper" award for the week on account of his superior athletic ability, even though his name wasn't to be found anywhere on the camp roster!
While I've lived and traveled throughout Mexico, South America and Europe, the only American food I regularly get nostalgia for is the PB&J sandwich, which, along with proper peanut butter, is only rarely available and at a very high import-price. To this day, I always take a large jar of Jif along on my annual trip to Rio.
I had no idea sunflower seed butter was a thing. Sounds delicious. It happens to be about three times as expensive as peanut butter. Such a sacrifice for those deadbeat no-lunch-money kids!
While we're at it, couldn't we just assume that a jelly sandwich would be served cold? Are they implying that a hot jelly sandwich would be better?
Good name for a band-- Hot Jelly Sandwich.
Sunflower seed butter? I have very pedestrian tastes, I doubt that I would enjoy something that...exotic; particularly as a child! That all should suffer for the sake of a few (those with peanut allergies) seems like a political philosophy of some sort.
My daughter attended a Catholic high school. Being too lazy to make her own lunch, we paid for the school lunch. I'd estimate a month's worth and write a check. She wouldn't always tell me when the fund was low, and when it ran out- she'd get a PB&J sandwich!
Tyrone, I don’t know how other school districts fund it, but at mine our PTA bought the bread, butter and jelly for the lunch program.
Is there a difference between "sesame seed butter" and tahini?
This type of thing strikes me as the canary in the coal mine. Are we starting to run out of Other People’s Money?
At Trader Joe's the other day, I espied Sunflower Seed Butter Cups -- like a Reese's Peanut Butter cup. It was okay. I won't buy another one though. Unusual flavor. Maybe you could get used to it.
The comments are too long and I didnt read them. But I searched for fried and grill and no mention of a grilled PB&J?
You know, they could do a grilled cheese with tomato soup. But with Vale, it would probably be made with feta cheese, almond milk butter, and sundried tomato soup.
Gospace recalls: Adults in the troop were equally divided on the issue. Years later, any of the young men who earned Eagle rank were sons of the people who thought it was a good planning lesson. Could be pure coincidence.
Nope. I'm sure there is a direct correlation between parents who let kids suffer the consequences of their actions to learn life's hard lessons and success of the kids later in life. I know 'kids' in their 40's who are still dependent on Mom & Dad to bail them out every time things go sideways. OTOH, maybe there's a genetic component, as well.
Henry says: There have been camping trips where a kid totally forgets to bring their contribution to the meal. Sometimes the main contribution. The adult leaders are always ready with a backup plan, after the mistake is made.
So did the kid still get to eat?
No nuts.
Some kids are allergic to other nuts, e.g. walnuts.
So did the kid still get to eat?
Yes -- once the kids realize what they've done the adults prompt them figure out a solution, either making do with what they do have, or figuring out a way to share with other patrols. At a certain limit, we're not going to let a whole patrol try to hike on no food.
Spit roasted Webelo works in a pinch.
I volunteer at an agency that prepares a couple hundred or so Sun Butter and jelly sandwiches per week for a school tutoring program. Sun Butter is Expensive. Everyone's thankful.
As for the school lunch business: only once did I forget my bagged (bologna and cheese with an apple) lunch at cat-ho-lic school. When I did, the nuns prepared me a grape jelly and butter sandwich on rye bread, with no side or dessert. That, along with having the nuns hand that business over to me, had to have been one of the most difficult lunches ever to swallow.
Stigmatized?
As a taxpayer, I am offended when benefits provided by my dollars and given for free are deemed not good enough. There’s nothing wrong with a [x]butter and jelly sandwich! I ate a thousand of them during my school years. I brought a lunch from home every day!
Any kid worried about being stigmatized by a free sandwich has an option—he doesn’t have to eat the damned thing! A few days of going hungry is a good way to recalibrate the offendometer. .
elkh1 said...
No nuts.
Some kids are allergic to other nuts, e.g. walnuts.
5/8/19, 3:56 PM
Yeah, then one day some kid comes in and says I'm allergic to beef. Let me tell you, that kid is getting taken out behind the barn.
I hope to God they provide Arugula salads! If not.... the horror.
On rare occasion I stiffened up at the meal my mother placed before me. Sometimes I was clear about the indignity of the situation. I recall my mother saying, "You'll eat it and you'll LIKE it.
A clear notch above her standard, "Eat it or go hungry. Your choice."
I ate.
School is for learning, not eating. Get rid of the cafeterias and nobody gets stigmatized.
“Which turned out to be assailable. And a tiny bit wrong. But only a tiny bit.”
Actually not. That’s the part of the post where I recount a conversation and I do that accurately. The blog post is therefore right, not wrong.
You all are a bunch of real jerks, aren't you??? You were never children, perhaps? And no, people, a sunflower seed/jelly sandwich is NOT as nutritious as the other menu options, and NO, little children should not be singled out and embarrassed because their parents are struggling and cannot pay for their lunches. Get a little bit of compassion, fools! I pity your own children!
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