Yet Another Feel Good Gov’t Program Going Awry – Free Breakfast Increases Obesity in School Children
We have heard a great deal about the obesity levels of young children in this country. I agree they are startlingly high. But the answers that the government has come up with don’t seem to be working. Who would have seen that coming?
Turns out that the free breakfast that is being offered to low-income children is actually increasing the levels of overweight children. It seems that these parents are not as irresponsible as the government has thought that they were and the vast majority of these kids are now eating two breakfasts every morning, which of course increases their caloric intake for the day.
Nearly half of New York’s elementary and middle-school students are overweight or obese, according to a public health official quoted in the news story. Thus the concern in expanding a free meal program created for malnourished kids from poor families that can’t afford food. Parents from low-income New York schools who were interviewed for the piece expressed concern that their kids were getting breakfast in class because they eat at home every morning.
One mother said she actually reduced what her five-year-old eats at home because he has a second breakfast at school. This obviously creates doubts about the need for this taxpayer-funded meal program. Uncle Sam is already feeding a record 45 million people via food stamps and the number is quickly growing, according to the most recent government figures.
It also turns out that many of the school systems in lower-income areas are completely skipping the cafeteria and feeding the breakfast right in the classroom. To remove the stigma. So we are feeding children who are not even necessarily low-income, because they don’t anyone to feel bad so every child receives a free meal and the number of these free meals in the morning has more than tripled in school districts like Chicago.
Wouldn’t the money we are spending on this program be more effectively used to improve the education that kids are receiving? The drop out rate in the city of Chicago was 55.7% in 2008. Well above the national average of 30%. Other major metropolitan areas don’t fare much better. In the city of Detroit kids are going without school books in schools that are falling down.
We need to look at how we are spending our educational dollars and realize that the main goal is educate our children and we are failing big time in giving the next generation the tools that they need in order to thrive in a competitive world. We continue to lower standards; instead of raising our children up we are letting them down and continue with the dumbing down our kids.
…the mathematics components of the Common Core State Standards Initiative are a bitter disappointment. In terms of their limited vision of math education, the pedestrian framework chosen to organize the standards, and the incoherent nature of the standards for mathematical practice in particular, I don’t see how these take us forward in any way.
Says Grant Wiggins, curriculum expert.
But hey, at least they are getting fatter.
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Ike and 
A.Men are discussing. 
Potluck 
A.Men 7:23 AM on 04/29/2012 Permalink |
We are broke. Start every spending conversation with we are out of money. Do not borrow from China or print this money .
Ike 9:01 PM on 04/29/2012 Permalink |
The money we might save by doing away with free breakfasts, lunches and dinners for school children will not (would not?) produce any better ‘educational outcomes’ for those kids. Ye Gods! More money is spent on primary, secondary and college educations in this nation than can be imagined and at each level the children come out knowing less and able to understand less than they start each level with. The entire system of public education in in the U.S. is broken beyond all possibility of repair and needs to be done away with and replaced with less system, less centralization and less authoritarianistic notions. If that last adjutive had too many syllables, for a more concise label, we need teachers and head teachers in American schools who would never consider having student sing hymns to the President of the United States, nor take home notes to their parents to read which lecture them on their ‘carbon footprints’, nor be required to act out central ceremonies in a religion that is not the parents’ (nor the children’s I might add), nor for pre-pubescent children to be “counselled” at their schools that they may well homosexuals and tutored on how to become the opposite sex, nor for foreign flags to be given pride of place at the schools and other children at the same schools being told not to show the American flag as it might hurt some ethnic minority’s feelings …. shall I continue? Time and money are being wasted in vast quantities in public schools as, to add insult to injury, mainstream American culture is being denigrated and belittled while the majority religion – like it or not that is Christianity of some variety or another! – is criticized and made the butt of obscene jokes. Yes, I think that pretty well sums up the reasons why we ought to throw the education establishment out of work and hire someone with better qualifications to pass on the values and traditions of America to the young. And perhaps teach them to read, write and do simple arithmetic would be nice, too.