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What is “lunch shaming?” It happens when a child can’t pay a school lunch bill.
In Alabama, a child short on funds was stamped on the arm with “I Need Lunch Money.” In some schools, children are forced to clean cafeteria tables in front of their peers to pay the debt. Other schools require cafeteria workers to take a child’s hot food and throw it in the trash if he doesn’t have the money to pay for it.
In what its supporters say is the first such legislation in the country, New Mexico has outlawed shaming children whose parents are behind on school lunch payments.
Source: The New York Times
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New Mexico Outlaws School ‘Lunch Shaming’
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We lie loudest when we lie to ourselves.
-- Eric Hoffer
(Score: 4, Insightful) by KilroySmith on Sunday April 09 2017, @07:31PM (13 children)
I think there are valuable lessons here.
Kids should understand that there are things in life that cost money, and if you don't have the money, you can't have the things. Lunch is a pretty harsh thing to learn that lesson over, but I understood it when I went to elementary school - you could "take" lunch in a brown bag, or "buy" lunch from the school. If you didn't have a lunch, you went hungry. My mother let us "buy" lunch twice a week; I quickly learned to make at least a sandwich on the "take" days.
But that doesn't mean that stamping a scarlet letter on the student is the right answer. IMHO, a student who goes through the lunch line and doesn't have money to pay should get his lunch, along with a discreet discussion about needing to have money to get lunch and a note to parents requesting the cost. If it's a repetitive problem for a particular student, it needs a more personalized intervention - is it a discipline problem, a poverty problem, or something else - with a personalized approach. Based on my memories from elementary school, nobody's going to go broke because one or two students a day took some food and didn't pay.
IMHO, punitive attitudes like the parents (take it out on the kids because of a bigoted perceived parental failing) are unforgivable in a civilized society.
/frank
(Score: 5, Insightful) by vux984 on Sunday April 09 2017, @08:18PM (2 children)
Your whole post reads like a child going up, placing an order, and then not having enough cash in his wallet. And in the context your post seems reasonable. But is that really the scenario here?
I RTFA and it sounded more to me like the parents are paying a monthly fees to the school to provide the lunches, and then have gotten behind on their payments. You see the same thing in after school care too -- where if the parents are behind on their payments, the provider is in a tough spot. Are they supposed to just deny the kid care and ... what... kick them out on the street.
Its not the child's fault the parents last meal plan or daycare cheque bounced... and its not really a 'teachable moment' for the child.
And perhaps the parents are 'milking' it a bit -- counting on the school not to literally withhold food or shelter from a child, just because they're behind on the fees... I'm not sure what the solution here is. Interest and fines on the late payments is the 'default' solution... and it's what utilities etc use, but it doesn't work if the parents are behind because they couldn't pay the original amount; tacking fines just gives them a bigger number they aren't going to pay. And actually the utilities have the same problem. They aren't allowed to simply cut off the heat when a cheque bounces either...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 10 2017, @10:09AM
its not really a 'teachable moment' for the child.
I suspect it is in fact teaching the child something... but definitely not the thing that they want to teach, depending on just how the school handles it. In some schools a child is required to take a lunch, or at least, it used to be. As such, in this situation they're essentially humiliated repeatedly for something entirely beyond their control that they cannot opt out of. This does in fact teach them a lesson, and it is not one that makes them inclined to be respectful or well-behaved in the future, and understandably so.
(Score: 2) by meustrus on Monday April 10 2017, @08:00PM
The solution is pretty simple: pay for the food with taxes. The problem with that is mainly people who send their kids to school with a lunchbox who would be indignant that they still have to pay, and to a lesser extent people with no kids anyway. It's ultimately the same problem as funding public education at all though, which is...currently under fire in every Republican state as a target to slash funding in order to pay for their tax cuts for the rich.
I eagerly await the libertarian straw man to tell me how this plan is wrong because threats of violence if you don't pay your taxes are wrong and we should have a ridiculously complicated system of trillions of legal contracts between individuals instead, apparently enforced by sheer goodwill.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 0, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 09 2017, @08:52PM (2 children)
>IMHO, punitive attitudes like the parents (take it out on the kids because of a bigoted perceived parental failing) are unforgivable in a civilized society.
Your definition of 'civilised' is that an ever-increasing population of stupid, irresponsible and lazy people get to do whatever they please, while hard-working prudent people are forced to pay for them.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 09 2017, @09:29PM
Then why oscillate your bowels?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 10 2017, @04:32PM
Maybe you missed the latest reality check, but right now the US is a place where an ever-increasing (but still tiny) population of stupefyingly rich, irresponsible, stupid, and lazy people get to do whatever they please, while the hard working majority of people are forced to give up their hard earned money to the top 1% for "reasons".
Taxes are normal and keep society moving.
Extreme greed takes resources away from society and makes it collapse.
Your definition of civilized is actually the opposite, what you propose is anarchy or such a thin system of "government" that it may as well be anarchy. I imagine a horde of angry poor people in your proposed future, a horde which runs over anyone with any amount of property / resources. This mob will work hard at plundering your stash of goodies, and will prudently leave your bibles behind. Hooray for the future!
(Score: 2) by dry on Monday April 10 2017, @02:21AM
Especially the kid who just had his lunch money stolen by a bully.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Monday April 10 2017, @05:25AM (4 children)
It's not stamping a scarlet letter. It's making sure the parent sees it in a kid who is unlikely to remember to take a note home from school.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by pe1rxq on Monday April 10 2017, @12:19PM (2 children)
If stamping it on the arm of the kid is the only way a school can communicate effectivly with the parents your education system is seriously fucked up.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Monday April 10 2017, @03:51PM (1 child)
Or the parents are oblivious. Everything isn't on the school system's head, ya know.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 10 2017, @04:56PM
So what matters is that 0.01% who are bad parents, its their moral failings that should determine how all the other children are treated regardless of how damaging it is to those kids.
You are a peach.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 10 2017, @04:14PM
And if that doesn't work, I suppose we could just tattoo it to their arm; that way, no one in their family will ever forget. I mean, it worked so fabulously for the nazis. </sarcasm>
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Monday April 10 2017, @03:34PM
ALL poor kids know about not being able to afford things. Only those who have been affluent all their lives (or those with intelligence) know this. Why don't you?
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