"Banty" <Banty_member@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
news:g6ch790115e@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> In article
> <184d00da-a75b-496b-a836-69e2fc041038@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
> hedgehog42 says...
>>
>>On Jul 24, 7:39 pm, "Stephanie" <h...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>>> Banty wrote:
>>> > In article <QvGdnRTSDMkYSBXVnZ2dnUVZ_sbin...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>, Stephanie
>>> > says...
>>>
>>> >> Pologirl wrote:
>>> >>> The hard facts of life are that, if a child is sent to school
>>> >>> without breakfast or provision for lunch, then sending the child
>>> >>> home is unlikely to get them fed.
>>>
>>> >>> A better option would be to provide a school breakfast as well as
a
>>> >>> school lunch.
>>>
>>> >>> Pologirl
>>>
>>> >> Point... WOOOOOOSSHHHHHH
>>>
>>> > Dewoo****fy please, because I also missed the point, and didnt know
it
>>> > until now.
>>>
>>> > Batny
>>>
>>> The trend toward entitlement not being good for those who wind up
>>> entitled
>>> and where it ends. (One could easily argue that how bad that is must
be
>>> measured against the bad of being in a stinky family situation.) Also
>>> the
>>> spending of resources on taking care of these issues not being good
for
>>> everyone's education.
>>
>>OK, now you've really rattled my cage. :)
>
> What rattles *my* cage is that this is supposed to be such an "everybody
> knows
> that it's true" thing that this was a "whoosh"??? I'm beginning to
wonder
> where
> folks are getting their information to think kids from poor families are
> swimming in freebies, because around here, breakfast programs are only
in
> the
> preschool years.
Well, in my case, it's because I taught in an inner city school, serving
largely students from two reasonably large low income housing projects,
for
8 years. And yes, my students DID have all the services I elaborated in
another post available. And, in most cases, the reason why those services
were available was because parents weren't getting it done, and the school
stepped in, wrote another grant, and started providing those services.
Or teachers would take the student's needs to their churches and civic
groups and the community at large and the various groups would provide the
services.
Which is fine. But what got me was just how soon something that was
provided
as a service one year then became an entitlement and was expected from
then
on out, and something else replaced it as the need that parents were
saying
they just couldn't provide. And while each inch-pebble seemed reasonable,
in
toto, it turned into a much larger amount of time, energy and resources
were
being spent providing social services than educational ones. It's hard to
teach a child who's teeth hurt, but it's equally hard to teach when every
single child in your class is being pulled out for dental exams in the
same
one week period. Would it really have been so hard to provide the free
physicals, immunizations, dental exams and the like during school breaks,
at
the school building? Did it have to happen during the school day? We
didn't
have school bussing into our building-our kids mostly just walked less
than
a block.
I understand Maslow's Hierarchy, and that a child can't learn when he/she
has unmet needs on other levels. I do have to wonder, though, why somehow,
the schools have fallen in the roll of providing those needs, instead of
letting the parent know that the child needs X, Y, Z, and referring to
outside agencies where appropriate. And one thing I've noticed, through
the
years, is that parents who would refuse a referral to a food bank, because
"I can feed my kids" have no trouble asking if the (free, grant sup****ted)
after school program can feed their child dinner.
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