Forrest Knox, state senator whose 14th District includes Woodson County, is close enough to home to captivate my attention from time to time. AN ASIDE to the hot lunch program is when I was a student in the 1950s, it was very much a part of the day at Humboldt High School.
Earlier this week he caught the dickens in a Hutchinson News editorial for a bill he introduced to give higher foster care payments to families who met what he termed the state’s definition of a “good family.” Specifically, that’s one with a stay-at-home mom, dutiful husband and cookie-cutter kids in the images of Beaver and Wally of “Leave it to Beaver” fame. I suppose he’d have Eddie Haskell ex-communicated.
A couple of weeks ago Knox took aim at “bad parents” who depend on schools to feed their children breakfast and lunch. He interpreted school meal programs as an example of parents not stepping up to the plate, rather sending their kids to school hungry.
Intervention on the schools’ part has been morning and noon meals, which in most cases in southeast Kansas — Allen County included — has 50 to 60 percent of kids qualifying for free or reduced-priced meals. Poverty may not be rampant in this corner of the state, but it is pervasive.
While Knox may interpret the program as schools assuming the role of parents, there is much more to it. Foremost, educators realized decades ago that children performed better in class and learned more if they were not distracted by hunger.
Also, the lunch program isn’t a new kid on the block, with federal subsidy starting in 1946 under the pen of President Truman, in part because of a preponderance of men entering armed services during World War II who suffered from malnutrition. The nation also had food surpluses and what better way to alleviate the glut of food than by feeding hungry kids.
The breakfast program came at the tail-end of Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society” domestic initiatives, at the behest of experts who rightly pointed out nagging hunger was no way to start a day.
Knox’s rail about the food programs was part of a screed that blamed most of what’s wrong with society and education on abdication of parental responsibilities. Whatever shred of truth that’s in that isn’t positively amplified by inflammatory pronouncements by legislators.
I lived less than two blocks from school and if any mom ever prepared three nutritious meals a day — every day — it was my mother. But, it was quite a treat for me to stay at school over the lunch hour and join my friends.
We got quite a kick of having fare of the day plopped down on our compartmentalized plastic trays and then munching away, with a little carton of milk to wash all down.
Also, I learned an important life lesson when a nutritionist came to talk: Eat the potato skin, he said, that’s where all the good stuff is. I have with every potato since.
Nutrition a big part of learning
