The Des Moines Register is telling us that kids are upset about a ban on soft-drinks on campus. In its next breath, the reporter writes that students now go off-campus to get their sugar fix. Well, I've made a couple fundamental observations:
1) Cash-draining, electricity hungry, health compromising vending machines have no place in public schools -- and I don't care what they put in them.
2) I'm expected, by law, to leave my kids in the care of the public school system, purportedly so they might get a proper education. I submit that when the schools release students to run around town during lunch, health and education are both undermined.
When I went to public school, we had a lunch ticket. One punch meant you got a plate of food handed to you and you could add bread & butter and milk, or drink water. It was a certified diet and parents could trust it. There were no vending machines, and no, students were not permitted to leave campus. It worked. Parents had trust. Don't dare tell me the budget made you poison my son.
Admit it. Fast food is now part of our school culture because administrators have no backbone and I think that's a sad commentary.
Family "A" gives their kid cash to go to Quizno's for lunch every day. Family "B: wants their kids to eat school lunch for nutritional reasons. For whatever reason, perhaps out of a sense of peer pressure or for social reasons, kid from family "B" wants to go to Quizno's too. Dad "B" says, "No son, I'm against your eating fast food more than once a week". Dad "B" subsequently has a fight on his hands.
This is part of a larger conflict. Cash strapped schools are compromising health out of greed of their administration. Soft drink bottlers and vending companies would like to see more of the market share. I have no problem with most of the creative ways they find to increase market share -- until they begin to enlist public schools to bid for their profits.
Parents feel that soft drink bottlers and schools make bad bed fellows. But it appears, once again, greed wins.
Researchers have found that rats, when given a choice, will consistently turn down healthy food in favor of sugary treats and cocaine, to the point of self-detriment and even their own demise. Unfortunately, it looks like our kids are more like rats than we want to think. So a level sense of guidance by parents and responsible adults is something society should value.
So what's the deal? Have parents become less concerned about the well-being of their kids? Are they complacent? Or has right-wing capitalistic greed gotten in the way of common sense? We report; you screw up the world.
Put down the talking points and rub the make-up off your seedy little face, Mr. Witherspoon, and see how you're poisoning society at its very base. We see through the phony spin. The fact that you still wanted to be superintendent, even after finding out that you'd have to sell our kids into virtual slavery, should give the city pause. Stop throwing money and spin at the problems you've helped to create. And start doing your job. Educate our kids. Stop feeding students -- and everyone else -- crap.
DesMoinesRegister.com
I'm not sure where I came up with the idea, but I thought of a big national coffee house that seems to be the epitomy of the undermining of American values and culture and wanted to do something that people would want to support.
