I never ate my lunch when i was a kid at school, never. Nor breakfast i just wasn't hungry. Same when at colleage now and then i would have a pie from the tuck shop but hardly i ate all through those years. When my sons went to school they would come home with their lunch still in their bags so i stopped making lunch for them and they use to skipp breakfast. Come dinner time though it was a feast.
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Yes this is a problem, but a problem that needs to be solved by the parents.
It's not up to the tax payers to fund this. We already fund the DPB, WFF, YPP benefits - Shouldn't the parents be spending this money for the lunches?
Just a quick calculation using Countdown online shows that a loaf of bread, bananas, a jar of jam and a 10 multi-pack of grain waves chips would cost $11.20. Not really that much.
It's a heck of a lot cheaper then all that junk food shown in the decile one school, and for the kids with no lunch, I'm sure the parents could find $11~ somewhere per child per week.
If anything is done, I reckon there should be some sort of partially funded school programme where parents pay $2 per day and the school provides some sort of food. Make it compulsory, take it off their benefit or whatever it takes.
It is great how parents are not allowed to smack their kids but are allowed to not feed them??
One day we have a news item as to how all our kids are overweight and the next that many are not fed??
Just using the following early quote to launch off of, so not picking on it, it representing some of the wider commenting on costs in various posts -
loganjames: The story said it'd take only $4 million per year to feed all decile 1-4 schools nation wide. In the grand scheme of things that is nothing. Kids can already has 2.2million for this year, surely this is where public / private should be working together. I.e. Fonterra could donate the milk etc.
Not perfect but as said in earlier posts we spend a lot more on less.
A quick check on the MinofEd site gives approx 56,000 kids in 1-4 decile full primary schools (doesn't include intermediate schools) and circa 190 school days in the year (give or take a few teacher, etc days).
So $4 million spread across that gives $4,000,000/56,000/190 -> circa 0.38 cents/ child per day, assuming every kid gets something.
Which hooks back to:
loganjames: I.e. Fonterra could donate the milk etc.
They have been doing so already in Northland and are in the process of rolling it out to ALL (not just lower decile schools) year 1 to 6 schoolchildren who want it, and supplying the schools with refrigeration, product delivery, and pickup of waste.
Others in the business community also heavily support schools through KidsCare or directly. As an example, Tip Top (hence the mention of their bread in the video, said 40,000 loaves but did not give the frequencyof supply) who do food, but they do tens of thousands of items of clothes, coats, shoes, etc, etc as well.
So, I suspect the costs that are being bandied around are heavily dependant on the continued and increased generosity of the business world.
My guess is there are many factors at work. There may be a tipping point where not bringing lunch becomes a norm - which more kids/parents will then conform to. Imho there may be some benefit in setting aside 10 minutes at the start of the lunch break for kids to actually eat their lunch.
The best solution would be reducing the allowances familes get (for school age children) and diverting that money to schools so they can provide a standard feed for everyone. It's targeting the welfare to the problem rather than giving money to people who determine their own priorities.
Feeding kids at schools is done in other countries (as has been mentioned). If you want your little people to have something different there's no stopping you supplementing the public fare....
Economies of scale should mean this is the cheapest way to get them feed and focused, hell why not encourage the parents to come along and help with the program. It may be the kicker some of them need.
You'll never teach the parents, the effective ones will always be doing the right thing. But the people who will change the future, and the parents.... are the children.
But why is it the Schools/Governments problem that the kids don't have lunch?
I blame the parents. There is no excuse for letting your kid go to school with nothing to eat. No excuse. A slice of bread costs how much? A loaf of bread can be bought for $1.80
Sorry I don't buy into this Poverty in NZ nonsense.
of course you can blame the parents, they are absolutely responsible.?
unfortunately, though, the parents will still be poor, alcoholics, gamblers, etc after all the blame and the kids will still go hungry.?
the kids, themselves, don't have any control over their parents or their own situation which is why it might be a good idea to help them out at school...
Nope.
By shifting the responsibility for feeding the children to the school you enable parents who do not care.
But why is it the Schools/Governments problem that the kids don't have lunch?
I blame the parents. There is no excuse for letting your kid go to school with nothing to eat. No excuse. A slice of bread costs how much? A loaf of bread can be bought for $1.80
Sorry I don't buy into this Poverty in NZ nonsense.
of course you can blame the parents, they are absolutely responsible.?
unfortunately, though, the parents will still be poor, alcoholics, gamblers, etc after all the blame and the kids will still go hungry.?
the kids, themselves, don't have any control over their parents or their own situation which is why it might be a good idea to help them out at school...
Nope.
By shifting the responsibility for feeding the children to the school you enable parents who do not care.
It seems evident that the parents don't care though, which is the initial problem. Or they may care, but not care in the right ways that enable their children to be well clothed and fed at school. You would probably have a hard time telling parents that they 'don't care about their kids'. I would also imagine that this is how the parents parents brought their children up, so to them this is how it should be. It's likely there are a higher percentage of 'young' parents who perhaps did not get an opportunity to grow up themselves and seek education/work before having children. These parents probably believe they are doing the best they can, in most cases they probably are.
It doesn't seem there is much way around 'feeding the kids' until the communities around the children are able to make proper decision to take care of the children.
I look after my 10, 11 year old cousins for weeks at a time, and every day it is a battle to get them to do what I ask and eat what is healthy, I know to do this because that's what I my parents did for me, and I know it will enable them to grow up well. If I didn't know any better I would certainly find it easier to give them $5 for lunch every day and not make sure they look 'smart' for school.
By shifting the responsibility for feeding the children to the school you enable parents who do not care.
True, but not feeding the kids at school does not make the parents care. It just means the kids go hungry.
If we accept that 'it cost too much' and 'they are uneducated' are just excuses then I can't think of a way to make parents actually take care of their children short of things which would violate human rights.
The truth is there are people who have children who are simply incapable of taking care of them. I don't like it but I think we, as in society, have a responsibility to take care of these children.
There are a lot of people here at fault but it isn't the hungry child. Feed the kid first, then try to fix the problem of parents who can't take care of their kids.
crackrdbycracku: The truth is there are people who have children who are simply incapable of taking care of them. I don't like it but I think we, as in society, have a responsibility to take care of these children.
There are a lot of people here at fault but it isn't the hungry child. Feed the kid first, then try to fix the problem of parents who can't take care of their kids.
I agree with everyone who suggested that we have to take a realistic look at this issue.
So far, having read every post on 3 pages, I'm quite amazed at the range of views, the passion and over whelming ignorance, understanding and empathy some geeks seem to have.
I'm excited by the amount of passion there is to fix the issues, even if some views seem to boarder on a call to put bad (or non-coping) parents to death by burning at the stake.
I agree with those who suggested it's complex. They're right.
The children them selves can make the dynamics very hard. When our local school decided to do some breakfasts, some of the kids who were eating at home started to refuse to because they wanted to join their friends at school for breakfast, does this then make those parents bad and we should add them to the stake burning above?
In some cultures communities eat together. Why do we assume that feeding our children together in the community has a bad thing?
I did a school visit with my son last week, he's about to turn 5. The teachers at his school do make the kids sit and eat their lunch, they do supervise what's in the boxes, and they seem to consider this as part of their job in teaching children how to take care of them selves.
Is the problem in these decile one schools as much about teachers with different attitudes who have just given up? See, we could point fingers in all sorts of directions.
I can understand the dynamics of a parent who just gives up putting good food in a lunch box to see it come home uneaten to only go in the rubbish bin. Some talk about parents wasting money, but are these parents simply just accepting the dynamics of their kids. We heard from one poster who commented it was his choice never to eat lunch.
What do we know about the dynamics of these kids at home? Do they get home and then tuck into a good feed at 3:30pm, where they are being properly supervised and ensured that the food is going in and down? Sure, that doesn't help classroom learning, but does it give these parents some reprieve from the stake burning?
Teach the shocking parents?!?!?!
Ok, so perhaps we should be pointing the finger back at these parents....
Who do we now think should teach these parents? Where should they go for this education? YouTube? TV? ...or here's a novel idea.... school?
Lots of posters seem to want parents to learn but yet seem to be against actually feeding kids at school.
But isn't it just logic that we should just combine the two problems within the school by employing some of these parents in the schools to do the cooking and feeding?
We complain about dole bludgers
Some of these parents on the DPB complain about not being able to get sensible work, and they have a very valid point. Many employers don't want to hire staff from 10am to 2pm.
If we know who these parents with issues are, then why aren't we giving them jobs to just teach them cooking skills and get them more money to pay for better food for their kids at the same time? Seems like a double win to me.
We talk about the costs
If we've got all these DPB parents sitting at home doing nothing all day (which I actually doubt, but we'll accept that for the sake of argument), then if we give them jobs in the schools, won't we then end up saving money on what we're paying them in benefits?
Drink and Smokes are the problem?
If this is the case then why not just put more tax on both? I suspect the reason is that drink and smokes really aren't as much of an issue as some seem to think. If that was an easy fix then why aren't we advocating it?
My pledge: $10
If all it will take to fix this problem is a $1 a year, then sure, I'll pledge 10 years support to this problem.
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CamH: Yes this is a problem, but a problem that needs to be solved by the parents.
If anything is done, I reckon there should be some sort of partially funded school programme where parents pay $2 per day and the school provides some sort of food. Make it compulsory, take it off their benefit or whatever it takes.
I quite like this idea, though with the bleeding hearts I can't see it ever getting done.
Kaos36: I never ate my lunch when i was a kid at school, never. Nor breakfast i just wasn't hungry. Same when at colleage now and then i would have a pie from the tuck shop but hardly i ate all through those years. When my sons went to school they would come home with their lunch still in their bags so i stopped making lunch for them and they use to skipp breakfast. Come dinner time though it was a feast.
This is a fair point.
The conventional wisdom goes that loading kids up with "healthy" carbs (cereal, fruit, bread) for breakfast and lunch day helps them learn.
It's BS, since when did jacking kids up with sugar help concentration?
Also humans (even small growing ones) can go from dinner to dinner without food with no real problem, evolutionary biology at work. Some people prefer to do this and shouldn't be forced into an 3 meals a day just because of conventional wisdom + PC gone mad.
The ineptitude of the decile 1 parents is another matter all together.... there is no quick fix, current generation of parents is probably a write off.
In the Ragnortatorship anyone leaving school and not going into a trade or uni would go into national service and get taught basic life skills + a useful trade. Probably would be solved in a generation.
My kids are very young (3yrs and 6 months) but one of the main rules in our house is 3+ meals a day. We simply make a culture in our house of requiring everyone to eat at least breakfast lunch and dinner, and more healthy options and more important in kids, is actually 5-6 meals. Admittedly we can afford to feed our kids though we have worked to be in this position.
I really like the schools to make lunchtime supervision compulsory, it only takes 10 minutes. It also ensures kids get lunch and ARE eating it. Not eating breakfast or lunch would do your body and mind immeasurable harm in most cases (Plenty of evidence to support this). Schools where lunch is supervised and notes sent to parents who's kids don't have lunch, have much better academic performances according to a report I read recently but can't find right now to post.
networkn: Not eating breakfast or lunch would do your body and mind immeasurable harm in most cases (Plenty of evidence to support this).
That's conventional wisdom imo, citation needed for your "evidence" is does real harm.
Humans didn't evolve always eating breakfast and lunch on a set time or schedule or eating a certain number meals a day, it's just a modern convention.
As long as you get the nutrients/minerals you need the schedule of when and how you eat is irrelevant.
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