From: Bob Sullivan
We came home for lunch in my day ('50's)
Only the kids who rode the bus had to stay in for lunch.
I can see the grade school from my house, but my kids took lunch in bags.
There are fewer stay at home moms to fix lunch for kids,
and it's easier to control the day if you keep the kids in school.
I always thought of the school lunch program as a conspiracy between
the USDA and the Wisconsin Dairy farmers to get rid of surplus cheese.
I changed my mind when I learned about school breakfast programs.
It's a sad state of affairs when the kids come to school to hungry to learn,
and when the parents are so negligent. At least this feeds them...
Different school systems - different rules - different reasons.
Thinking back on my elementary school days, I think there were a few
kids there who lived close enough to the school to go home for lunch.
Not many did, because even then a lot of mothers got jobs outside the
home once the kids were old enough to go to school.
I grew up in a lower middle class part of town, and I think I was the
only kid in my grade whose mother didn't work in one of the cigarette
factories.
The school breakfast is a much later addition. Early to mid-70s if I
remember, although it WAS driven in part by concern that the USDA was
having so much surplus food to warehouse.
It was actually originally proposed as a cost cutting measure, because
distributing surplus food to the schools cost less than destroying it.
I don't know that I blame parental neglect for kids going to shcool
hungry as much as I see parental ignorance & poverty. Parents who don't
know any better, or don't have the resources, rather than parents who
don't care.
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