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On the off chance you're interested in school lunches I highly recommend watching videos of Japanese school lunches on YouTube. There's a bunch out there now an
by iandanforth 1y ago
On the off chance you're interested in school lunches I highly recommend watching videos of Japanese school lunches on YouTube. There's a bunch out there now and if you were raised in the American system it will probably blow your mind. The idea that lunches can be freshly made, on site, out of healthy ingredients and children are active participants in serving and cleaning up is just crazy. When I encountered it for the first time I felt like a big part of my childhood had been sold to the lowest bidder.
- staplers 1y agoI felt like a big part of my childhood had been sold to the lowest bidder. It was. Most local procurement laws enforce this.
- delfinom 1y agoIt wasn't just sold to the lowest bidder, the subsidized lunch program is specifically not to subsidize the kids, but to bail out farmers growing crap nobody wants.
- reverendsteveii 1y agowhen your tax money helps hungry children that's socialism and that's evil. when it helps agricultural conglomerates, otoh...
- gregw134 1y agoIn our case, sold to the bidder who gave kickbacks to the district supervisor.
- Suppafly 1y agowe had pepsi machines in my middle school because the pepsi distributor in town "donated" a new score board.
- panick21_ 1y agoSelling to the lowest bidder isn't necessarily bad if the requirements are set correctly.
- e_i_pi_2 1y agoEven worse - it's sold to the lowest bidder so they can sell it back to you for profit. This is a perfect example of why GDP isn't a good measure for how well a country is doing - if the kids do it themselves they may learn a bunch and enjoy it and make their lives better, but it doesn't create jobs or profit, so the incentives are against it.
- mensetmanusman 1y agoLook at what the grown-ups are eating…
- pfannkuchen 1y ago> The idea that lunches can be freshly made, on site, out of healthy ingredients and children Excellent garden path sentence.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- xarope 1y agoA friend who's a pre-school teacher has this excellent t-shirt (I LMAO the first time I saw it): let's eat, kids. let's eat kids. punctuation saves lives. https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/B1pppR4gVKL._CLa%7C2140%2C2000%7C61%2B6mPBW73L.png%7C0%2C0%2C2140%2C2000%2B0.0%2C0.0%2C2140.0%2C2000.0_AC_UY1000_.png https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/B1pppR4gVKL._CLa%7C2140%...
- Rhapso 1y ago[flagged]
- 9283409232 1y agoThey were just making a joke. I understand humor might be too foreign and loose for people on HN but trust me, there was no maliciousness in their comment.
- x-complexity 1y ago> The idea that lunches can be freshly made, on site, out of healthy ingredients and children are active participants in serving and cleaning up is just crazy. > When I encountered it for the first time I felt like a big part of my childhood had been sold to the lowest bidder. ....I share the sentiment, but I also see the chasm between the requirements to get to what's desired, & what's actually given to meet those requirements (which is almost nothing). To have this program exist requires children that can be trusted to not waste the food that they're given, to behave, & to learn about preparing their own meals. It's a bootstrapping problem, trust problem, & expectations problem, all at once. Japan was able to do this by pressuring its citizens & youth to pay the cultural toll needed to get there, and it was a toll that *everyone* had to pay into. No exceptions. Whilst there can be pockets of local communities that can do this, the probability that the same thing can happen *everywhere* in the US is close to zero, given the cultural emphasis placed on individualism. It is also from this emphasis of individual exceptionalism where there can be no guarantees that *everyone* will pay the cultural toll. It must be *everyone*, or this proposal won't work: It'll just be another form of subsidization by another name. ------ Note: This doesn't mean that it can't happen, just that the amount of effort needed to get there is monumental, and that certain axioms have to be relaxed significantly to do so.
- ethbr1 1y agoKids don't go to all schools: they go to their school. So by fixing things in one school, any school, you're really fixing things for all the kids that go there.
- pnutjam 1y agoThis is why the wealthy should be required to use public schools.
- Aurornis 1y agoPeople who send kids to private schools pay taxes (which fund schools) but don’t take resources from public schools. Forcing them to use the public schools would further divide the tax funding across more kids, reducing the funds available per kid. This suggestion is reminiscent of California trying to reduce educational inequality by eliminating advanced math classes and putting everyone together. It was a terrible idea, but it made sense to someone looking for what they thought was an easy solution.
- RandallBrown 1y agoMaybe this wasn't all over the US, but in the 90s I helped serve and clean up our elementary school lunches. There was a rotation through all of the older classrooms.
- iandanforth 1y agoMind sharing which school?
- RandallBrown 1y agoIt was a public elementary school in Bay City Michigan.
- Aurornis 1y agoOn the internet it’s easy to forget that the US education system is extremely heterogeneous. There isn’t one set of practices or laws that are shared across the country. It’s very local. For me, I can barely remember school provided lunches existing as something that a small handful of students got. The majority of students brought a lunchbox from home that our parents prepared.
- RandallBrown 1y agoYup, we had "hot lunch" available or you could bring your own. Some kids had meal cards that got them free lunch (or maybe just reduced lunch? I was like 8 years old so I don't remember.)
- saltcured 1y agoI can remember similar from public elementary school in the early 80s in the suburban SF Bay Area. In kindergarten, we had a rotating chore to take the collective milk money for the class, exchange it for a crate of milk at the cafeteria, and return it to the kindergarten room. I can imagine social norms have changed since then about this de facto mandatory financial exercise. In later grades, we had some rotating lunch duties including, at least, rinsing the lunch trays and loading the big dishwasher. I can't remember if we ever helped serve food, but I do remember being told to be careful with the very hot water spray nozzle in the washing basin. I can imagine this having changed due to shifting safety and liability norms.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- veunes 1y agoI remember stumbling across one of those videos and just sitting there like, wait… this is real?
- indrora 1y agoA Japanese friend of mine visited an American middle school as part of a science class. He was invited to eat lunch with the students or go out with the staff. He chose (after not having ever been in an American school cafeteria) to sit with the students he had talked to as a matter of respect. He sent me a picture of what he was served -- cold pizza slab with a cup of fruit. His comment was simply "How are you to learn when your soul hungers? Is this really how American schools prepare the minds of the youngest?" I responded with "Oh you're lucky, you got the fancy meal." That a cheese slice between two slices of bread with some mayo would be served to a child as their only food of the day was spiritually disgusting to him in a way he did not have words for.
- veunes 1y ago"How are you to learn when your soul hungers?" Hits hard because it's true.
- Suppafly 1y ago>children are active participants in serving and cleaning up is just crazy They also clean the classrooms and hallways.
- GuinansEyebrows 1y ago> When I encountered it for the first time I felt like a big part of my childhood had been sold to the lowest bidder. Not to be a total downer but I often feel like this is true of every aspect of life in America.
- dkkergoog 1y ago[dead]
- foofoo4u 1y agoI attended a Japanese elementary school in California. It served food just as you described. Fresh and made onsite. I then transitioned to a typical American public school. I was disappointed to find my only option was cheap, factory made, mass produced, strangely flavored and textured food. This stark contrast and downgrade has made me forever passionate about the topic of improving school lunches.