It frustrates me when advocates get righteous about something that they only imagine and don’t take the time to see for themselves (while claiming it’s widespread and easy to observe):
“I never actually witnessed this scene myself, but I’ve interviewed enough lunch ladies, principals and kids to construct a sort of composite mental image that now plays on an endless loop between my ears. It’s become my own personal film of educational injustice, frame by frame, in high-definition slow motion: the momentary confusion on the child’s face, the hushed explanation from the cashier, the sudden understanding dawning in the kid’s eyes, the burning shame that follows.”
And from that, cooking up an opening paragraph precipitated on “witnessing” it, and Nuremberg-like somber intonations about the banality of “the ritual humiliation of second graders. It’s watching the adults in the room — ordinary, decent people who’d never dream of snatching food from a child in any other context — perform this strange ceremony with the mechanical resignation of DMV employees, while around them life continues uninterrupted, because this is just How Things Are.”
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He didn’t witness this. He talked to people who were heartsick about it happening at all. Even in his imagined example, the kid doesn’t go hungry, the kid gets a sandwich instead of an institutional pizza slice.
The adults I remember from situations like this would absolutely go out of their way to treat kids with dignity—I remember foodservice workers seeking out any kids who still looked hungry to slip them leftover hot food from the line, and in some cases workers or counselors or teachers covering kids’ meals themselves.
Dunning lunch debt is probably a silly way to run a program, but there’s no honest policy assessment here. I don’t see why school lunch shouldn’t be free at the point of service, but I also don’t know why it isn’t under the status quo. I bet it’s not raw sadism. The pearl-clutching seems to focus on behaviors that are unsubstantiated at best.