Coming to the Table

A friend and I recently attended a meeting of the Kent City Schools Wellness Advisory Board.  By recently, I mean about a month ago or more, but it's taken awhile for me to sort this out and, well, life got in the way.  We went to that meeting planning on talking about how we wanted to see better food in the schools.  we wanted food not to be used as an incentive.  We value children' health and want to see obesity rates lowered.  We're afraid of the corn-flavored sodium pellets that is "industrial sized" cans of corn.  We are acutely aware that ketchup does not actually count as a vegetable.  In short, we came to the table to share my concern about they were feeding children, mine and others and talk about how to improve food choices.

Imagine my surprise when the teachers and school employees that were in attendance started expressing their concern over what parents were feeding children.  The teachers were frustrated that they could only control what food and nutrition messages children received at school.  They were afraid that children would come to school, learn good nutrition, and then go home and be fed nothing but Doritos and soda by parents.  In short, they came to the table to talk about how best to educate children.

Both of these things- good options and good education- are necessary to beat something like the childhood obesity epidemic.  Both sides were right in our concerns.  However, little was done at that meeting and I have little hope for things to change in the near-term future.  Granted, this was more of an organizational meeting than a planning meeting, but even for what it was, there was little really accomplished.

Part of the lack of any movement on the subject is the lack of trust that both parties exhibited and felt, I think.  I realize Ken doesn't have the normal "kid" diet.  He doesn't get high fructose corn syrup or artificial food coloring if he's at home.  This helps his diet as well as my sanity- you don't want to know what his reaction is to Red #40, it's not pretty.  He also gets the vast majority of his grains as whole grains.  We eat mostly organic.  No store-bought canned veggies; just fresh when they're in season, frozen, and home-canned from fresh.  He's mostly vegetarian, although we have been letting him try meat at home  lately, where we know what the animals have been fed and how they have been treated.  I don't fit the school's idea of their student's parents lack of education.

The school where the meeting was held also wasn't what I had envisioned.  At the high school, there were things that I would almost consider eating.  They have a salad bar and a burrito bar.  They have real food, by US standards.  The school cafeteria that I remembered from my childhood was only a small portion of the options that were present.  This cafeteria more resembled a mall food court than the cafeteria in which I grew up.  It didn't fit my preconception of the food choices available.  It was also not what the lower grades' cafeterias looked like and those are closer to my view of a cafeteria, I was told by one of the teachers.

In retrospect, we all would have done better to leave our preconceptions at the door before coming to the table.  We would have done better not to have pre-judged the other side.  We would have done better to think outside of the "us" and "them" style of combative mentality.  We would have done better to trust each other until proven otherwise.  I think these are good lessons for accomplishing goals in many more areas of life.

Happy Belated Pi Day!

To celebrate the event, I'm posting my dad's classic bad joke.  Really- it's bad.

A farmer and her husband work hard, live frugally, and save every penny they can so that when they're old enough, their children can go to college.  That day finally arrives, and they proudly send their first child off to school.  Upon returning home for winter break after his first semester, the boy is quizzed by his father, who was smart in the ways of the world, but uneducated in academic disciplines. 

"What'd they learn you at college?" asks the father, who had always admired education but accepted it as not his fate.

"Pi(r)²" responded the boy.

To which his father, incensed and red-faced, replied, "BOY!  You ain't learned NOTHIN'!  Pie are round; CORNBREAD are squared!"

Ba-dum-bum.  I told you it was bad.

Cognitive Dissonance Much?

I find myself in the peculiar position today of being a staunchly feminist woman advocating for boys rights.  I know- it sounds even odder on this side of the screen.  I'm doing this because really, I think for both genders, there are some serious human rights issues that don't get enough attention, and equality means just that- equality.  If persons of either gender suffer abuse, discrimination, or inaccessibility to services because of their gender, then that is not equality.  Yes, obviously there are some distinct biological differences between males and females, but a person's access to education really shouldn't be influenced by their biological sex.  And as I was informed yesterday by my son's pediatric provider that it most definitely was.  Apparently the current thinking is to wait until boys are almost or already six years old before starting them in kindergarten.  The reasoning that I was given is that boys can't be expected to sit still for classes before then, which strikes me as the typical "boys will be boys" excuse. 

What does this teach boys?  To tell children going into public education that boys can not, and thus should not be expected, to behave themselves in a classroom appropriate manner until later than girls?  To tell them that younger girls are behaviorally on par with their older boy class mates?  Doesn't this just set up lower expectations for boys?  Doesn't it just say "It's OK, we don't expect as much out of you as we do girls, you are a boy, after all.  It's not like you can control your own behavior."  Doesn't this just lay the foundation for later sexual harassment and possible abuse to be excused with an "It's not my fault; she wore a revealing outfit."  We've accepted the fact that when we set the bar lower for girls, we set them up for failure.  If we tell girls it's OK to be bad at math and science, then they are less likely to seriously try math and science.  Why can't we see that the same is true for boys? 

Public education is just that- open to the public.  Not the public of one gender.  If boys are not ready to sit still and learn at kindergarten age, then why is kindergarten structured in a way that favors girls, who supposedly are behaviorally ready?  I'll admit Ken is an active child; anyone who knows me has heard at least a tale or two of being lapped by a small child.  It happens frequently in our house.  I get that boys are active.  So are girls.  Frankly, I'm almost thirty and I have to get up and stretch and be active for a little bit every couple of hours or I go stir crazy.  I understand the need to be not looked into a desk all day.  Why do we expect children of any age to do what even adults have trouble doing?  Especially when we're facing an epidemic of childhood obesity, shouldn't we be encouraging all children, regardless of gender, to get up, move about, and exercise, and provide them ample opportunity to do so? 

I see similar differences in treatment when it comes to certain medical procedures, but that post will have to be written another time- I need to get out and run a bit.