Poverty and bullying have been shown to produce compound negative effects on childhood education, leading to potential long-term behavioral problems. Often, the two causes feed off of each other, resulting in tragedies like the 1999 shootings at Columbine High School.
Yet, as if out of a Charles Dickens novel, one Southern California school district has opted to “blame” children for delinquent lunch money by giving them cheese sandwiches until their parents fork over the dough.
A recent Los Angeles Times article described a debt-collection strategy used by the Chula Vista Elementary School District in San Diego County. These wise educators have adopted a “cheese sandwich” plot to embarrass parents into paying overdue lunch tabs.
The intended result is to force deadbeat parents to pay up. The true outcome may be that low-income children are ostracized by bullies for life circumstances beyond their control, leading to problems sociologists, educators and psychologists have studied exhaustively since Columbine.
Bullying in schools isn’t rare. According to the National Resource Center for Safe Schools in Portland, Ore., “30 percent of American children are regularly involved in bullying, either as bullies or victims, and approximately 15 percent are severely traumatized or distressed’ as a result of encounters with bullies.”
The organization states, “Children who bully in childhood are more likely to become violent adults and engage in criminal behavior.” Victims are likely to suffer long-term anxiety, low self-esteem and depression into adulthood, researchers agree.
Studies in 2002 by the U.S. Secret Service and the U.S. Department of Education correlate causes for the spate of campus shootings in Colorado, Vermont, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and, more recently, Virginia Tech, to the “bully” phenomena many children experience early in life.
The policy applied by the CVESD is akin to “re-victimizing the victims.” By holding children’s stomachs hostage, the district sends an elitist message: Pay up or we will starve and embarrass your kids.
Any elementary school teacher can attest to the difficulty in holding a hungry child’s attention in the classroom.
Children don’t understand hunger and poverty, but must deal with the rigors of trying to learn, in spite of their growling bellies. They are poverty’s most vulnerable victims.
Cal State Long Beach has thousands of students in teaching programs, and many will struggle to teach through learning disabilities associated with student hunger.
Some will advance to leadership positions in their future school districts and, hopefully, will address the problems with greater empathy.
CVESD is not the only district attempting creative bill collecting through nutritional blackmail. The article points out that Orange County’s Capistrano Unified School District “serves crackers with peanut butter or cheese,” while Los Angeles Unified offers “half a sandwich and a piece of fruit” to children without money.
CVESD claims on its website, “We believe that we have the responsibility to nourish their bodies and to provide a clean and safe learning environment.” Perhaps it’s time these educators stop counting beans and gut-check their mission.
Even Ebenezer Scrooge showed up to dinner with more than a cheese sandwich.
Duke Rescola is a senior journalism major and the opinion editor for the Daily Forty-Niner.
