Importance and Relevance of School Children Feeding on Education
This session evaluates the importance and relevance of school children feeding program on education with the lens of who is in the best position to implement such policy. As a method to support underprivileged children gets enough food to eat while motivating them to be in school, school children feeding program have been embraced by Policymakers and development organizations over the decades. It is worthy to note that the programs are not peculiar to developing countries. Developed countries such as the United States and the United Kingdom began implementing school feeding programs in the 19th century and still use them today for poor children (World Bank 2012) . The acceptance of these programs in many countries has led to a series of debates and questions about the effectiveness of these programs. Many have raised fundamental questions if the school children programs really increase enrolment and if so, what are the quality and the nutritional value of the food that the programs offer. Without a doubt, a suitable lunch can ward off starvation, but is it sufficient to cover for several years of nutritional deficiency? Children who aren’t hungry can focus better in school—does this mean they will do better in their classes?
But before we evaluate the importance of the program, it is imperative to first understand what School feeding is. Quite a number of scholars have defined the term “school feeding”, but for the purpose of this essay, I will define school feeding in line with the World Food Program report of 2004 which state that, “school feeding is a tool which today effectively enables hundreds of millions of poor children worldwide to attend school—in develop...
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...ding in urban settings often take a packed lunch according to what is available in their homes. On the contrary, in the rural areas schools provide all meals at school in which the parents pay fees for every term. (GCNF, 2006: 3-5). In a similar argument, Acham and colleagues maintained that school feeding program apparently have an impact on the increase in school participation rather than regular attendance in Uganda. Even though there are more than 8 million children attending primary school, many parents, in particular, the rural areas cannot afford to pay even the minimal cost of a daily meal of maize porridge “Several factors including food insecurity, poverty, distance between home and school and lack of commitment make the parents involved unable to provide meals for their children, which is the cause of irregular school attendance” (Acham et al., 2012:2).
Anna Quindlen’s take on child hunger in her essay School’s out for Summer could be seen as very interesting. Most times, people writing about this topic choose to look at the issue in foreign, low-development countries, but Quindlen decided to bring this topic right to America’s back door. By using pathos and logos, this author effectively makes an argument about how child hunger in America could be solved.
In Anna Quindlen’s essay, “School’s Out for Summer” she identifies a more unknown or even suppressed problem within America; child hunger. Throughout this essay her use of resources and information gives readers insight into a problem maybe they hadn’t known existed here in America. Quindlen gives many great facts and really gives a reality check that this is a problem that needs to be stopped. “That’s right. In
Though proponents of this method argue that it has lowered meal debt and the amount of families failing to pay, Stacy Koltiska refutes this claim by saying: “[The ones making these policies] are suits at a board meeting… They are not the ones facing a child and looking them in the eye and taking their food away.” While it is irrefutable that debt in schools is a problem that must be tackled, it is not a justifiable excuse to take a child’s midday meal out of his or her hands and throw it into a trash can because his or her parents can not put money into their child’s lunch account. There is no excuse for denying a child a hot meal or making them go hungry during the school day for something that is not their fault. Their dietary and nutritional needs are not a bargaining tool for the school system to use under any
"Hunger and Malnutrition." KidsHealth - the Web's Most Visited Site about Children's Health. Ed. Mary L. Gavin. The Nemours Foundation, 01 May 2012. Web. 12 May 2014.
Studies have shown that there is a link between food security, performance in the classroom, and obesity. If this issue is not faced head on, America will have a generation of children not fully prepared for the workforce and high health insurance rates due to obesity health issues. In providing help to people who find themselves in food insecure households, people can be found who are skeptical of their true need. One of the biggest myths of the disadvantaged is that they have poor shopping habits or shop in convenience stores where prices are extremely high compared to those in grocery stores. Another myth is that in America, the land of plenty, those that cannot afford food are lazy or cheats.... ...
Lunch time is a time to take a break from the day and recharge for the rest of the day. In elementary schools it is also a time to meet up with your friends and socialize. Lunch time is not only time to eat. It is important for the mental, social, and emotional health of the children as well. Children need them chance to unwind and destress, which is promoted by socializing with friends. “Lunch should be an enjoyable part of the school day for students, offering a break from classroom work and a place to relax, socialize, and become nourished.”("The Cafeteria: Creating a Positive Mealtime Experience", 2013) Lunch time should be done in a setting where
World hunger is a very important epidemic because of the risks or implications it imposes on the rest of the world. Juveniles are the utmost apparent victims of under-nutrition. 2.6 million children die as a result of hunger-related causes each year. 66 million school-aged children go to classes hungry across the developing world, with 23 million in Africa alone. One in four of the world's youth are kept from growing due to malnutrition. In developing countries the proportion can rise to one in three. A strong maternal-infant bond provided through psychosocial stimulation is essential for positive child development. The formation of this bond at the beginning of life is an essential step that sets the stage for cognitive,emotional, and social development later in life. Feeding and other care practices provide opportunities for psychosocial stimulation and help to establish a positive attachment between caregiver and child.(WHO) Under-nutrition magnifies the effect of every disease, such as measles,diarrhea and malaria. Asia has the largest number of hungry people (over 500 million) however S...
According to the Centers for Disease Control, “Childhood obesity has more than doubled in children and quadrupled in adolescents in the past 30 years,” meaning that America’s children need to start eating healthier, including healthier school lunches. The National School Lunch Act is a fairly recent addition to American society. For, as the world waged war a second time, the United States began to worry about the strength and health of the country’s soldiers. However, in the beginning, selling excess agricultural goods was more important than building a healthy, well-balanced meal for students. Unfortunately, many children coming from poorer families could not afford well-balanced school lunches, so in order to compensate, the School Lunch Program changed its focus to help these students. This program, however, decreased schools’ lunch budgets, and schools had a hard time keeping up with the amount of free meals they had to provide, so they came up with some extra ways to increase revenue. However, in a small town in Massachusetts, one chef makes a difference in the health of the school lunch students eat each day, and proves that hiring a trained chef to cook real, healthy meals can increase profit. Unfortunately, that is not the case in most schools across the nation. The quality of health of the food being served in school lunches is extremely poor and was allowed to decline even more with a new set of rule changes. However, there are some improvements currently being made to increase the quality of health of the food being served to students, including teaching them all about food and its nutritional information, both good and bad. In order for students to eat healthier lunches at school, the USDA needs to implement healthier ...
In conclusion, hunger is a constant, chronic pain distressing many children. Famished children should have become a thing of the past a long time ago. The thought may seem impossible, but the world produces enough food to feed everyone. In the world as a whole, per capita food availability has risen from about 2220 kcal/person/day in the early 1960s to 2790 kcal/person/day in 2006-08, while developing countries also recorded a leap (2015 World Hunger and Poverty Facts and
Hunger is a big complication for economically impoverished people because without money no food can be bought. “Estacado High School principal Sam Ayers recalls getting regular visits an average of two days a week from a hungry student” (Gulick 1). Being hungry can cause the loss of concentration at school and make your grades drop. Gulick explains how concentration is lost by the hungry kids “Regardless of age, if you are hungry, it is hard to concentrate on the teaching and learning going on in the classroom” (1). Less concentration causes lower grades for the economically handicapped students says Gulicks report from school districts ”It follows that districts and campuses with higher percentages of economically deprived students are more likely to have lower test scores” (5). The student’s grades are low because buying books and going to the library is an extra expense. Because the books are an extra expense...
With the implementation of the “Healthy Kids Hunger-Free Act” schools are not serving as many lunches and participation is decreasing. According to the Government Accountability Office (GOA), “Nationwide, student participation declined by 1.2 million students(or 3.7 percent) from school year 2010-2011 through school year 2012-2013, after having increased steadily for many years”(sec. 1). The school lunches became more distasteful and bland; the combinations of foods did not make sense, and the portion sizes decreased significantly. In order to support the cafeteria
Even though there is such a large food production in India and they are one of the world’s largest food exporters, still so many go hungry. India’s economy has boomed in the past decades, creating an even larger gap between rich and poor.Even though their middle and upper class outnumber their poor, the population is so large that the amount of people below the poverty line is unprecedented. Malnutrition of the poor is India’s largest downfall in the area of food security and nutrition. It is more common for undernutrition to occur in rural areas of India, but it even happens in cities. According to Unicef, out of the 20% of children worldwide that are “wasting” (a person or a part of the body becoming progressively weaker and more emaciated), over one third are Indian citizens. If just regarding children under the age of five years old, 43% are underweight, and 48% (or 61 million children) have stunted growth due to malnutrition. Lack of education is a large contributor to the vast disparity of nutritional security. Children whose mothers have less than 12 years of school education are five times more likely to be
Many of these children only get a full meal while having their school lunch, so many of these children go hungry the rest of the day.
Food insecurity and poor nutrition is an alarmingly large problem for low income families, especially in developing countries. Many strategies exist to fight this problem, although not many of these address all the factors contributing to it along with all the possible solutions to solve it. In many cases, multiple strategies must correlate and work together so that all the determinants of this issue are addressed and can fight food insecurity from different angles. This essay will discuss the significance of the problem, a range of possible strategies to solve the problem, and go into detail on a select few that will correlate and work together to solve different factors of food insecurity and poor nutrition.
A dusty, one-room schoolhouse on the edge of a village. An overworked teacher trying to manage a room full of boisterous children. Students sharing schoolbooks that are in perpetual short supply, crammed in rows of battered desks. Children worn out after long treks to school, stomachs rumbling with hunger. Others who vanish for weeks on end, helping their parents with the year-end harvest. Still others who never come back, lacking the money to pay for school uniforms and school supplies. Such is the daily dilemma faced by many young people in the developing world as they seek to obtain that most precious of all commodities, an education.