Free breakfast in the School rooms-The pros and cons

The subject of midday meals programs in schools world over is a hotly debated one with some favoring it while a few oppose the exercise as a fruitless one. As with any other issue there are always pros and cons and it is not easy to come to any categorical conclusion regarding the impact of such social welfare programs. Ostensibly free meals provided in schools are supposed to to improve the attendance especially that  of children from the low income families and many studies have supported such a hypothesis in many countries though the result is not uniform. These ready to eat meals are generally supplied outside the class premises at a common time and at a designated place within the schools. While the foods are brought by approved caterers or cooked locally. In developed countries there are established cafeterias in some schools where kids congregate to pick up their foods to be eaten at designated times. A new issue has cropped up now in the Us where such programs have been operating for a long time. Some social activists feel that meals must be served within the class room and must be eaten by one and all irrespective of their economic status. According to them such an arrangement serves to help the kids to concentrate more in the class room resulting in better academic performance. Here again such a conclusion is not shared universally raising doubts about implementing such a policy without assessing whether it is true . Here is a take on this new development in school feeding and the feasibility of making change over in the school meals programs.

"In an effort to increase the number of children eating breakfast, more schools are serving it in the classroom. In a national survey by the Food Research and Action Center, 50 of 62 districts polled offered breakfast in class or had outside carts with food items that children could bring into the classroom. Yet the initiative has opponents in districts like Los Angeles Unified, where some teachers and parents argue that low-income children in danger of falling behind academically are getting less class time and food is being thrown away. The federal school breakfast program started in 1966, but for decades, participation lagged behind the number of students eating a free or reduced-price lunch. Schools that offered breakfast typically served it before school in the cafeteria. Not all children could get to school early, and of those that did, many opted to play outside. The U.S. Department of Agriculture reimburses schools for each free or reduced price meal served to low-income students. So non-participation means losing potentially millions in revenue. Looking at these factors, food policy advocates began encouraging districts to consider an alternative approach. Studies haven't shown a link between eating breakfast and academic performance, but supporters say there is a common-sense element to the initiative. The day before a big test, for example, parents are routinely reminded to make sure their children eat a good breakfast. Anecdotally, some districts report improved attendance and fewer visits to the school nurse. Charles Basch, a professor at Columbia University's Teachers College, said school breakfast is one of several factors with an effect on a child's ability to learn. "There's not just one thing that's going to be a magic bullet," he said. Instead of sending children to the cafeteria, students or volunteers bring crates of food to the classroom. Each district determines what food to serve, but all meals must meet federal nutrition guidelines. A typical meal could include a piece of fruit, cereal, milk and orange juice, coffee cake or a breakfast sandwich. Ideally, the food can be served and eaten in 10 minutes. Teachers are encouraged to incorporate a lesson or other school tasks, such as taking attendance, while students eat. This can be a challenge, especially for teachers of younger students. Supporters say serving breakfast to only some students adds to the stigma associated with a free meal and discourages those who need it from eating. The number of children from low-income families has increased from 32 percent in 1989 to 51 percent in 2013, according to the Southern Education Foundation. For the most vulnerable students, the food they get at school might be their most substantial meal of the day. Where breakfast is being served in class, participation is significantly higher than in schools where it's offered in the cafeteria. Parents and teachers have objected where it's been introduced as a universal policy. Opponents say breakfast in the classroom takes away class time from low-income students who have lower math and reading performance."

Whether such a change will really improve the academic performance or not, it is beset with some logistical problems which ought to be addressed before thrusting the same across the board in all schools. Scientifically serving pre prepared foods within a class room is wrong from hygienic and sanitation angles and this cannot be an effective substitute for a well designed functionally efficient cafeteria. It is beyond any body's comprehension as to how a kid can divide his attention between the food he has in his hand and the subject matter being taught by the teacher. Besides the eating habits of different children coming from different economic and cultural milieu can vary enormously making it difficult to compress the eating time to 10 minutes as being proposed. Cafeteria is the best place to serve the food, especially hot ones or moist ones, as there will be proper seating arrangements and frequent cleaning of the place by the canteen staff and also having facilities for drinking water and hand washing, before and after eating. While eating together is a socially satisfying exercise, compelling every student to eat what he does not like is a violation of the basic principle of "inviolable eating right" of a citizen. The issue becomes more complicated because the food suppliers have a vested interest in boosting the number of students served in the school in order to make more bucks in the process. Serving of foods in the schools, whatever be the economic justification,may be uncalled for in spite of many countries embracing the practice and it is better that the policy is revisited for better delivery of  nutritious foods to deserving and vulnerable children through alternate channels or programs.   .

V.H.POTTY
http://vhpotty.blogspot.com
http://foodtechupdates.blogspot.com

TRAINING OF TRAINERS-SPREADING FOOD AND NUTRITION AWARENESS

Food, nutrition, health, eating habits and sanitation are subjects which are usually confined among experts and scientists. Inculcating healthy eating is a responsibility shared equally by the parents of growing kids at home and by the teachers in schools where kids go at least 200 days an year. The big question is how far the parents and teachers know about these subjects and poorly informed and ignorant parents and teachers cannot be expected to teach the children correctly and adequately. Going further down, only adequately exposed children can become good parents of tomorrow who in turn can transfer their knowledge and experience to their kids. Thus school teachers are the vital cogs in the education of kids vis-a-vis food related issues. The FDA of USA and the teachers' association in that country are doing wonderful work in training teachers for such a job so that they can train the children in making them practice eating good foods with high nutrition content and adhering to scientific hygiene and sanitation habits. Read further below to understand fully the implications of the program being undertaken in America to train the school teachers.  

"One way to teach kids about food safety and nutrition is to teach their teachers. That's the idea behind a training program the Food and Drug Administration has been running for the past 15 years. "Science and Our Food Supply" is a week-long program held in the summer that brings together teachers from all over the country who teach biology, chemistry, food science and health. Its aim is to improve food safety and nutrition education in schools using a curriculum co-developed by FDA and the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA), which looks at the science behind issues such as foodborne illnesses.The participants learn about the journey of food from farm to table, basic microbiology techniques, FDA's role in regulating products, new research on food safety, nutrition and nutrition labeling, and food allergies. This year, 32 teachers from 22 states participated and then returned to their own schools to teach the curriculum to students and hold day-long sessions to train their fellow teachers."

It is rather a mystery as to why Indian education planners are ignoring this respect, considering that children form their habits fairly early in their life and undesirable and inappropriate habits imbibed early in life will be difficult to be changed later. A body like NCERT in India can do wonders by introducing basic concepts of food and its allied aspects in text books designed for school going kids at the age of 5-8 years and undertake a national endeavor of training teachers through short term abridged programs at the national, regional and state levels. It can always depend on scientific bodies like CFTRI, DFRL, NIN, NIFTEM. Universities etc to provide experts in transferring the technical information to teachers through well designed programs, especially during vacation times when teachers do not have much teaching load. This is the only way to transform India into "Swacha Bharath" , as being propagated by the present Prime Minister of the country.  

V.H.POTTY
http://vhpotty.blogspot.com/
http://foodtechupdates.blogspot.com

              

SCHOOL FEEDING-THE KARNATAKA SITUATION

After the Bihar midday meal program tragedy every state government vested with the management of this education-cum nutrition oriented Central scheme woke up suddenly running helter skelter for cover fearing that their weaknesses also would be exposed. School inspections became more frequent and erring officials were hauled up for not doing their job properly. But all these knee jerk reactions slowly faded away once the news became "cold" and forgotten by every body. Here is a typical PRO exercise by the Karnataka government to claim how efficient they are!

"Maintaining that the scheme in the state was near to 100% error free, the minister said over 60 lakh school children are getting the benefits of mid-day meal every day. "Barring one incident, where a girl child died after slipping into sambar vessel last year, the scheme is running successfully since it was introduced in 2002. More than 6 crore children have benefitted by the scheme till date," Ratnakar said. Mid-day meals is being given in around 55,000 schools and the government was into building quality kitchens in these schools. Only 75% of the schools have kitchens. Ratnakar said the Centre has announced that it would provide Rs 3 lakh to built a kitchen and Rs 5,000 to buy utensils. "There is also scheme where Centre will provide Rs 3,500 per month to grow vegetables in water availability areas. Rs 7,000 grant per month on big schemes and government has planned to give milk from August at a cost of Rs 600 crore," he said. Of the Rs 18,000 crore allocation for the department, Rs 11,000 are being spent on the salary. Ratnakar informed that Rs 180 crore was being spent on providing free uniforms every year and Rs 3,500 crore needed upgrade school buildings".

Is it not a tragedy that instead of getting down to the basics and having introspection, governments tend to take high moral grounds trying to defend a system which is moribund at its best? The lay out is such that the present school feeding program cannot be an instrument of furthering the education system because the very purpose of the school is shifted from teaching to cooking food for all the children whether they want it or not. Teachers hardly aware of the logistics of mass cooking and feeding are forced to take up the chore against their free will. Sanitation and hygiene conditions can never be safe enough to ensure safety of children. Water used, qualitatively and quantitatively, is unsatisfactory. In the face of these heavy odds the government spokesperson is trying to defend the indefensible. Good luck to him till the next food related episodes which are waiting to happen, in spite of all the good intentions!

V.H.POTTY
http://vhpotty.blogspot.com/
http://foodtechupdates.blogspot.com

TEACHERS REFUSE TO BE MEAL MANAGERS TOO- THE BIHAR TRAGEDY AFTERMATH

The chicken has come to roost at last vis-a-vis the food contamination episode in Bihar as more than 300000 teachers across the state have revolted against the State government for the insinuation made by one of the ministers that the incidence was a conspiracy to defame the government! Will any self respecting teacher continue to work any more for the government under such circumstances? After all teachers are forced to undertake management of the feeding program being carried on under most primitive conditions over and above the teaching responsibility for which they are appointed and paid for! The babus and politicians take the credit when any government program is lauded while the blame for any mishap is passed on to the low paid workers like teachers in the present case. With the teachers on the war path what option the so called progressive government now ruling will have to continue the program? Will the school meal program be abandoned as the minister concerned has thrown up his hands in despair? What is most disgusting is the implied insinuation that kids were deliberately poisoned for political gains by the opposition political parties! That means the school teachers have no integrity and humaneness in carrying out the diabolical plan with the support of some politicians to murder 23 kids in broad day light! Here is a take on this latest turn of events in Bihar where the ruling party has no time for development work, spending most of its time in its political maneuver to become a shiny model of secularism in the country, whatever that means!

"A week after the death of 23 children from eating a contaminated mid-day meal in Saran district, teachers are in no mood to assist the government in running the scheme. "It was unanimously decided at a meeting of the Bihar State Primary Teachers' Association to boycott the scheme," its president, Barajnandan Sharma, told IANS. "We had repeatedly requested the government in writing to involve teachers in academic work only and employ some agency for the scheme, which was ignored. Teachers should not be burdened with all kinds of non-academic work," he said. Teachers are blamed for anything that goes wrong with the scheme, Sharma said, adding: "It is giving a bad name to teachers due to rampant corruption." He said that it is a well-known fact that teachers and headmasters have to invariably manage the mid-day meal scheme with third-grade food stuff and corruption at every level. "Top to bottom, officials have information about it. But when something happens, a teacher or headmaster is solely blamed for it despite the fact that there are several officials involved in it," he said. Refering to the Saran tragedy, Sharma said: "There may be some mismanagement. Even human error cannot be ruled out. But putting the blame on teachers even before an inquiry has completed surprised us." In the wake of teachers' decision to boycott the scheme, Bihar Education Minister P.K. Shahi said it was difficult to arrange for an agency to run the scheme in 72,000 schools across the state. "The government does not have the resources to hire an agency for the huge task of serving mid-day meals to 1.60 crore students," Shahi said".

The minister has no business to lament about the helplessness of the government in continuing with the program of feeding 16 million kids every day after making the allegation of sabotage in the poisoning episode. Did he not think about the consequences of his irresponsible uttering about sabotage? If the state government does not have the ability to continue with the program why not stop it right now and think of other alternatives to reward the kids for showing their face in the school. Both the governments at Delhi and in the states will have to bear the responsibility for the latest tragedy because they were cornering all the credits being showered on the country by international agencies for "running" the largest "feeding" program in the world! When will the government of India wake up to the reality that schools are not meant to cook foods and teachers cannot manage such hot food programs without affecting the quality of education? There is no other alternative, whether one likes it or not, to supplying processed packaged foods, ready to eat, prepared by established manufacturers with guaranteed quality and safety. Government of India must wake up to this reality before more such tragedies as that happened in Bihar are repeated over and over again across millions of schools in the country.

V.H.POTTY
http://vhpotty.blogspot.com/
http://foodtechupdates.blogspot.com