Children and Lunch

Upon reading about the school that took lunch trays, literally out of the children's hands and thrown away, two thoughts immediately came to mind.

One prompted me to call the local school to donate lunch money.  The second thought was that of the "old days" when the school bully took a fellow student's milk or lunch money.  In all the "anti-bullying" awareness, we seem to have overlooked something very fundamental.  By old school definition, these children were bullied by the staff!  Public education is a place of learning.  What did all the children learn that day?

Retractions, mea culpas, and promises of policy change don't hold a candle to the example that was set that day and the humiliation some of those children endured.  Laws against children bullying other children, I guess are all well and good, if the parents aren't going to teach their children any better, but this report has raised a new question.  Since this is just one headline over a major issue of taking food out of the children's hands and sending them back to class hungry, how much more bullying are some children enduring at the very hands of those who are teaching?

Legislating against bullying while publicly teaching it, seems a real double message in the programming of what we call public education.