Parent your children

Vincent J. Curtis

12 June 24

RE: One-quarter of public schools are without food programs. The Hamilton Spectator new item. 12 June 24.

With breathless astonishment Kate McCullough reports that a quarter of Hamilton schools are without a nutrition program! (What’s a “nutrition program”?  Is that a faux-sophisticated way of saying a ‘lunch’ program?)

Twenty years ago, these were unheard-of.  It was simply expected that parents would feed their own children.  About fifteen years ago, school lunches came to be provided out of the charity of volunteers, after their own children began asking for extra food to give to classmates who came regularly to school without lunch.  And so it spread; and became official.  It became okay for parents to send their kids to school expecting the charity (or the taxes) of other people to fulfill a requirement of parenting that they neglected.

Now, we’re at the stage where it’s expected that schools take over a basic requirement of parenting, and it’s considered shocking and neglectful when schools don’t.  The Federal government is jumping in with both feet in this matter, albeit for political gain, but people ought to worry that the government is now taking over the parenting of your children.

Before 1984 truly comes to Canada, we’ve got to get the government out of the parenting business.  If “nutrition” programs are still needed here and there, let it revert to private volunteers; and maybe the neglectful parents should be privately reminded of their responsibilities.

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