F.A. Farm

Yesterday I responded to a Local Harvest forum post about getting local milk into schools. It strikes me that the whole idea of healthy food in an institutionalized setting is structurally unsound. Let's start at the paradigm level. Schools and prisons are basically warehouses for people. Schools are more about enculturating your child with his peers and acculturating him/her to the adults' culture. Enculturate = assimilating into the home culture. Acculturate = assimiliating into another culture. Most anthropologists would probably argue (anthropologists do a lot of arguing by the way) that children enculturate in school, but I view the dynamic in terms of oppressed/oppressors. Adults are the oppressors and the children learn how to manipulate them in order to "fit in." This naturally leads to the the eighth-grade phenomena of "nasty" girls and "stupid cool" boys. [And yes, I am dealing in gross generalizations here, but have you seen this in your local middle school? Of course you have.] So, the children are warehoused under the watchful eye of the oppressor adults and they learn how to get along to go along. This becomes useful in later years if and when they go to prison. So, the concept here is that we must look to the school system as a precursor to prison and one of the reasons we have the highest incarceration rate among developed nations. In prison, the guards are just bigger, meaner, and they have guns in addition to psychological intimidation techniques.

So how about the food issue? In an institution, food must be consistent and prepared in mass quantities by workers who are bored, unattentive and careless. Anytime you opt for consistency OR large quantities, you must descend to a lower level of quality. For example, last night we had garlic scapes for dinner. Some were a little hard and some were nice and soft, simply because I have different kinds of garlic in my garden and I picked them all at once. My option? Hot oil in a cast iron pan, sizzle for a bit (all the while standing right over the pan so I could catch them at the right time), and then turn off the fire and cover the pan. The steam of the scapes' own water softened them up and they were muy bueno served with just a bit of soy sauce. Could I have made such a dish for 100 people, even if I had enough scapes? Not likely. They would have come out much more bland, AND if I was employing a whole raft of minimum wage workers who don't give a rip about the peculiarities of each individual dish, they would have come out like mush. The same line of reasoning can be applied to the source of the food. Can a school cafeteria cater to the peculiarities of each vegetable and each farm source? Not likely. Thus, the food must devolve into mush-like food products. Does it even make sense, cost-wise to even buy local vegetables? Again, not likely. It really is about cost anyway, so it is quite logical to buy processed, canned and packaged food. Institutional food is just a maintenance diet then, and your job as parents is to counteract the crap fed to your child in the school cafeteria by the good breakfast and the good supper he/she gets at home. In point of fact, if your school has a Taco Bell or McDonalds nearby, their products are really not that much different from what the school cafeteria is providing.

What about Washington state and the "Local Farms - Healthy Kids" bill passed unanimously in early 2008? This was supposed to buy local produce from local farmers for school lunches and snacks. Well, it is on hold because of Governor Gregoire's budget cuts (once again, I am condemning Gov. Gregoire because she makes consistently bad choices in fiscal matters). So . . . it really is about costs isn't it? If you are going to warehouse people in schools and prisons, you want to get by as cheaply as possible.

Final point. The idea that you have to counteract the bad nutrition your child gets in school can also be extrapolated to the subjects your child is supposed to be learning. You should think about how you can counteract the crap your children get from their underpaid, undertrained and undermotivated teachers, as well as the fascist atmosphere they are subjected to each day. You might want to consider home schooling. The few families I know who have home-schooled their children have done a much better job than the public schools.