One Size Fits All

There is one obvious problem with Big-Brother government … and that is that it dosn’t allow for diversity. Gasp! But, but “diversity” is the watch-word of our current generation of Orwellians! How can this be? Well, when control and standards are centralized in Washington, suddenly the wide range of options, that once existed, vanish like all those hundreds of billions of dollars in the 2009 government Stimulus Program. Such failings are beginning to be realized in education with the Common Core strictures and nutrition with Michelle Obama’s childhood obesity program.

Let me here just deal with the current tube-sock approach to school lunches. (I might soon deal with the Common Core program.)  I am certain that Michelle Obama meant well when her heavy-hand landed on the public-school cafeterias throughout America. Liberals applauded another government-sponsored (and funded) program that was going to benefit the health and avoirdupois of our public school children. Just one problem … it’s a complete and costly failure. All across our fruited plain, schools are dropping out of this “free lunch” because it doesn’t suit the needs of so many of their students … see: All the Food That's Fit to Eat.

A perfect case in point is North Tonawanda, New York where this town’s Board of Education has leveled copious criticism on this program. Read the details here: EAG News Item. Basically, this school-board’s salvo centers on the lack of understanding and accommodation in this program for the diversity of the nutritional needs of all their students. For instance, high-school athletes might need three to four times the caloric intake of their more sedentary classmates … yet this program does not permit such “gluttony.” And, I am certain that students in Arizona have different food traditions and preferences from kids in Maine … yet these differences are not understood or allowed under Mrs. O’s attempt to re-make our children after her apparent Platonic ideal.

Please … can’t her precious program understand that one size does not necessarily fit all? Otherwise, we might just take the sane approach … and deep-six it entirely.