Stronger Than You

"But helping poor people should be voluntary."

And even when it is, people still have a problem with it.

I went back and did some digging, because it occured to me that I didn't know the date reference of this story and, sadly, there are way too many stories about school lunch debt that they're easy to mix up.

This particular story was from July 2019 (I reblogged it Sept 2022).

There was a relevant update within a week of the scandal: public outrage was swift, the embarrassed school board redacted the outrageous allusions to indebted students ending up in foster care, and it accepted the CEO's $20k donation.

It doesnt change the fact that the very concept of "school lunch debt" is disturbing and inhumane (and there are still stories about children...with lunch debt...). And clearly, the district changed it's tone because it didn't like the bad PR. But figured it was helpful to have more info and context.

Here are some of the relevant sources; each offer bits of info unique to each specific source:

1) "Pennsylvania school district turns down local businessman’s offer to pay off student lunch debts"

2) "Pennsylvania district sorry it warned that lunch debt could lead to foster care, accepts $22K donation"

3) "Pa. School District Reverses Course And Will Now Accept Donations To Cover Lunch Debt"

4) "Pennsylvania school lunch debt furor ends with an apology and an announcement: free lunch for all"

Remember: Public outrage can and does solve problems.

you simply used to be able to do whatever

link to the relevant section on Wikipedia

Man I hope they cancel standardized testing, any education professional can tell you it’s a bunch of useless horseshit that does nothing except make students and teachers miserable while utterly failing to accurately gauge understanding.

“why yall gotta make everything about race?”

because everything is about race. you just upset cause we’re talking about it. 

This used to be called “Auto Shop” and “Home Economics,” subjects which were included in nearly every high school curriculum up until the 1980s. Auto maintenance, budget management, sewing skills, cooking, and other basic Adulting skills were actually taught in classroom settings. But suddenly all that money got funneled away to sports and graduation requirements shifted toward standardized tests because those were somehow more? important? than life skills? and the home ec and shop classes were no longer taught, even as electives. We’ve been steadily losing arts classes for similar reasons.

And so students leave school with a thorough grounding in football and calculus, but having no idea how to sew on a button or change a tire. 

Petition to bring back these classes in every single middle and high school in the country.

Like most things that went wrong in the 80s, this is due to Reagan. He signed the Carl D. Perkins Vocational and Technical Education Act into law which allowed “Job Creators” to control our educational system.

If it can’t help the Boug make a buck from you, it no longer gets taught.

the greatest injustice of education is that professors/teachers demand things be turned in exactly on the due date and if you’re even 1 second late fuck you

and then they just… grade things whenever

this pissed me off in junior high and it continues to piss me off to this day

“sorry guys, I know I still don’t have your essays graded. things have been crazy.”

oh have they?? things have been crazy?? well gee, maybe you should head down to the student success center and get somebody to help you with your time management skills!

how much time did YOU spend watching netflix or hanging out with your friends and family instead of grading, professor? hmm?

maybe YOU should invest in a planner and track your time to see where you’re wasting time instead of handling your responsibilities. 

you know, if you just do a little bit every day instead of trying to cram it all in at once, you get a lot more done.

people in the notes don’t get it. op didn’t say that teachers aren’t busy, or that they don’t have any other responsibilities, etc. they said that just as teachers are allowed to turn in grades late, students should also be allowed to turn in assignments late without it being looked down upon, or seen as laziness. students are people, just like professors are.

Yes, thank you.

I have literally completed assignments while sitting on the toilet with a severe, blacking out when I stand up to go refill my glass of Pedialyte, “maybe I should go to the hospital for fluids” stomach virus because they were due that night at midnight, and I knew if I emailed my professor she would tell me it’s my fault for “leaving it to the last minute.” 

(Which is honestly another educational pet peeve of mine. Doing something the day that it is due is not necessarily “leaving it to the last minute.” Sometimes, that’s just how the time management cookie crumbles.)

Meanwhile, a professor can show up in class and be like “Gosh y’all, I’m so sorry I haven’t gotten your papers graded. I meant to do it this weekend, but I had a migraine and then my credit card got stolen and I had to spend the weekend sorting that out and I just haven’t gotten around to it yet. Whoopsie-doodles, my bad.”

Like… you are not the only person who gets migraines and has your credit card stolen and has a kid get sick or some other family obligations and sometimes life just drops a bomb on your schedule. How come you get to be flexible with your responsibilities, but when we come to you saying we’re having a hard time keeping up and we’d like an extension, you direct us to resources to “learn better time management” and chide us for not being responsible enough to handle everything? 

It’s also mega classist and abelist- especially when it comes to like high school. I’ve had teachers return stuff months after we did it or just never return it but if you don’t get it in on time they give you a 0

Like…. some kids are disabled and can’t get 504s bc of money or ableism. Some teens need to work to support their families. Some kids have like an insane amount of responsibility at home. Hell some ppl don’t have stable home lives where they can get work done.

Not even to mention the fact that teachers/professors are adults with years of experience learning how to do time management but most teens/collage aged adults probably never had anyone to teach them how to actually deal with time management. Saying “get a planner” isn’t the same as teaching actual study skills

At my school, they didn’t let you enter class if you were even a few seconds late. They locked the doors and made you go to the guidance counselor for a pass, which could take up to fifteen or twenty minutes.

In freshman year, I was about to go in the classroom and the door was locked right in my face. I was late because I had been helping a friend pick up her papers in the hallway. I got lucky that day and there was no line at the counselors office, so I was back to class in seven minutes. In that time I had missed what we were going over in class and was not given out the handout worksheet and had to borrow from a classmate.

The system was meant to discourage students from getting to class late, but ended up making them much later than they would have been in the first place. It punished students who could not cross the building in the five minutes passing time we were given, and did not account at all for the schools five floors and one elevator.

a fun fact about teenagers who go through neo-nazi phases is that jewish children and children of color are unavoidably subjected to them in school and other environments, and the harm that they experience as a result is not negligible even if their neo-nazi peers eventually change their minds

#queer kids are often also the targets of this #the main difference is unless their out or fall into visible stereotypes #they’re less likely to fall victim than their visible minority peers

i’m gay and the phrasing of this post is intentional. i know this is uncomfortable for some people to acknowledge but to be honest, i saw and experienced a significant amount of antisemitic and racist aggression from my white, goyische LGBT peers. as an adult, i’ve absolutely known and interacted with LGBT neo-nazis. i’d like white goyische LGBT people to engage with that, actually

roasted