9/4/02
LA votes for soda-free students
By Scott McLeod
Now
that we are all back to school, I’ve been scanning the papers
for some of the more interesting news accompanying the annual influx
of students. Seems that obesity and grades are among the top subjects.Overwrought, overweight
Worried about your weight, whether you are getting enough exercise? Well, you ain’t gotta worry no more. No, we will just get rid of those pesky companies who are out to turn you into a doughboy (or girl).
That’s what the Los Angelos school system did. When school starts out west in the Golden State this week — in September, when school should start, by God — the soda companies will be absent. They’ve been canned, told that their products cause too many overweight little Californians. No more vending machines in the schools. By 2004, all the cafeterias and machines will offer water, milk, and drinks that contain at least 50 percent juice and no artificial sweeteners.
All this comes after a number of recent studies presented school officials in LA — the nation’s second-largest school system with 677 units — with some disconcerting information. Local research at 14 separate schools in the Los Angeles showed that 40 percent of the students were obese. National studies point to a population of adults that is worse off than the children: one recent study reported that 61 percent of grown-ups are overweight.
Health experts are touting the school board’s decision as a watershed event in the education of students. Not only will there be an immediate health benefit, but the school system will also be sending a message about nutritional health that could stick with children their entire lives.
“Kids need to learn from an early age what is good for them and what isn’t ... and parents need to know that they are training the palate of their kids in ways that will last a lifetime,” said Carmen Nevarez, the vice president and medical director of the nonprofit Public Health Institute.
All this may sound good, but remember where we live.
In America, the almighty dollar will come into play. Seems soft drink sales in the LA system net the school board $4.5 million a year. Much of that money goes to athletics, programs that combat the problems caused by too much soft drink consumption. Schools may come up with other sales opportunities to replace the soft drinks, but they will be hard pressed to raise that kind of money.
The dilemma in this whole issue is so typically American that it is difficult to see how all sides will ever be satisfied. I can hear the citizens who will have to face a tax increase to make up that $4.5 million. They will be in the face of their county and school officials threatening to kick them out of office if taxes go up.
The idea of nutritional education is certainly important, and kids are smart enough to see the hypocrisy in teaching about good eating habits in health or science class while selling cokes and gazillion-calorie pizza slices in the cafeterias for a profit.
The truth is that children and adults must wrestle their entire lives with making the right choices, with taking the right path when the wrong one is easier and faster. The kids who want soft drinks will get them. School officials are right to end the sales of soft drinks, but if they think that will make their school children fit and healthy they are sadly mistaken. It’s just one brick in a foundation, albeit a very symbolic one.
SATs and money
Being a news reporter who uses statistics in stories and someone
who has witnessed report rigging by people wearing fancy clothes
and giving slick presentations, I’m not usually taken aback
by graphs and charts.
However, the discrepancy among the wealthy and the poor on the recent
batch of Scholastic Aptitude Test scores is nothing short of startling.
Very poor children and even kids from moderate-income families score
well below those who come from higher-income families.
The use of the SAT as an indicator of how well school systems and
students are doing is suspect, I know. In this case, though, the
issue is not what the individual schools are doing but how we, without
meaning to, spend less on students in poverty-ridden areas than
in high-income areas.
Education Trust, a Washington, D.C.,-based group that advocates
for higher academic standards for low-income children, says that
the gap in spending between high- and low-poverty districts must
be narrowed.
“The achievement gap separating poor and minority students
from their peers is neither inevitable nor acceptable,” said
the group’s new report, titled “The Funding Gap: Low-income
and Minority Students Receive Fewer Dollars.” The report examines
local and state spending per pupil.
A lot in this life has passed me by, but one thing I have learned:
poor people aren’t less intelligent than rich people. Somehow
we’ve got to overcome this gap in potential, which is really
what the SAT measures.
(Scott McLeod can be reached at info@smokymountainnews.com)