Children Must Have a Healthy Diet
A new state law has been passed in my state. Professional nutritionists, health experts, and medical professionals have all agreed with what we knew all along. Children must eat three healthy meals every day to be healthy, productive citizens capable of learning and participating in society and becoming good citizens. Therefore, a sweeping new law has just passed requiring that all children eat three square meals, seven days a week, all during their formative years.
Because this is a state law, the state must administer the meals for students and enforce the implementation of the law. The state must decide what children will eat, how much, who will be in charge of diets and measuring portions, where meals will be provided, how programs promoting the meals will be administered, and in the case that any child refuses the food provided or resists this clear and nutritious benefit, how the child will be brought into compliance.
Parents will be required to support the state’s benevolent measures. Weak, sickly, and unhealthy citizens who have poor nutritional habits and who do not eat their meat, dairy, and vegetables cannot contribute adequately to the society and to the national security of the country. Sweets are only allowed on special occasions and holidays.
You probably think I am making this all up. Well, yes. I confess. I did make that whole scenario up.
So, what do you think about compulsory school attendance laws? Do you believe they are somehow categorically different from a hypothetical law requiring children to eat a diet prescribed and administered by the state government? Just think about it.
We have been told, many, many times that our citizens are being educated in our schools and that compulsory attendance laws were and are essential to achieve a minimum level of literacy. If that were indeed the case, would it be worth having the state dishing up the curriculum and determining rewards and punishments for compliance with the laws and the standards by which human subjects are evaluated and categorized, frequently affecting their entire future? In a democratic republic in which freedom, liberty, diversity, autonomy, self-determination, and initiative are valued? Just think about it. Please. Just think about it.
Have a significant percentage of citizens demonstrated a level of education or literacy which would merit a paradigm in which children are controlled, behavior modified, obedience trained, and fed a standardized diet of whatever ostensible experts have decreed? Have we witnessed meaningful progress in schools or in the “field”/discipline of education in the last century by any reasonable standard of measure?
Is our democracy secure and do our citizens truly understand and appreciate our history, traditions, and government structures? Are our people well-adjusted and intellectually oriented? Do you honestly believe that forcing children to attend schools can lead to authentic educational achievement for more than a select minority?
Just think about it. Please.