Brickbat: Food Fight

The Lorraine, Ohio, city school board has fired Palm Elementary School Principal Debra Pustulka and paraprofessional Monika Sommers-Fridenstine after an investigation found the two forced a 9-year-old student to eat food retrieved from a garbage can. A lawsuit filed by the girl's family says Pustulka told the girl she had to finish what was on her tray. The girl didn't want to and threw the food away. Sommers-Fridenstine retrieved the food and forced the girl to eat it as other students watched.

Comments

[Chumby]

Brickbat: Junk Food

[Jerryskids]

And that's how you give kids food hang-ups that will torment them for the rest of their lives.

[Jerryskids]

Hopefully, this will also give this girl a life-long unwillingness to abide petty tyrants and their "because I said so" authoritarianism. Nice job, you two supposedly grown-ass adults bullying a small child into respecting mah authoritah.

[mad.casual]

I don't think an aversion to eating out of the garbage is a bad food hang-up for kids to have.

[R Mac]

I’d even go so far as to call it a good thing. However, whatever type of food it was, she might be averse to in the future, whether it’s been in the garbage or not.

[loki]

This pretty much sums up the public school system. Garbage in, garbage out.

[Stuck in California]

Well, from the perspective of this girl it was the other way around.

[Fist of Etiquette]

BUT THE GIRL DISOBEYED AUTHORITY

[KiwiDude]

Did she cross State Lines?

[rbike]

My 29 year old son blames us for his smaller stature for not forcing him to eat better foods. He would throw fits about anything except hotdogs and cheese pizza. My wife would relent and let him get away with this.She would fix him a couple of hotdogs (While I would have let him starve) when he refused spaghetti/ etc.

Note, my son only says this in jest. Even at 5 years old people need to realize that they can make decisions that will effect them the rest of their lives.

[Will Nonya]

Someone grew up with depression era hangups.

Did they merely coerce the kid into eating the food or did they actually force the food into her? She she succumb to coercion this probably teaches the kid the wrong lesson.

[mad.casual]

Someone grew up with depression era hangups.

Or was already pretty tired of serving at the behest of the school district and flew a little off the handle when a 9-yr.-old refused to partake in the party they had worked to put together. Depression-era is getting a little old to still be teaching.

Compared to the outright beatings handed out and Kafkaesque struggle sessions imposed for writing on a dry erase board or illegal use of a pop-tart gun, this incident seems exceedingly mild.

[mad.casual]

Depression-era is getting a little old to still be teaching.

By that I mean a teacher who was alive during the Depression is well past retirement age. The idea that she's perpetuating a Depression-era trope or idea rather than a plain intolerance of the disrespect for other's work is a bit of a projection.

[Dillinger]

the half-pieces-at-a-time of Wrigley's my grandmas would give me were laughable to me and serious to them.

[Deep Lurker]

I was much more sensitive to strong tastes back when I was 8 years old. Things I eat and enjoy now tasted vile or were actively painful back then, and not just spicy-hot things, either.

There are some things that I still find vile, even as my friends and family happily chow down on them. I also have friends who are much more meat-and-potatoes than I am. So I have to wonder how much pickiness about food is actually a “this tastes like poison!” reaction that conveys a legitimate warning to the person experiencing it.

[mad.casual]

My parents could eat tomatoes and onions like people eat apples. I wouldn't touch tomatoes outside ketchup and pizza sauce to save my life. Now, I can eat everything from ketchup to caprese, but still not standalone raw tomato. My brother still pulls tomato slices off of sandwiches.

I've developed or subconsciously absorbed a notion that, through evolution to avoid intraspecies competition, children prefer to consume high-speed/low-drag fuel while the adults prefer more averse but stable nutritive sources.

[sarcasmic]

It's all in how they are raised. Kids learn to dislike things from others. For example my daughter would eat anything until she started living with her mother full time. And most of what she now doesn't like is things her mother doesn't like.
Then there's texture. I won't eat boiled onions at the Thanksgiving table because it's like eating snot. I know people who hate sushi for the same reason.

[kevrob]

I still won't eat onion, unless the cook has reduced them so much in a sauce that I need not chew them. Onion slices or slivers in a salad or on a sandwich will still make me retch and/or gag. I can't even tolerate "sweet" Vidalias. Don't try to give me scallions, etc, if I've stipulated "no onions," either. The only allium I 'll stand for is a moderate amount of garlic.

De gustibus non est disputandum

[sarcasmic]

I used to feel the same way. I don't like chunks of raw onion, but some paper thin slices on a sandwich are good. Or pico de gallo? Can't do that without raw onion.
Cooked onions are one of the foundations of French cooking. I've got a few friends who swore they hated onions until I cooked them in some dishes, and now they're fans. Of cooked onions anyway.
Roasted garlic is one of the best things in the worlds. Yum. I can just pop the cloves like candy. Raw garlic though? Too much of a bite.

[mad.casual]

Kids learn to dislike things from others.

That makes sense. No kid anywhere ever learns to hate tomatoes so no kids ever hate tomatoes. All kids learn to like the same foods equally so nobody's ever tempted to switch lunches. Or...

Some kids develop their own preferences for no particular or understandable reason at all and you're either stupid, full of shit, or both.

I could totally understand if your kids hated you.

[Vernon Depner]

Many people can't stand the taste or smell of raw tomatoes. I can't myself. They are a member of the Nightshade family, and so do in fact contain toxins, but apparently only certain people are sensitive to them.

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cocktail-party-physics/tasters-choice-why-i-hate-raw-tomatoes-and-you-dont/

[mad.casual]

I used to love the smell of tomatoes and I can't describe the exact reason for the dislike. Tough skin and juicy center maybe. But, given my uptake, maybe I've developed an immunity to the toxin.

Still doesn't really explain onions, which I will/can eat any way except generally raw in any real quantity. Which, while still tasty, without antacids of some sort, I will quickly regret having eaten.

[Earth-based Human Skeptic]

More important! Did they force the kid to wear her mask between bites?

[Longtobefree]

Where is Paul Harvey?
Were they charged with child abuse?
Kidnapping (assumes they forced the kid to remain in the cafeteria)?
Assault?
Conspiracy?
Do the sentences add up to 110 years?
Who is John Galt?

[Earth-based Human Skeptic]

Fucking reason fucking comments not working fucking merry christmas.

[R Mac]

If it wasn’t both articles, I’d suspect they did it for the George Will article on purpose.

[Dillinger]

posting George Will around here is asking for ridicule

[swillfredo pareto]

Any infringement upon the dignity and respect of our students will not be tolerated.

I could not find any mention in the linked article, what with the importance of her dignity and all, but if it turns out the child was on a free lunch program I am far less sympathetic. She'll be fine and the principal may have been protecting taxpayer money.

[R Mac]

So if this child has poor parents she deserves to be forced to eat from the trash? You know, sometimes garbage has things like bacteria that really shouldn’t be consumed, right?

[swillfredo pareto]

So if this child has poor parents she deserves to be forced to eat from the trash?

If a child's parents have abdicated the responsibility of feeding their own children then their children should be taught to only take from the taxpayer what they are going to eat. Nothing edible should ever find its way to the trash in the first place

And I am still not saying that is what happened in this case.

[mad.casual]

I don't exactly disagree with swillfredo but, do you have evidence that the food was buried in the trash unwrapped rather than just 'sitting on top of trash'? I agree that people shouldn't generally be eating out of the trash, but lets not pretend the teachers picked through a pile of used condoms and moldy banana peels to feed a maggot-covered sushi to the kid without evidence.

Feeding kids 'clean' garbage isn't exactly worse than foregoing peanut butter. It's not like lunch meat, your average fast food burger, or pretty much anything you cram in your piehole while sitting at your keyboard or using your phone isn't also covered in bacteria.

[ducksalad]

IMO the part about the trash can is secondary, the main issue is forcing the kid to eat something she didn't want to. Some encouragement is fine, not providing an alternative and letting them experience some temporary hunger is fine. But escalating pressure to put something in her body she doesn't want....thought we were supposed to be against that.

If the concern is wasting food, then the focus should be not taking too much rather than taking too much and eating it all. Suitable penalties would be old classics like no recess, writing an essay about wasting food, or maybe deducting from tomorrow's serving.
Forced eating is not a good punishment for a number of reasons.

[Dillinger]

>>She'll be fine

lol your magic 8 ball is special

[ducksalad]

Mr. Pareto, I don't know what your political philosophy is. Maybe you're just anti-tax and otherwise indifferent to liberty, if so ignore the following.

A libertarian can reasonably take the position that taxation is coercion and be opposed to expansive tax-funded programs.

A somewhat slack libertarian can reasonably take the position that taxation is coercion but like bad weather some of it's going to happen.

What's not so reasonable, IMO, is using the fact that you've been taxed as a pretext to closely police people's conduct and oppose all the freedoms we claim to be in favor of, e.g. not being bullied into eating food you don't like, freedom to move from place to place without "papers", and in general just being free from an overabundance of authority.

In short: Don't give someone money, fine. Give someone money, fine. Give someone money and then go full Karen on them....nah.

[Earth-based Human Skeptic]

Anyway, here is what I tried to post on the George Will piece:

The most important, and perhaps unique, foundational principle in the design of the United States was the concept of limited government, specifically to maximize individual liberty. Every bit of legislated and regulatory growth since then, with rare exceptions, has defied this principle, with plenty of authoritarian expansion from left, right, and center.

We might expect ideologues to seek and impose power, but perhaps even average, politically detached people incline towards rules. Are we just incapable of living with uncertainty?

[sarcasmic]

The problem with government is that there's no mechanism or incentive for repealing laws and regulations. So they just pile up on each other, destroying freedom in the process. Sure it's technically possible for Congress to repeal laws, but they don't do it. The courts have that power, but they don't use it. And there's a process for reviewing regulations as well, but they don't do it. There's no incentive. Quite the opposite. They don't want anything repealed because that takes away their power. And if they started repealing laws then they would risk the laws they pass being repealed. Their egos won't allow that.
So government becomes a one-way ratchet.

[mad.casual]

Are we just incapable of living with uncertainty?

No, or not necessarily, but 'once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action.' I'm totally tolerant of uncertainty. I got up uncertain of what I wanted for breakfast. Got out and greased a skillet uncertain of what I was going to have for breakfast. Cracked and fried a couple of eggs uncertain of what I was going to have for breakfast. Slammed a couple slices of bread in the toaster and pushed down the lever uncertain of what I was going to have for breakfast... totally tolerant of uncertainty.

[Idaho Bob]

This shit will continue until parents begin beating the everloving shit out of their childrens' abusers.

Firing the perpetrator is not enough.

[CE]

Never let your kid get on a bus.
Or a train.

[Minadin]

"and paraprofessional Monika Sommers-Fridenstine"

Dafuq? Para-Professional? As in outside of profession? As in, Non-Professional?

Teacher's Aide?

[kevrob]

Paraprofessionals have some sort of credential short of a teaching license . Teacher's aide, most likely.

[Bobster0]

Was it in the garbage or above the garbage?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6arTgjbHVS4

[Dillinger]

+1 next to refuse is refuse

[Fats of Fury]

"Please Sir. May I have no more?"

[croaker]

Fired?

How about arrested for felony child abuse?

[Bill Poser]

I'm appalled that people like that ever managed to work with children.

[Vernon Depner]

They work with children out of the sight of other adults. They can get away with a lot that way. That's one of the reasons parents are fleeing public schools now—the extra involvement they've had with schools and teachers due to the COVID shutdowns has opened many eyes to what goes on in school.

[Speed]

Charles Oliver wrote, "The Lorraine, Ohio, city school board has fired ... "
Only one "r" in Lorain. And no "e".

[m4019597]

Instead of complaining about it, the mother should have beaten the child when she got home for wasting food.

The principal and assistant teacher are heroes. This girl needs to learn not to waste food.