When I share with my students the graphs showing the direct correlation between poor student populations and their standardized test scores, no student has ever suggested that the consumption of free and reduced priced lunches causes students to perform poorly. And yet there is a cracker Lieutenant Governor in South Carolina by the name of Bauer who is preaching that racist message. From
NewsVine.com:
At a town hall meeting recently, South Carolina Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer distinguished himself with this theory of social services -- specifically the government program that makes sure poor kids get enough to eat while they're in school. Bauer told a crowd of lawmakers and citizens:
"My grandmother was not a highly educated woman, but she told me as a small child to quit feeding stray animals. You know why? Because they breed. You're facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a person ample food supply. They will reproduce, especially ones that don't think too much further than that. And so what you've got to do is you've got to curtail that type of behavior. They don't know any better."
Bauer added:
"I can show you a bar graph where free and reduced lunch has the worst test scores in the state of South Carolina. You show me the school that has the highest free and reduced lunch, and I'll show you the worst test scores, folks. It's there, period."
Don't miss Jay Bookman's deconstruction of the Bauer's "starve the poor" philosophy in the Atlanta Journal Constitution.
Jay Bookman, in his article says, "The first problem is history. Human poverty has existed in every culture and era, without exception. It is a constant of human existence, a pre-existing condition, so to speak."
ReplyDeleteUh oh, now the insurance companies will add poverty to the list of pre-existing conditions.