Chicago school bans home-packed lunches

http://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2011/04/11/Chicago-school-bans-home-packed-lunches/UPI-96921302542391/

What kind of control-freak came up with this idea?  Sometimes schools and our government are so busy “looking out for the well-being” of our children that the fundamental principals of parenting are left behind.  While school systems all over the country decry and condemn parents for not being involved enough in their child’s academic life, this principal in Chicago takes the pompous position that he knows what’s best for the children  when it comes to their noontime meals.  I suggest that there’s more to a brown bag than the contents inside.

    My mother was a terrible cook.  She didn’t like to cook, didn’t have time to cook, and found the entire enterprise at once a necessity and a nightmarish chore.   I’m not really speaking out of school (no pun intended) she would tell you herself that cooking; for her was a huge waste of time. When I was in school, I carried my lunch often.  Most days my noon meal consisted of a bologna sandwich, Oreo cookies and Frito corn chips.  It wasn’t the healthiest lunch, but it was my lunch.  It was a meal, prepared by my mother, just for me.  It was made with love, and although much of the time the bread was stale, the cookies were broken and there weren’t enough Frito’s in the little baggie, it was still my lunch.  It was like I took a part of my mother’s heart to school with me each day.  It was a message in a bag.  It wasn’t a message of words; it was a message of actions.  This message came from my mother and it told me how much she loved me and how she could and did make sacrifices for the love of her children.  It was a message containing not a single written word, yet it told me volumes about her love.

     Knowing that the last thing my mother wanted to do, involved anything with cooking or preparing meals, made my lunch all the more important to me and all the more demonstrative of her love and care.  Without a doubt, these dismal meals in their brown paper bags, segregated by baggies, were a display of her devotion and a wholesome respite to a long morning in the classroom.  It was because of these lunches, and countless other gestures, sacrifices and displays of affection that I came to know and understand the love of my mother.

     To the Chicago principal I can only say; don’t do this.  Don’t do anything that will stand in between a parent and one of the most important bonding experiences and adult and their offspring can have.  It’s not your place, not your prerogative, and not your right.  Give the children back their Bologna!