THE RELATION OF THE STATE TO EDUCATION--THE FEEDING OF SCHOOL CHILDREN
A much more important and far-reaching question than that of the State
provision for the medical examination and inspection of children
attending Public Elementary Schools is the question of whether, and to
what extent, the State should undertake the provision of school meals
for underfed children.
Of the existence of the evil of under and improper feeding of children,
especially in many of our large towns, there is no doubt. The numerous
voluntary agencies which have been brought into existence to cope with
the former are sufficient evidence that the evil exists and that it is
of a widespread nature. Again, the high rate of infant mortality amongst
the children of the lower classes is largely due to ignorance on the
part of parents of the nature and proper preparation of food suitable
for children. Further, the social conditions under which many of the
poor live in our large towns is a contributing cause of this improper
feeding. In many cases there is no adequate provision in the home for
the cooking and preparation of food, and in others the absence of the
mother at work during the day necessitates the children "fending" for
themselves in the providing of their meals. However, in considering this
question we must carefully distinguish between three distinct causes
operating to produce the condition of underfeeding, and as a consequence
resulting in three distinct classes of underfed children. As the causes
or groups of causes are different in nature, so the remedies also vary
in character. Moreover, in many cases we find all three causes
operating, now one and now the other, to produce the chronic
underfeeding of the child.
In the first place, the underfeeding of the child may arise through the
temporary poverty of the parent due to his temporary illness or
temporary unemployment. In normal circumstances, in these cases relief
is best afforded by means of the voluntary agencies of society. In
abnormal circumstances, such as are caused by a widespread depression of
industry, the evil may be met by a special effort on the part of the
voluntary agencies or by municipalities or other bodies providing
temporary relief-work.
In the second place, the underfeeding of the child may be due to the
chronic and permanent poverty of the parent. The wages of the
breadwinner even when in full work may be insufficient to afford
adequate support for a numerous family. This condition of things is not
peculiar to Great Britain, but is a common characteristic in the life of
the poor of all civilised nations. This is where the real sting of the
problem of underfeeding lies, and the causes at work tending to produce
this condition of things are too deep-seated and too widely spread to be
removed by any one remedy. Moreover, in endeavouring to cure this
disease of the Commonwealth we are ever in danger of perpetuating and
intensifying the causes at work tending to produce the evil.
In the third place, the underfeeding of the child may arise through the
indifference, the selfishness, or the vice of the parents. In such cases
the parents could feed their children, but do not. Manifestly in cases
of this character there is no obligation placed upon the State and no
rightful claim upon any charitable agency to provide food for the
children. To give aid simply weakens further the parental sense of
responsibility, and leaves a wider margin to be spent on vicious
pleasures. But while there is no obligation placed upon the State to
provide the necessaries of life for the child, there is need and
justification in such cases for the intervention of the State. There is
need, for otherwise the child suffers through the criminal neglect of
the parents, and the community must interfere for the sake of the future
social efficiency of the individual and of the nation. There is
justification, for here as in the case of the parents of the morally
defective, parental responsibility has either ceased to act or become
too weak a motive force to be effective in securing the welfare of the
child. As the individual parent neglects his duty, so and to the
corresponding degree to which this neglect extends, must the duty be
enforced by the State. But in the enforcing of this or of any duty we
must be quite sure that the neglect is really due to the weakened sense
of responsibility of the parent, that it is a condition of things which
he could remove if he had the moral will to do so, and that the neglect
is not due to causes beyond the power of the parent to remove.
Cases in which there is culpable neglect of the child due not to
poverty, but to the fact that the money which should go to the proper
nutrition of the child is squandered in drink, or on other enervating
pleasures, are therefore cases in which recourse must be had to measures
which enforce upon the parent the obligation to feed and clothe his
children. The really difficult question is as to the best means of
enforcing this obligation. Manifestly to punish by fine or imprisonment
does little in many cases to alleviate the sufferings of the children.
The punishment falls upon them as well as upon the parent, and where the
latter is dead to, or careless of, the public opinion of his fellows, it
fails to initiate that reform of conduct which ought to be the aim of
all punishment. If indeed by imposition of fine, or by imprisonment, the
individual realises his neglect of duty, repents, and as a consequence
reforms, then good and well, but as a rule the neglect of the child is
in such cases a moral disease of long standing and not easily cured, and
so we find often that neither punishment by fine nor imprisonment, even
when repeated several times, is effective in making the parent realise
his responsibility and reform his conduct. All the while the child goes
on suffering. He is no better fed during the period of fine or
imprisonment, and the wrath of the parent is often visited upon his
unoffending head.
The second method of cure proposed is to feed the children at the public
expense and to recover the cost by process of law. But the practical
difficulties in carrying out this plan are similar in kind to those
formerly experienced in the recovery of unpaid school fees. The cost of
recovering is often greater than the expense involved, and as a
consequence local authorities are not inclined to prosecute. Further,
there is the difficulty of discriminating between underfeeding due to
wilful and culpable neglect and underfeeding due to the actual chronic
poverty of the parent. If this plan is to be effective, some simpler
method of recovery of cost than that which now prevails must be adopted.
_E.g._, it might be enacted that the sum decreed for should be deducted
from the weekly wages of the parent by his employer. Here again many
difficulties would present themselves in the carrying out of this plan.
In the case of certain employments this could not be done. In other
cases, employers would be unwilling to undertake the invidious task.
Moreover, the cost of collection might equal or be greater than the cost
incurred. Above all, such a method would do little to alleviate the
sufferings and better the nutrition of the child. In most cases the
school provides but one meal a day. Experience has shown that in the
case of children of the dissolute the free meal at the school means less
food at home. Were the cost deducted from the weekly wages of the
parent, the result would be intensified. So great have been the
difficulties felt in this matter that with one or two exceptions no
foreign country has made the attempt to recover the cost of feeding from
the parent. Yet the disease requires a remedy. The evil is too dangerous
to the future social welfare of the community to be allowed to go on
unchecked and unremedied. Moreover, to endeavour to educate the
persistently underfed children of our slums is to do them a twofold
injury. By the exercises of the school we use up, in many cases, with
little result, the small store of energy lodged in the brain and nervous
system of the child, and leave nothing either for the repair of the
nervous system or for the growth of his body generally. We prematurely
exhaust his nervous system, and by so doing we hinder his bodily growth
and development. To make matters worse, we often insist that the child
in order to aid his physical development must undergo an exhausting
system of physical exercises when what is most wanted for this purpose
is good and nourishing food and a sufficiency of sleep. At the same time
that we are neglecting the nutrition of his body we are spending an
increasing yearly sum on the so-called education of his mind. What,
then, is the remedy? If fining and imprisonment of the parent only
accentuate the sufferings of the child, if they fail to make the parent
realise his responsibility and reform his conduct, if the provision of a
free meal at school means less food at home, then there is only one
thorough-going remedy for the evil, and that is to take the child away
from the parent, to educate and feed him at the public expense, and to
recover the cost as far as possible from the parent. In Norway this
drastic method has been adopted. Under a law passed on the 6th January
1896, the authorities are empowered "to place neglected children in
suitable homes or families at the cost of the municipality, the parent,
however, being liable, if called upon, to defray the cost."[20]
The reasons for taking this extreme step are obvious. By no method of
punishing the persistently dissolute and neglectful parent can you be
assured of securing the proper nutrition and welfare of the child.
Parental affection in these cases is dead, and parental responsibility
for the present and future welfare of the child has ceased to act as a
motive force. As a consequence, the child grows up to be, at best,
socially inefficient, and liable in later life to be a burden upon the
community. In many cases, the evil and sordid influences of his home and
social environment soon check any springs of good in his nature, and
more than likely he becomes in later life not merely a socially
inefficient member of the community but an active socially destructive
agent. Hence, on the ground of the future protective benefit to society,
on the ground of securing the future social efficiency of the
individual, on the ground that it is only by some such system we can
ever hope to raise the moral efficiency of the rising generation of the
slums, the method above advocated is worthy of consideration.
Against the adoption of such a method of treatment of the dissolute
parent many objections may be urged, and it would be foolish to minimise
the dangers which might follow its systematic and thorough carrying into
practice. But the possible injury to the community through the weakening
of the sense of parental responsibility seems to me small in comparison
with the future good likely to result from the increased physical,
economic, and ethical efficiency of the next generation which might
reasonably be expected to follow from the rigorous carrying out of such
a plan for a time. The fear lest a larger and larger number of parents
might endeavour to rid themselves of the direct care of their children,
if this plan were adopted, need not deter us. If this plan were carried
into practice, then some extension of the scope of the Industrial Acts
would be rendered necessary, and some such extension seems to have been
in the minds of the Select Committee in their Report on the Education
(Provision of Meals) Bill, 1906, in considering their
recommendations.[21]
But the importance of the two classes of cases already considered sinks
into comparative insignificance compared with the third class of cases.
Temporary underfeeding caused by temporary poverty can be met in many
ways without to any appreciable degree lessening the sense of the moral
obligation of the parent to provide the personal necessities of food and
clothing for his children. In the case, again, of the persistently
dissolute and neglectful parent, moral considerations have ceased to
operate, and so the individual by some method or other must be forced to
perform whatever part of the obligation can be exacted from him.
But in the third class of cases parental responsibility may be an active
and willing force, yet the means available may be so limited in extent
that the child is in the chronic condition of being underfed. No one who
carefully considers the information recently supplied by the Board of
Education as to the methods of feeding the children attending Public
Elementary Schools in the great Continental cities and in America can
arrive at any other conclusion than that here we are in the presence of
an evil not local but general, and apparently incidental to the
organisation of the modern industrial State. For whether by voluntary
agencies, by municipal grants, or by State aid, every great Continental
city has found it necessary to organise and institute some system of
feeding school children.
The only inference to be drawn from such a condition of things is that
in a large number of cases the normal wages of the labourer are
insufficient to maintain himself and his family in anything like a
decent standard of comfort. How large a proportion of the population of
our great cities is in this condition it is difficult exactly to
estimate, but there is no doubt that a very considerable number of cases
of the chronic underfeeding of school children may be traced to the
insufficiency of the home income to support the family. The moral
obligation to provide the personal necessities of food and clothing for
his children is active, but the means for the realisation of the
obligation cannot be provided in many cases the endeavour fully to meet
the needs of the child results in the lessened efficiency of the
breadwinner of the family.
The real causes at work tending to keep the wages of the unskilled
labourer ever hovering round a mere subsistence rate must be removed, if
anything like a permanent cure of this social evil is to be effected. We
must endeavour on the one hand to lessen the supply of unskilled labour.
By so doing the reward of such labour will tend to be increased
materially. On the other hand, we must during the next decade or two
endeavour by every means in our power to ensure that a larger and larger
number of the children of the very poor shall in the next generation
pass into the ranks of skilled labour.
But in the meantime something must be done. The children are there; they
still suffer; and their wrongs cry aloud for redress. It is certainly
true that any aid given to the child will tend meanwhile to keep the
wages at bare subsistence rates. It is also true that the distribution
of relief only tends to make the poor comfortable in their poverty,
instead of helping them to rise out of it. All this and much more might
be urged against the demand to institute and organise the systematic
public feeding of school children. But these evils are evils which fall
upon the present adult population. Education has, however, to do with
the future, with the next generation and not with this. Its aim is to
secure that as large a number as possible of the children of the present
generation will grow up to be economically and ethically efficient
members of the community. To secure this end the problem of underfeeding
is only one of the problems that must be solved. If we adopt some
systematic plan for securing the full nutrition of the children of the
present, this must go hand in hand with other remedies. During the stage
of transition we shall have to take into account that for a time the
wages of the poorest class of labourer will tend to remain at their
present low rate; we shall have to face the danger that by giving such
aid we may in some cases still further weaken the sense of moral
obligation of the parents of the present generation. If, on the other
hand, we do nothing, or if we look to the present voluntary agencies to
go on doing what they can to remedy the evil, what then? Will the evil
be lessened in the next generation? Assuredly not, if the experience of
the present and of the past are safe guides as to what we may expect in
the future.
Hence we have no hesitation in urging that the feeding of children
attending the Public Elementary Schools should be organised on lines
similar to the recommendations laid down in the _Special Report from the
Special Committee on Education_ (_Provision of Meals_) _Bill_, 1906.[22]
But if we carry out these recommendations and do nothing else, then it
may be that we shall partially remedy the evil in the next generation,
but we shall to a large extent perpetuate the present condition of
things. Side by side with this, we must institute and set other agencies
at work. By the institution of Free Kindergarten Schools in the poorer
districts of our large towns, by postponing the beginning of the formal
education of the child to a later age, by a scientific course of
physical education, by better trade and technical schools, and if need
be by the compulsory attendance of children at evening continuation
schools, we must bend our every effort to secure that the ranks of the
casual, the unskilled, and the unemployable shall be lessened, and the
ranks of the skilled and intelligent worker increased.
As the freeing of elementary education can be justified on the ground
that the education of the child is necessary for the future protection
of the State, so on similar grounds it may be urged that the nutrition
of the child is also necessary. Without this our merely educational
agencies can never adequately secure the social efficiency of the coming
generation. At the same time, unless in the future the need for free
education and free food becomes less and less, and unless by the means
sketched above we rear up a generation economically and morally
independent, then truly we have not discovered the method by which man
can be raised to independence and rationality.
APPENDIX
_Recommendations of the Select Committee on Education_ (_Provision of
Meals_) _Bill_, 1906.
"The evidence, verbal and documentary, placed before the Committee
has led them to arrive at the following general conclusions:--
"1. That it is expedient that the Local Education Authority should
be empowered to organise and direct the provision of a midday meal
for children attending Public Elementary Schools, and that
statutory powers should be given to Local Authorities to establish
Committees to deal with school canteens.
"2. That such Committees should be composed of representatives of
the Local Education Authority, representatives of the Voluntary
Subscribers, and where thought desirable a representative of the
Board of Guardians, and of the local branch of the Society for the
Prevention of Cruelty to Children, where such exists. That the Head
Teacher, the School Attendance Officer, and the Relieving Officer
should work in association with such Committee.
"3. That power should be given for the Local Education Authorities,
when they deem it desirable, to raise loans and spend money on the
provision of suitable accommodation and officials, and for the
preparation, cooking, and serving of meals to the children
attending Public Elementary Schools.
"4. That only in extreme and exceptional cases, where it can be
shown that neither the parents' resources nor Local Voluntary Funds
are sufficient to cover the cost, and after the consent of the
Board of Education as to the necessity for such expenditure has
been obtained, a Local Authority may have recourse to the rates for
the provision of the cost of the actual food; the local rate for
this purpose to in no case exceed ½d. in the £.
"5. That the Local Education Authority should, as far as possible,
associate with itself, and encourage the continuance of, voluntary
agencies in connection with the work of feeding of children.
"6. That whatever steps may be necessary, by way of extension of
the Industrial Schools and the Prevention of Cruelty to Children
Acts or otherwise, should be taken to secure that parents able to
do so and neglecting to make proper provision for the feeding of
their children shall be proceeded against for the recovery of the
cost; and that the Guardians, or where available the Society for
the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, and not the Local Education
Authority, be empowered to prosecute in any cases coming under the
law in respect to the neglect of parents to make proper provision
for the feeding of their children.
"7. That payment for meals, prior to the meal, whenever possible,
should be insisted upon from the parents.
"8. That it is undesirable that meals should be served in rooms
habitually used for teaching purposes, and that the Regulations of
the Board of Education should carry this recommendation into
effect.
"9. That whilst strong testimony has been placed before the
Committee to the effect that the teachers have given and are giving
admirable service in the way of supervising the provision of meals
to the children, it is the opinion of the Committee that it ought
not to be made part of the conditions attaching to the appointment
of any teacher that he (or she) shall or shall not take part in
dispensing meals provided for the children, and that the Board of
Education should carry this recommendation into effect."
FOOTNOTES:
[20] Cf. Underfed Children in Continental and American Cities (presented
to Parliament, April 1906).
[21] Cf. _Report on Education_ (_Provision of Meals_) _Bill_, especially
Recommendation 6, Appendix, p. 75.
[22] Cf. Appendix, p. 75.