“My question is what poor excuse for a parent can’t rustle up a bowl of cereal and a banana? I just don’t get why millions of school children qualify for school breakfasts unless we have a major wide spread problem with child neglect. If that many parents are incapable of pulling together a bowl of cereal and a banana, then we have problems that are way bigger than [that]– that problem can’t be solved with a school breakfast because we have parents who are just criminally … criminally negligent with respect to raising children. And yet that’s the kind of program that has bi-partisan support.”

Wow, and WOW. The sad part is that we have pages and pages of research that shows well-fed children learn better, and when kids learn better they have a better chance of pulling themselves out of poverty, stopping the cycle, and becoming tax-paying Americans.

My family would have qualified for free breakfast and lunch when I was little. My mom never signed us up because she was too proud. I wish she had. We often left for school with empty stomachs. She left before 8 a.m. to go to work. We got ourselves ready in the morning including fixing our own breakfasts. I can tell you with 100 percent certainty that my mother was NOT criminally negligent. She was a working mom who did everything in her power for us, but she wasn’t making a lot of money, and sometimes that meant we struggled. Since when is being poor a criminal offense?

I have written about this before, but I can remember weeks where on Tuesday we would run out of milk knowing we had to wait until Friday to get some. (Supermarkets didn’t take credit cards in the late 70s and early 80s.) So we went without milk. How nice it would have been to go to school and have a little carton of milk and a packet of cereal waiting for me. And today I know for a fact that there are plenty of kids living what I went through.

As Raw Story points out, in September the U.S. Census Bureau released the latest poverty numbers. Last year, 14.3 percent of the population was living below the poverty line, a 15-year high. That means in 2009 43.6 million people were living in poverty, up from 39.8 million in 2008. “The third consecutive annual increase in the number of people in poverty,” according to the Census Bureau’s report.

Some of those folks were laid off. Some of them are uneducated. Some are sick. Some desperately want to work, but can’t find a job. Some have seen their unemployment benefits run out. Some have been foreclosed upon. I know there are plenty of people who think that people should take care of themselves, and if they can’t, screw ‘em. I am not one of them. I think, especially in this season of giving, that we should always be looking to take care of those less fortunate than others. Because you never know what life is going to throw you. And so I say to Ms. O’Beirne: The only criminal here is YOU. Only a criminal could display such depraved indifference for human life, especially the tiniest and most helpless of our society: our children. You should be ashamed of yourself. I know I am ashamed for you.

What’s your take on this issue? I’d like to know. BTW: You can listen to the discussion here. Listen to around the 54 minute mark.

The first one didn’t work out. It was a Montessori. I dropped her off and was jarred by the atmosphere. Very chaotic and more like a daycare than a school. The room wasn’t neat and tidy. No educational bulletin boards. No desks. It wasn’t what we were promised, that’s for sure. And at $350 per month, well, it should have been nicer. When my husband picked her up that day (I was in the city), he was also underwhelmed. So we yanked her out that same night.

Her new nursery school is very different. Tables and colored chairs. Blocks. Toys. Puzzles. A classroom hamster named Speedy. And two teachers — Strict-but-nice cop and super-mushy sweet cop. It’s a really welcoming place. Before we arrived I told Little Girl about what her day would be like. That she would go in and start the day doing quiet table time. Then she would play. Then she would probably hear a story, do some coloring, eat a snack. Heck, she might even play outside.

We got to the school, she went in, and sat right down ready to do table time. I was stunned. How could she understand what I meant? She’s two! And yet there she was sitting down playing with manipulatives. I stood there taking pictures. She glanced up as if to say, what, you still here? Go home. I’m good. I’m ready to have fun. The director of the program was there to greet everyone. She knows me well. She had my big girl for four summers (pre-3, 3, 4, and 5) and two years (the 3- and 4-year-old programs). She looked at me and said, “I think you’re having a bigger problem with this than she is.” I think she was right.

My little digression: I never expected to be able to put a two-year-old in a program. Well, before I gave birth I did. But once I met her not so much. And yet I have done it. I feel really torn. As my husband says, it’s 7.5 hours a week. It’s not like she’s going all day. But I still wonder if I am doing the right thing.

Back to the story…I was so nervous that around 11 a.m. I called the school. I got the director on the phone. How is she, I wanted to know? The director told me she was fine until a wailing little boy sat next to her. She cried out of empathy, the director thought. She put the phone down and went to check on her. She was smiling and playing, I was told. She was fine.

When I picked Little Girl up today she was so excited. She ran and hugged me, but not before stopping off to give one of the teachers two high fives. And then she told her she would see her soon. I grabbed the other teacher and asked if she thought Little Girl was ready for school. It’s a 3-year-old program after all. She’s only 27 months. I didn’t want her to interrupt class or be a distraction. No, she told me, Little Girl was going to do just fine, she thought.

And what did Little Girl think? When we got into the car I asked her: “Did you have fun, baby? Do you want to go back again?” Yes, she told me. I had fun. I want to go back. And then she proceeded to tell me, “I cried, Mommy. The little boy cried and I cried.” And then I heard the smile creep into her voice. “I gonna cry again next time.” I turned around and sure enough, she was grinning ear to ear. “Are you joking with Mommy?” She laughed. “Yes, I joking, Mommy. I not gonna cry.” I’m glad. That means only one of us will be shedding tears.

How was your kid’s first day of school? How young is too young when it comes to preschool? How do I stop feeling so guilty? I’d like to know.

It’s Saturday, so I’m not going to write a long blog. I’m sure you don’t want to read a long blog. But I did want to put this out there: Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution is great. But while we’re at it how about fostering some love and concern for our earth? Jamie says he wants real, unprocessed food, but where are we going to grow that food if we keep polluting our waterways and killing our ground with plastic and chemicals like Bisphenol A (BPA), which NEVER go away. Never.

So on this Saturday evening I say can we take it to the next level? While we’re teaching those kids to love what is found in nature, how about we show them that it’s important to protect nature. We must find a way to eat while at the same time avoiding waste. Kids should be recycling and — if they have to use disposables — they should be using more earth-friendly options. Companies like BioSmart Packaging are a good example. But I still think that the best option is to teach kids how to go completely green by using metal utensils and ceramic plates and cups like they do in Nashville or some of the other schools that have taken the waste-free lunch challenge.

Because the real revolution is more than just eating the right foods. The real revolution keeps our bodies and our environment clean and healthy.

Hope you’re having a good weekend! How does your school handle the environmental issue of food service? Would you consider advocating for a waste-free cafeteria?

What is NCLB? There’s a U.S. government-sponsored Web site about it, but, for those who don’t understand it or never followed it, here’s the deal: Enacted by Bush the second in 2002, NCLB requires schools to test children for specific proficiencies. Your school tests well, it gets federal aid money. It doesn’t test well: Parents can pull their kids out, send them to different schools, get free extra help. Oh, and the schools don’t get federal aid money. Here’s the catch: Certain scores are assessed separately. Kids who speak English as a second language, poor kids, minority kids — their scores often don’t count.

Aside from the fact that that’s a crock since it means those groups don’t get the same attention and care that they should, here’s my biggest problems with NCLB: the teachers end up teaching to the tests. They don’t teach critical thinking, they can’t spend time on the whys. All they can do is get kids to learn things by rote because they need to make sure those kids fill in the right little bubbles on the testing sheet. You could have a terrible teacher who knows how to get kids to memorize stuff but can’t inspire kids to actually learn.

Teacher unions are against the Obama plan, of course. They don’t like one of the provisions being discussed — merit-based pay. Congress doesn’t like the fact that funding will be reallocated based not on the number of kids in a school but on the actual help needed. (And for what it’s worth, I think the entire funding thing is messed up, too.) However, there are some bright spots in the overhaul. Personally, I love the fact that the new plan, if implemented, will create new standards of success including one that requires kids to be “college or career-ready” by the time they graduate high school. This takes into account that everyone doesn’t do well on tests, but that everyone out there can be a productive member of society. It should also raise overall standards for those kids who are education-minded.

This is important because, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, we’re ranked 24th out of 29 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) member countries when it comes to our 15-year-olds’ math proficiency. We ranked 17th out of 29 for science. A recent Education Week story even pointed to the fact that Americans may soon fall behind when it comes to technology, too. In my opinion, NCLB is partially to blame for this disparity. The reason that kids from other countries regularly outperform those from the States, especially when it comes to math and science, is that you can’t “memorize” math and science. You have to understand it to do well. Which brings us back to the pointlessness of testing.

Of course, President Obama’s plan has to make it through Congress, no easy task these days. It also needs more fleshing out. But, as far as I can tell, we’re finally going in the right direction.

What did you think of No Child Left Behind? What do you think of the quality of your child’s education? Your own education? If you’re from another country: what’s great about how your country educates? What do you see as the major mistakes being made here in the States as well as around the globe? Let’s discuss.