food and fairness

If solving the world's problems was as simple as gathering all of the left-overs from lunch-time along at the school and then sending them off to Haiti ... well, that would be great!

Thursday tends to be my 'school' day. The assemblies were rather more staggered today (one in the morning, one in the early afternoon), but they both took place. And the theme for them both was the same.

Fairness and Justice is the 'value for the month' through June. And the Head had the children all thinking again.

Four of the children who sit on the Pupil Council had prepared a presentation on the amount of food that gets wasted each day over lunch. They had photos of the sort of stuff that gets left - on the tables and loads on the floor which all then gets swept up and put into buckets at the end of the feeding frenzy called 'lunch'.

How much food would the children in Haiti have left? asked the Head. None came the answer.

How much food would be left on the floor by the children in Haiti? None came the answer again.

Is it fair, he went on, that we have so much that we can't eat it all, and that they have so little to eat - maybe one meal a day and possibly not even that?

Is it fair on the people who clean up the hall that we leave such a mess from our lunch? Is it fair on the people of Haiti that we have so much and they have so little to eat?

And then he came out with this - next term for a week they would do without lunch in the school.

It was meant as a putative suggestion, but it came across as a statement of fact.

They would pay their dinner money: he'd say 'Thank you very much': and then he'd announce that the money brought in (he instanced £1,500) would be sent to feed the children of Haiti.

Would that not be fair? he asked.

This was the P1s-3s who were in at the time. That's quite a question to be asking them! You could almost hear the cogs in their young brains working overtime.

Some thought that, yes, it was fair. (Ask the question in the right sort of way and you're likely to get the answer you want)

But others, you could see were struggling. They knew the answer should be 'Yes', but they weren't entirely comfortable with that and were trying to figure out why.

You lied, said one little boy at last. It might be fair for the children of Haiti: but it wouldn't be fair on the children at the school. They'd paid their money for lunch in all good faith. The school should keep the deal - or it wouldn't be fair on the people who'd paid for their lunch.

Fairness. The concept is fine. Working it out can be hard.

How responsible are we for what goes on elsewhere? If we do without lunch in the school all the time to be helping the people of Haiti, then we're putting folk out of a job here in Scotland and making life harder for them.

Solving the world's problems is not a simple thing! But that doesn't mean we shouldn't be making a start. And the sooner the better!

I think that's what the Head is really on about. And all strength to the man. Isn't this one big part of what the Lord rerquires of us?

"To act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God."