Or blame parents? Or blame The Culture? I think it is interesting and not surprising that a survey would find a decline in empathy among college students, and other generations as well, as reported by Stephanie Steinberg in USA Today. This is depressing, as empathy is the most important thing we can teach our children. This piece just reminds me how much more journalism I would like to see about the inner lives of kids. Of course, that is a small
Flickr photo by Rick
Plus, details on the deals:
"Some of the nation's largest and most elite universities stand to gain millions of dollars from selling the names and addresses of students and alumni to credit card companies while granting the companies special access to school events, the Huffington Post Investigative Fund has found.
The schools and their alumni associations are entitled to receive payments that multiply as students use their cards. Some colleges can receive bonuses when students incur debt.
The little-known agreements have enriched schools and some banks at a time when young women and men already are borrowing at record levels, raising questions about whether such collegiate and corporate alliances are in the best interests of students..."
" . . . Our examination of affinity agreements involving some of the nation's largest and most prestigious colleges revealed that schools and alumni associations:
Sell students' personal information. Many are contractually obligated to share students' names, phone numbers and addresses with banks.
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The lunch menu may be getting thinner at New York City schools next year.
Schools where students have three hot-meal choices a day will begin offering two, and those where there are two hot choices will cut to one under a budget proposal being considered by the Bloomberg administration. Combined with a plan to cut the number of schools where all the students get free lunches, the proposal is projected to save the city $23.7 million a year.
The idea is leaving a bad taste in some parents' mouths.
"This is a dramatic reversal to all the inroads that parents and food activists have been trying to make with regards to school lunch," said Elizabeth Puccini, a parent of a child at Children's Workshop School in the East Village and founder of NYC Green Schools, a coalition of parents trying to make schools more environmentally friendly, in part by addressing food issues.
The Department of Education serves 870,000 meals a day among more than 1,500 schools and has worked for years to increase healthy choices for students. Among the changes: replacing white bread, whole milk and white-flour pasta with whole wheat bread, skim milk and whole-grain pasta. An extra 90 salad bars were added to the schools this year. Baked fries have replaced french fries, and the department hired a chef to help reformulate menu items with fewer calories and fat.
Ms. Puccini is concerned about the city's plan to cut 276 food-service workers at a time, she said, when many kitchens are already too understaffed to promote healthy-food choices. Ms. Puccini said she has observed a trend where activist parents at low-poverty schools have been able to affect big changes in lunch programs, while high-poverty schools' meals are generally
