I personally wouldn't do this project, because I grew up inside of it and have NO interest in revisiting it. And in our case my mom would have been judged, because she did have a cigarette addiction (that was stopped while she was pregnant but she would go back to it...ended up being a smoker from 15 to 35, which meant 10 years of off and on smoking after having me), and we did have two big dogs that needed to eat. We had a garden, and we had chickens for eggs (until dad put the malamutes in the chicken coop, thanks dad).
Other than those things she would be judged for (if only she had known at 15 that her life of wealth in her dad's house would end when she married 2 years later, moved to SF and was a hippie, she never would have started the addiction to cigarettes), she worked her rear off to keep things healthy for us as much as she could. She cooked real food, she made sure we had nutrition even if it meant she had nothing but black coffee for days on end (something I found out about during the relative few years I had with her as an adult before she died from a medical error/overlooked issue). After I was 4 and my brother was 2 she went to work (child support being a randomly received thing, so it was almost all on her) and usually had two jobs. Despite that, she still qualified for food stamps for a few years. It was HARD for her. It wasn't fun. And it taught us very little except that being poor was rotten.
So I'm not going to do that sort of unit. But if you have never lived it, you can see it as educational, I don't begrudge that.
But I DO have to say that just because YOU are poor doesn't mean your friends are. I had tremendously wealthy friends whose doors were open to us. One of my uncles had a GREAT job, and they lived close, and would take us for long weekends. In that way I got to experience country clubs and beautiful homes, and lots of food in the fridge. My friends ran the gamut of poorer than we were, to very fancy lives, and so I experienced RV trips to Stanford games, among other things. MANY friends had videogame systems EARLY on.
So just because a family is poor, it doesn't mean they don't get to experience those things. Of course, not every family will be in an area like I grew up in, where you had migrant worker families and ex-hippies being friends with children of surgeons, etc. There is no one way of living, even when on food stamps.
Hard to experience poverty if you escape to your normal, everyday life.
I managed to experience it even while surrounded by friends and relatives who provided escapes for us.
Yes, I got free breakfast and lunch at school but that didn't help on weekends or school vacations.
FWIW, nowadays, at least in my town, kids can continue to get free/reduced meals even over breaks. It's actually pretty lovely that they do it. Every summer they have daily lunch for kids at a local park, all you have to do is show up. It does mean you have to get over there, of course.
Heck, I remember once when cashier argued with my mom that we couldn't buy a can of Crisco shortening with our food stamps, telling us that it wasn't "food." After going back and forth, my mom just gave up and had her remove it. Of course, the cashier was wrong about this. But who wants to draw attention with a book of food stamps in your hand?
My mom had a similar experience at our local Safeway. She never went back to that store. Her life was hard enough without cashiers judging her and making up rules.
Speaking to the falicy that people on food stamps are struggling to get by...
We have owned apartment buildings for the past thirty years. Approximately two thirds to three quarters of our tenants benefit from government programs.
Not a week goes by that we don't witness someone trading a trip to the grocery store using their food stamps for cash/material goods.
Whenever we get a new tenant,9 times out of 10, we or our managers are approached with a trade of food stamps for rent. For example, we are usually offered $100 of grocery purchases for $75 reduction in rent. It is a currency. Most food is procured through church run programs.
I do have to say that...since food stamps don't pay for the other stuff, I do wonder what that gov't expects? If they are giving what seems to be too much of one thing, and not enough of the other, shouldn't they expect that this sort of thing will happen?
I have a hard time seeing ALL cases of that sort of thing to show that recipients are not truly impoverished, but rather that what the gov't is giving doesn't meet their actual needs, and there's nothing else they can do.
You can do ALL of that without pretending to be impoverished in some strange money saving scheme.
I'm really torn, because I'm halfway with you, Robin. The part that isn't is the part that knows that some kids REALLY really really do learn from experience, not just learning *about* things. We do an "experiential" curriculum, Oak Meadow (a Waldorf offshoot), and it would really support doing something like this. But it doesn't work *for me*, not always, and definitely not with this sort of subject.
That's also known as food stamp fraud and can land you in jail for a while, I don't think I would be sharing that on a public forum.
If a person says they were offered something, there's no need to read "and I accepted" into that sentence.
If my kid's teacher told me that it was "educational" for an 11 year old to cut coupons, read recipes, create a paper price book, handle money, make an inventory, weigh and measure or learn unit pricing - I'd be asking what the school taught up until then.
I don't understand. Those things ARE educational. They involve skills inside of other subjects, teach new skills (part of our 3rd grade curriculum involves cooking from recipes!), and are skills that will be used *for life*.
And I know my public school taught me none of that. I was already reading by the time I even hit Montessori at 4 (those "if you can read this thank a teacher" stickers enrage me since no one *taught* me to read), my mom cooked with us as much as possible, and even made bread *whenever possible*, even when working her rear off to pay for rent and clothes. OK I'll admit that it was Girl Scouts that taught me to make change (so that's hair-braiding, making change, and "snack" as the things GS taught me).
Every time we go to the store I'm teaching DS about budgeting; they don't take you to stores in school.
Interesting ... I guess I'll find out what I think on cooking and eating from that kind of budget. We homeschool largely because we can make learning fun (as well as makes my kid's sport activities feasible and because of some health issues dd has) There is no point to continuing an activity meant to make learning fun and interesting that isn't doing it, so we would certainly stop if the kids are actually unhappy.
I knew a Free Enterprise teacher who did something like this with her students, down to making them budget out and prove what they would eat day by day. She made them each take a low-paying job with no support and a kid or two, then a solid working class job etc. She and I used to call it the "scare those kids into going at least to vo-tech, if not to college" part of the semester.
