by Rhys Laverty, The Critic
Breakfast clubs are bad for both families and the economy
“A quiet growing time” — this is how the educational reformer Charlotte Mason described the ideal for a child’s first six years of life. “A full six years of passive receptive life, the waking part of it spent for the most part out in the fresh air” was a goal for mothers to strive for during “this time of extraordinary pressure, educational and social.”
By “this time”, Mason didn’t mean childhood, but the turn of the twentieth century. It is hard not to think that she didn’t realise how good she had it, given the social and educational pressures now faced by children as young as four in full-time schooling in the UK.
A “quiet growing time” is precisely what British children today don’t get. They are thrust into long hours of state-funded childcare from as young as nine months, the point at which statutory maternity pay ends. And so, between the ages of nine months and five years, and between the hours of 8am and 6pm each weekday, the British state will give money to almost anyone to look after your child apart from you.
This week, the government piloted its new school breakfast club program, a £30 million pound initiative to provide free breakfasts in schools across the country. These clubs are meant to be 30 minute sessions immediately before the school day, meaning 8-8:30 am in most schools. The rationale for the clubs was dystopically but articulately laid out by Labour councillor Sebastian Salek in a thread on X this week. Aside from the alleged benefits of saving families £450 per year, improving academic achievement, and ensuring children don’t start school hungry, the clubs are supposedly an instance of “clever economics” which “makes everyone richer”. This would happen by “giving parents back 95 hours a year”, thus allowing them to “work more hours”, “earn more money”, and “pay more tax that funds our public services.” Salek cites a stat saying that 1.7 million mothers want to work more, concluding that, if they could, they would generate £28.2 billion in economic output. Everyone’s a winner.
Read also: Breakfast clubs and the state takeover of children by Richard Morrissey, TCW