Breakfast at School Gets Pupils Off to Good Start
Achievement test scores were up. Tardiness was down. In a nation concerned about decaying educational standards, something good was happening with grammar school pupils in Lawrence, Mass.
Better teachers? Better textbooks? Radical new classroom methods?
None of the above. They kids were eating their breakfast--at school.
That was the conclusion of researchers who in 1987 studied the Lawrence schools and their new breakfast program. The findings are part of a small but growing body of research that has empirically confirmed something teachers have been saying for generations: A hungry student is not, as a rule, a good student.
‘Hungry Child Is Passive, Apathetic’
“Hunger, like undernutrition, leads to nervousness, irritability, disinterest in the learning situation and the inability to concentrate. The hungry child is passive, apathetic,” summarizes a nutrition guidebook published by the National Education Assn.
The findings represent a further argument to expand school breakfast programs, particularly in low-income areas, researchers say. “Poor nutrition makes poverty’s impact on learning even more negative,” the NEA report observes.
“We all largely agree there’s some immediate educational benefit for a child to have something in his stomach when he goes to school,” said Dr. Alan Meyers, an assistant professor of pediatrics at Boston City Hospital who participated in the 1987 Lawrence study. They based their findings on interviews with the students and teachers, test scores and attendance reports.
Much of the research, unlike the Massachusetts study, has occurred in carefully controlled laboratory settings. One recent study by a leading researcher found that well-nourished, middle-class 9-to-11-year-olds consistently made more errors on days they skipped breakfast.
Some Curious Findings
Some studies have provided more curious findings.
A study reported in the British journal Lancet told how researchers divided 90 children, ages 7 to 9, into two groups. One group received a vitamin and mineral supplement; the other, a placebo. A series of tests given to the groups showed no difference on verbal intelligence tests. But the group that received the extra vitamins and minerals outperformed their counterparts in mathematics and other nonverbal skills.
