(A little chuckle from across the room.)
‘Sorry. Every time I read this, it makes me think of animals on a farm. I just think it’s a funny name.’
Indeed it is. But maybe not so comical as unsettling.
The ‘name’ in question is ‘school feeding’, as in the School Feeding Programmes that the WFP administers throughout the developing world, and the Ghana School Feeding Programme (poster child of the Home-Grown School Feeding movement in Sub-Saharan Africa). But though these programs are all about assuring the fundamental human right to food – one recognized in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights – the semiotic packages that they’re wrapped in seem rather devoid of dignity – something recognized in the same declaration as inherent and equal among all people –, dehumanising, and invalidating.
As far as I can tell, animals, infants, and invalids can be fed, but autonomous people eat. To feed signifies a subhuman, visceral, uncontrollable, animalistic behaviour; or in a somewhat contrary sense, it implies the administration of food to a vulnerable creature powerless to satisfy its own needs. To eat, on the other hand, connotes self-direction and self-reliance – in a word (or two), independence and competence.
Though I’ve thought about it for a couple of days now, I can’t come up with another context in which I’d ever use the term ‘feeding’ to denote a self-respecting human activity. Cows are fed, they eat feed, and they might even lose control and engage in a collective feeding frenzy. It’s feeding time when a helpless infant needs its mother’s breast, and hospital nurses might feed a convalescing patient. And, true, vultures feed on their prey, and leeches and vampires feed on blood.
But no one with dignity feeds. A prim and proper pair of spinster aunts might lunch or take tea, a couple of junior partners might grab a bite during the noontime break, nobles might feast, gourmets might dine, dieters might pick, anti-dieters might snack, wine-and-cheese cocktailers might nibble, and Amsterdam partiers might, er, get the need to munch. But feed? I can’t think of anyone.
To me, eating seems a dignified, human activity that one engages in with self-respect; feeding, on the other hands, seems proprietary of animals and invalids. The first is an independent, active pursuit; the second, a dependent, passive one. Why, then, do American children have a school lunch programme; British children, a school dinner programme; and Ghanaian children, a school feeding programme? Is it that American children eat while Ghanaian children are fed, that American children are dignified while Ghanaian children are not? I’d hate to think so.
Confucius might have warned us:
If names be not correct, language is not in accordance with the truth of things. If language be not in accordance with the truth of things, affairs cannot be carried on to success. (The Analects)
Perhaps a good ‘rectification of names’ is in order. If ‘affairs are to be carried on to success,’ maybe we must first put language ‘in accordance with the truth of things’ and make it better reflect the universal and equal dignity of all human beings.
It may be that there is a good reason for (and for maintaining) the ‘school feeding’ name and I just don’t know what it is. I’ll be happy if you can set me straight – or otherwise contribute your perspective. Also, much credit to Jessica Spayde for some good ideas.
No related posts.
I think this is a great reflection about the terms and the power of the words we use! My hope is that the use of the term -feed- comes from some less than perfect translation. This sounds remote because I assume that in every language in the world including the non official ones spoken in Ghana, there is a term for eating and another one for feeding. I couldn’t find anything conclusive through my quick internet search so the question on the use of these terms remains but I agree that it could by rectified if there is as you say, no good reason for keeping it.
Since I read this piece, Leah, it made me think. Partly, I agreed and partly I thought: you can also search for things; and thus partly agreed with Gina that it might ‘just’ be bad translation. Since English is not my native tongue, it did not disturb me so much.
And then, this morning I was reading Carolyn Steel. Just a few lines:
“[modern cities] were utterly dependent on the state to feed them”
“the Senate provided citizens with a subsidised monthly grain ration [...] to keep them fed”
“There has always been plenty of money to be made from feeding cities.”
So, here I am posing a challenging question: is it a language issue between American and English??
Thanks for the challenge – that’s what this is for!
So, I’m not claiming to be authoritative on the matter, but my opinion : I still don’t think it’s an issue of British versus American English. In all of Carolyn Steel’s quotes that you mention here, I still pick up something of a de-personalizing or depreciative element: The Senate ‘keeps its citizens fed’ … BECAUSE it doesn’t want to deal with their discontent. (Kind of like the Romans turned to ‘panem et circenses’, bread and circus, to keep its lower classes, if not exactly ‘fulfilled’ in a Maslow-ian sense, at least distracted and disinclined from uprising.) Similarly, you can see the mercenary aspect to ‘making money from feeding cities’ …
Sure, we can use the word ‘feeding’ in all these senses, and we can even do it in a benign manner to communicate administering food to someone utterly incapable of feeding himself: the mother who nurses her infant ‘feeds’ the child, for example, the infant being entirely unable to care for itself. But I don’t think that’s the message that should be communicated in the title of the Ghana School Feeding Programme: neither Ghana nor its children are incapable creatures bereft of the human capability to provide for themselves. In fact, to be honest, if I had to pick whether an American ten-year-old (who participates in a school FOOD program) or a Ghanaian ten-year-old (who participates in a school FEEDING program) is more likely to have self-provisioning skills, I’d put my money on the Ghanaian kid.
Again, though, thanks for the challenge. I’m not taking an authoritative angle here by any means. Maybe we can ask Carolyn Steel for her opinion on her own quotes???
Great reply. I like the idea of asking Carolyn Steel. I will contact her and ask her to reply to this post.
To be continued…
Hi both,
Many thanks for inviting me to contribute to this interesting thread. I agree with Leah, that the verb ‘to feed’ has strong connotations in English usage (and, it seems, in American) that the recipient is somehow incapable of feeding themselves. It is therefore used in reference to babies, animals, prisoners, famine victims etc – and, historically, to up to a third of ancient Roman citizens, who were judged by the state to be similarly incapable. I agree, therefore, that its use in the Ghana School Feeding Programme is unfortunate, since it conjures up misplaced images of helplessness and neediness.
Curiously, this very issue came up recently in my own family. Language, as we know, is both strongly nuanced and constantly changing. My grandmother always spoke of ‘feeding’ when referring to family meals, and my father still does. My brother recently said ‘I have never understood why we talk about ‘feeding’ and not ‘eating’ in this family – it’s as though we don’t care about food!’ (Which, as family, we certainly do: my grandmother owned a hotel which was very highly regarded for its food). Now I am wondering even more where this generational shift came from, and am motivated to dig deeper!
Thanks very much for your perspective, Carolyn. Now you’ve got ME interested in your family’s dinner-table discourse, too! That is curious, isn’t it? First it’s curious that your grandmother and your father refer to family meals as ‘feeding’, and then that it’s curious that what (sounds like it) was the ‘normal’ family term carried such dissonance for your brother (and maybe for you, too). (I’m curious: how exactly do your grandmother and your father use the term?)
I’m wondering if it could have something to do with a generational shift in how your family (or perhaps society more broadly) viewed either women’s roles or children’s roles? Here’s what I’m thinking of … An extraordinarily high percentage of ‘young’ Italians remain at home long after their ‘European peers’ have left. (I’ve seen various figures for various age ranges, ranging up to 80%, depending on the age ranges used … but the point is that this percentage is (1) ‘high’ and (2) comparatively much ‘higher’ than other industrialized countries. For example: http://agentimmobiliari.ning.com/profiles/blogs/giovani-italiani-mammoni ). At the same time, I think that gender roles are much more strongly defined in Italy (I don’t know the right measure to use – maybe the low number of women in the labour force, the paucity of women politicians, I’m sure they’re are other better indicators …) than in many other countries. These two factors combine in that it is ‘the woman’s role to *feed* the children’, regardless of how old those children are; it’s almost as though the woman asserts her identity or establishes her ‘value’ by extending the phase in which SHE is responsible for the very nourishment of her children. So it’s quite common for an Italian mom to cook dinner for her thirty-year-old son. In contrast, it’s quite normal in the United States for a mom to say to her eleven-year-old: ‘Johnny, I’ve got to leave early for work tomorrow. Can you plan to pack your own lunch in the morning?’ So in this example, the Italian kid is ‘unable’ to take responsibility for ‘feeding’ himself, whereas the American kid is in fact required to do so; and the Italian woman finds an identity in ‘feeding’ the child, whereas the American one doesn’t. Obviously this is a heavily stylised depiction, and it’s not in reality a universal Italian or American experience, and it has lots of room for different degrees. But the point holds: different people have different conceptualizations about capability / authority / responsibility to provide for the nourishment of another person … I wonder if some of those conceptualizations (for example the Italian-style one I used here) would facilitate or encourage or even ‘require’ use of a word like ‘feeding’, while others (such as the American-style one I used here) would ‘require’ a word more like ‘eating’. Just an idea. Carolyn, would that kind of ‘analysis’ apply to your family at all? Again, thanks for your thoughts – really interesting!
Leah, thank you so much for this! This “school feeding” thing always puzzled me because in Brazil we use the term “alimentação escolar”. I always thought that “alimentação” had the same meaning as “the act of eating”, but now that I stopped to think about it, it can also mean “the act of feeding”. Well, I just got a little disappointed with Portuguese, I have to say.
It’s been years that I’ve been reading about “school feeding” and I thought it was the “normal” term in English for my “alimentação escolar”, and I completely overlooked the “school lunch” and “school dinner” in the name of some programmes. In my opinion, “feeding” is horrible. “School food” (does it make sense in English) would be so much better.
I tried to find the etymology of “feed” in the Internet. This is what I got (here: http://www.pugiofidei.com/feed.htm) :
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There are several words in the Bible which are organically related in Hebrew. The word for neighbor and friend is the same, rea’. It is derived from the root verb ra’ah, to feed, which has a secondary meaning “to rule”. The word ro’eh is Hebrew for shepherd. The consonants in Hebrew (known as the root) for these terms are r’h, r’, and r’h, respectively. Unfortunately, the translation of these terms in Greek and Latin is not capable of expressing the unity which exists in the Hebrew, although Greek comes closer than Latin, in that the word poimaino, “to feed”, metaphorically means “to rule”.
What is the importance of this term “to feed”? Our Lord commissioned Peter as prince of the Apostles not only when He said, “upon this rock I will build my church”, but also when He said “feed my sheep, feed my lambs”, that is to say, rule my sheep, rule my lambs. Additionally, as you will see, the failure to feed the sheep violates the commandment to “love thy neighbor”.
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Food, power and love together? Interesting, at least!
Interesting that in Britain the older generation uses the term “feeding”. When I worked in East Africa (Kenya and Uganda) my colleagues very often used the term “feed” rather than “eat” (which always struck me as odd), so I wonder “feeding” is simply an older term that has fallen out in of favour. Also, I think it’s important to keep in mind that something like 80% of staff working at UN organizations (WFP included) and NGOs are non-native English speakers. So I’m inclined to agree with Gina and Els that it may be a translation issue.
However, this doesn’t mean that the term can’t be changed to make it less disempowering. And it seems that WFP is already changing their terminology: http://www.wfp.org/school-meals
Coming back to an old topic, I guess, but I just came across this: http://documents.wfp.org/stellent/groups/public/documents/newsroom/wfp208120.pdf
It’s the summary of the 2009 Bellagio strategic meeting on WFP’s school feeding program. One page 6, it highlights for a communication campaign to ‘brand safeety nets and school feeding’ as … a bunch of things … one of which reads:
‘Language of ‘school meals’ better than ‘school feeding’.
(Interestingly, though, the title of this very section was to ‘Brand safety nets and school FEEDING as …’, and the title of the report used the same language. So it seems that while there is perhaps recognition of language and branding as important, ‘old ways die hard’.)