#178 Education! Education! Education! (Part 2)

Oh What A Time is now on Patreon. You can get main feed episodes before everyone else, ad-free, plus access to our full archive of bonus content, two bonus episodes every month, early access to live show tickets and access to the Oh What A Time group chat. Plus, if you become an Oh What A Time all-timer, myself, Tom and Ellis will riff on your name to postulate where else in history you might have popped up. For all your options, you can go to patreon.com forward slash Oh What A Time. Hello and welcome to part two of Education. Let's get on with the show. Okay, now, corporal punishment in schools might seem like a thing of the past, something that happened in the 19th century, possibly only the 19th century, but in fact, what the French once referred to as the English Vice. Wow. Wow. Which was commonality in British schools, was only abolished by Parliament. When? Do either of you know? Oh, this is going to be so much later than I expect, isn't it? I did know this because I actually remember them discussing it on the news. I would have guessed. Oh, really? That late? Yeah. 80s? Yeah. That would have blown my mind. I would have assumed 1950-something. 88? 89? No, 87. So it was abolished by Parliament in the summer of 86, but it was put into practice in 1987. I remember them discussing it on things like Newsround. That's unbelievable. Yeah. When was Live Aid? 1985. So it's after that. It's after Live Aid. Yeah. Wow. Well, mum was a teacher in, she was a secondary school teacher, and she taught in Liverpool in the 70s, and she was very against corporal punishment. She was once, a kid had been naughty in her class, and the headmaster called her in because he'd caned this boy. Right. Who'd been acting up, and they, you know, like on the bum, and the guy was, boy was crying. My mum was like, at that point, I'd never seen it happen before. But I was like, I am absolutely against, you know, corporal punishment in schools. And my deputy headteacher at school, that told a very similar story. It was like, we've never done it. Oh, really? In school, even when it was legal. Interesting. So I think it was sort of, it was only, you know, it was abolished by Parliament, but I think a lot of schools had decided not to do it. But I think in private schools, they were actually allowed to do it until later, but I'd have to check that. Wow, that's amazing. So much later than I thought it would be. Yeah, the Conservative government at the time, led by Margaret Thatcher, they weren't obviously by instinct. abolitionists, but they felt it better that they acted before, as one minister put it, the European Court of Human Rights obliges us. So they thought they'd get in quick, so that it wasn't the ECHR rulings that made them do it. Because the ECHR, there'd been rulings in the previous decade, which had sort of, which made it obvious that it was inevitable that Britain was going to have to get its act together. I think generally, if you've got a concern, the European Court of Human Rights has got an issue with something you're doing, it's probably time to nip that in the bud. I would say that, wouldn't you, because you're a lefty member of the liberal metropolitan elite. Absolute snowflake. You know, the 70s and the 80s saw several countries look again at the use of physical punishment in schools, with Spain and New Zealand, parts of Australia and several American states, including California and New York, instituting bans. It's weird, because I was at secondary school in the 90s, like the three of us were, and talking to kids who were, or people who were at secondary school in the 80s, it was quite a different vibe, I think, an awful lot of having board rubbers. Chucked at you and that kind of stuff, and being hit with slippers and things. Now, progressives pointed to the cruelty of the cane and did so for generations. Now, this staggered me. The first country to ban the use of corporal punishment in schools was the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Now, if we did it in Britain in 1986, with the ban being put into practice in 1987, when do you think the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth did it? Let's go with 1970. Christopher. Naughties. 1783. Wow. So, the Norwegians did it in 1889, the Dutch in 1920, the Italians in 1928, and the Danes in 1967, although Copenhagen had banned the practice at municipal level in 1951. Even the state of New Jersey took up the cause, instituting a ban in 1867 in the wake of the American Civil War. So, by my math, I think that's 204 years, is that right, later? Yeah, if you went to school in Baselton, you could still be here since 1987. We like our traditions here, Al. Yeah. Now, I think about it, I think I was a victim of corporal punishment. I remember getting hit by a ruler from a teacher once. No way. Mixing paints in primary school. I'm sure I did. For mixing paints? Yeah. I've never done it since. Dad, in the 60s, when he was at school, he remembers kids being caned. Yeah. Now, proponents of. There's that scene in Keres, isn't there, where all the kids are caned, and they're caned in real life, because that was made in the late 60s, and the kids. Went on strike. They said, listen, if you're going to cane us properly, so that it looks good on camera, you've got to paint us more. Yeah. This is a famous scene where they're all lining up and being caned on the hand. I've always wondered why rulers say shatterproof on them, and I now know why. It's because Skull was such a hard man. Exactly. So, a teacher could confidently know if they were going to whack Skull for mixing paints, that the ruler would still be safe. That's a great point. Like, what were they making rulers out of? Glass. That you had to brand them? Branding them all, this is shatterproof. The second question is, what are the situations that means that rulers are constantly shattering? What was happening before that? Where were people using them? Now, just one more thing. The other element of any pencil case in secondary school that was the most dangerous was the compass. Did you have a compass? Yes, yes. And did you do anything of spreading your fingers out and showing off by stabbing between them as fast as you can? Yeah, I think we might have had a compass ban at school, because they were being used for. Basically everything apart from drawing circles. I've got one more thing, which is even worse than that, which is the Bunsen burner. Oh, yeah. Which was basically saying to kids, you know how you want to attack your mate. Well, why not introduce fire to that? Instead of burning your friends. Exactly. Now, proponents of corporal punishment argued not only for its perceived necessity, so it did remain in use in 17 of the 50 US states, but also its longevity, not just the dark days of Victoria's Rainbow, as far back as you could go. And regardless of culture or context, so ancient Egypt, classical Greece, the Roman Empire, they all indulged in corporal punishment using a variety of implements from whips and lashes to reed canes. Oh, dear. No less, I think, than Plato, the Greek philosopher, considered that verbal threats and physical blows were essentially to train the child for greatness, a form of discipline akin to pruning an unruly tree, which is why Chris Scull is such a high achiever. If he hadn't mixed that paint and been hit with a ruler for it, in 1988, he wouldn't be the man he is now. I mean, that's the argument they were making. Oh, dear. Wow. So it should not be surprising, then, that Papyribe from Egypt sometimes calls teachers by another name, floggers. Really? Yeah, but we can go too far in assuming that ancient teachers were power-man bullies, so that they beat their pupils black and blue in a whim. There were limits of what was and what was not acceptable, what was sanctions, a form of punishment or correction. So one Roman writer, Quintilian, went further and argued, that corporate punishment should be limited, that it was a disgraceful practice, instilled shame and anxiety in children, was used by teachers to cover up for their own failings as educators. If lessons were interesting, then there'd be no need for misbehaviour and punishment. And the historian Plutarch raised similar objections, writing in an essay called The Education of Children, that children ought to be led by means of encouragement and reasoning, and most certainly not by blows or ill-treatment. He was an advocate of what we now call the sandwich method, of burying negative responses between positive ones for a little dose of negativity, which serve not to excite or puff them up, and so spoil them with excessive praise. So that's a very modern approach to. It is, yeah. Isn't there a word for that? Isn't it negging or something like that, people say? No, it's a shit sandwich. Shit sandwich. Negging is slightly different. I'm trying to think of it. Negging would be if you're trying to chat some up rather than saying that they had a beautiful face, you'd say that they had an interest. Interesting face. And then you're making that person think, well, is that good or bad? I'm not sure I stand that. Shit sandwich is me saying, Skull, I like your jumper. I've never really liked you as a human being. Those glasses suit you. That's a shit sandwich. And I hope that softened the blow. Oh, I see. The bread felt quite thin and the meat felt extremely. A lot of filling. I didn't like any element of that sandwich. Now, Roman methods survived in medieval schools and here corporal punishment was endemic, although punishment might not be quite the right word for medieval practitioners because they thought the classroom whip or cane is a tool for learning. Without it, they would have argued probably, what can we do to make our students learn? Right, yeah. Obviously, unfortunately, some rather enjoyed the experience of wielding a whip. So one student at Oxford in the 16th century wrote to his tutor to say, that you punish me over much, master, and please, I cannot buy this punishment. So it doesn't feel, you know. Do you reckon you're going to go to uni if you pass your A-levels? It doesn't sound great. Yeah. That's incredible. Now, there was an additional caveat in monastic settings. Here the argument was that the usual methods of punishing adults, say with excommunication, weren't well suited to children because children didn't understand the meaning of the word. So corporal punishment was a better alternative to teach youngsters a lesson. And that did not have to be about Latin grammar, it could be a lesson in faith. In the 11th century, monk teachers at Canterbury's Cathedral School were encouraged to beat all of their pupils five days before Christmas every year as a reminder of the penance and penitence owed to God. No way. Five days before Christmas? Yeah. Oh, God, imagine that. You wouldn't be looking forward to Christmas as a kid. No, well, that's the thing. Things have changed. Now you get to bring in a board game. That's what it is now. Final day of school. That's absolutely bonkers. By the 19th century, things had got so out of hand at Canterbury that pupils rebelled against a particularly sadistic headmaster. So he's a little bit like the headmaster in Nicholas Nickleby by Dickens, Wackford Squeers. Yeah. Wholly disregarding the cry for mercy, Mr. Squeers fell upon the boy and caned him soundly, not leaving off indeed until his arm was tired out. Oh, this is horrendous. Yeah, so elsewhere the king was a lesson in learning, and strictly so. So at Wells Cathedral in 1460, the then bishop insisted that pupils be punished according to a hierarchy of severity to avoid physical violence. Number one was a warning, number two was a sharp rebuke, and number three was a beating. So it's amazing. Number four was shatterproof rule. Yeah, it's amazing. They'd been doing this for so long in British schools. So over time, these alternative punishments would evolve into things like detention and the writing of lines. In the British state school system, which emerged in the late 19th century, punishments of all kinds were to be written down in the headmaster's punishment book, an official record of what had been done. So smoking, obviously, was a regular one, and discipline, another. And the book meant that inspectors could examine how often the cane was used in the school, for what purpose, and whether particular pupils or teachers were more likely to meet the rod or not. So this in one school in Lincolnshire, more than a thousand pupils were punished with the cane in just six or seven years, from 1968 to 1974. Wow. And for anything from lying to raiding the girls' playground and to getting caught short and weeing against a wall. Jeez. Some poor kid, weeing against a wall because he was desperate and he got caned for it in Lincolnshire at some point between 68 and 74. Although you would get in trouble at school if you were just weeing against a wall somewhere on the school grounds. Yeah. You'd get in a lot of trouble for me, in my school. Oh, yeah, I mean. The teacher would be, no, you have to make it to the toilet. Don't get me wrong, of course, but I wouldn't have been caned for it. I'd have been shouted at, I think. But given opposition to corporal punishment, may well be asked how and why it lasted for so long. Well, in truth, corporal punishment, never uniquely identified with education. And this made it socially acceptable, at least commonplace, because this is the thing, you see, like, smacking's now illegal. In the 80s, every single trip to the supermarket, I'd see kids being smacked. Really? Oh, yeah. And I used to love it. I did. So we'd go to Tesco, me and Mum and my sisters, and some poor kid would be getting smacked. And I'd be like, see that kid getting smacked, Mum? My mum would be like, yes, he must be naughty. And I'd be like, am I naughty? And she'd say, yeah. And I'd be like, no, you've been very well behaved. And I'd go, yeah. I must have told the story on here before. Like, my parents would dish out a smack. Oh, wow. But I had an Auntie Susan. Everyone did. I didn't know anyone who didn't get smacked growing up. No, it was very common when I was a kid, yeah. But except for my Auntie Susan, who never smacked her kids. And she was seen as a lunatic. My mum had studied teacher training in the hippy-dippy 70s. And she was very against it. And my dad, quite up for it. But Mum was like, no, you can't. It's not on. And she was seen as this sort of flower-power hippie child of the 60s. But yeah, it was all the time when I was a kid. And you'd see it in public places all the time. Yeah, all the time. It was everywhere. I love the idea of you thinking, oh, it's because I was a good child. That's why I'm not getting smacked. And then you'd see it in the public places all the time. And you'd just reveal that your mum was dead against it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But she's telling you, oh, it's because you're a good boy. Yeah. No, you deserved this. My big punishment was not having a story read to me. Wow. Yeah, that was a big one, yeah. I also think, because I studied fencing for a bit, I think my dad probably knew that I could handle myself. So he chose not to risk it. When I went past foil and briefly to sabre, he knew. We'll leave this one. Oh, my God. Because obviously in the ancient world, you know, people, slaves, for instance, were regularly beaten. And this was part of Plutarch's argument against corporal punishment in the first place was how could you treat well-off boys as you treated your slaves? That was just bad for society, which is such a crazy argument. Yeah. And in the medieval world, workers would be beaten by their bosses. So the problem was everyday violence ensured that those with power exercised it over those with less or none. Yeah. And it was a reminder of who was in charge and what little could be done to change things. I've just, at the start of this episode, I mentioned that I complained to chocolate and I couldn't remember I've got a voucher. I remember what it was. They sent me a cheque, but I was 11. Younger than that. I didn't have a bank account. And was this just to be spent on their chocolate or was it just cash that could be. They said in the letter something like, yeah, it said in the letter that I had to. We advised maybe you go spend this on some of our chocolate. And obviously, couldn't cash it. Yeah. Put it back into the firm. Clever. Come on, guys. Just let that 50 quid go. Give it one of those cheques, those novelty cheques we have lying around. That's so funny. Yeah. This will all go away. Fascinating, Al. It's also sort of a further reminder that the past was just brutal, wasn't it? It was, you know, an absolute horror show at times. God bless 2026. God bless 2026. So, to finish today's episode on education, I'm going to tell you lovely boys about school dinners. Let's talk about this with your school to begin with. What were school dinners like at your school? Absolutely horrific. I ate turkey burger, beans and chips and chocolate sponge every day for seven years and looking back, it's an absolute wonder I'm not dead. So, that suggests you had options or was that just what they were serving? We did have options, yeah. Did you? I didn't have options. Even at secondary school? What? No, this is primary school. Primary school, you had what you were given. Oh, you had what you were given and it was grim as fuck, yeah. It was awful. Beef with tubes. Oh, my God. Liver was the worst. This lump of really irony meat. Oh, God, it was so bad. I refuse to believe you didn't go to school in the Victorian age. Yeah, yeah. The stories you tell. So, what did you have? My primary school food was great. I remember the first time I tried pizza was in primary. I remember the first time they served pizza. I don't remember. But you went to school in Florence, didn't you? It was delicious. And in secondary school, there was a couple of years right at the start where you could get chicken burgers and beef burgers and cheeseburgers. They stopped that about three years in, I think. I remember when I was. Secondary school was better. I remember when I was very little, my mum would say, what did you have for lunch today? And me saying, chips again. And she said, you've had chips every day. And I was like, yeah. And I think eventually someone complained but yeah, it was bad. I like that. In our secondary school, so you had these two sides, you could queue either side, it didn't matter which side, it was the same stuff and it would be healthy food and also unhealthy food in different big silver tins. You'd choose your burger or you'd have your cod if you're being healthy, whatever it happens to be. And then I remember one year they decided to try and streamline it by putting the healthy stuff on one side of the one entrance of the hall and the unhealthy stuff on the other entrance of the hall and all that happened was just there was no queue at the healthy side whatsoever. And it was just, the whole school was coming through one door and going to this really stressed dinner lady on one side while the other one who was in front of peas and carrots was just kicking back with nothing to do all day. It would all be on a tray and the tray smelled like bums. You know that weird, that weird smell and it's like, this is just the only thing I can say that this smells like is bums. And yeah, grim. Let's go back to where this all started, where the first, thought that one day we could have trays smelling like bums at our schools came from. And in Britain, school meals first appeared in the early 20th century. They were introduced in the 1906 Education Provision of Meals Act, which was a measure designed to ward off malnutrition among children and to improve standard of health. Okay. However, this early version had a crucial flaw in it. Do you want to guess what this crucial flaw was and why it didn't take off in the way they hoped? Cost money. Too expensive. That is one of the reasons it didn't take off. The crucial flaw actually was that it was not applied universally. So local authorities and councils had to opt into the act. And as you say, Al, a lot of them saw it as too expensive. So they didn't. And in many cases, it took industrial disputes or the outbreak of war in 1914 to finally force councils' hands. But despite this, I think it's quite impressive. In the first year of full operation, which is 1907 to 1908, some 2.7% 5 million meals were provided to schoolchildren outside of London, with the figure rising to more than 9.5 million by 1910. That's pretty amazing, isn't it? Don't you think? And it grew from there. By 1914, some 14 million meals were being served across Britain with cities such as Birmingham, Bradford, Cardiff, Leeds, Manchester, Newcastle and London leading the way. But as we've discussed about our experience with Chris having thin-based stone-baked pizza at his school and us having it at home, having liver, standards differed from place to place. place to place okay also that was a big thing wasn't it after the boer war and the first world war they realized how malnourished a lot of the british working classes were so exactly so in the 40s right through to the 50s you could get bottles of orange juice on the from the nhs because they realized that kids weren't getting enough vitamin c and all that kind of stuff and it was um yes there were just these they were programs to try and make the general public healthier that's exactly right and this is what you'll see um things progress to um off the back of sort of you know events that shake the country essentially some schools at this early stage they take the meals very seriously these pupils are sort of seated in a hall and given a meal as though in a refractory so they're given cutlery crockery was used it's not so formal and sessions were supervised by sort of like quite smartly dressed dinner ladies who would keep decorum and quiet as you're eating your meal and enjoying your crockery uh thoughts on that you enjoying that or any formal setting but i don't know how you would maintain how formal that is like because every fear i think really yeah yeah yeah you just get smashed wouldn't it but i suppose the repercussions as we've discussed with your section l would be huge if you did smash the crockery so it's probably it's it's the fear of the cane that is like it's like the opposite to our our dinner hall our dinner hall was sort of like mayhem yeah every dinner hall i've ever been in is mayhem even as an adult was yours like this if you if you had chips for example and you left your chips to go somewhere for a brief moment when you came back they would have been nicked that was what would happen yeah and my friend chris used to um buy custard and chips and pour the custard over the chips so that when he left no one would touch the chips this would happen every day and he'd eat custody chips is this why you're you're custard obsessed it might be to be honest yeah but that was his way of defending uh if you had to go and get knife and fork or pop the loo whatever that was just one way of ensuring people wouldn't nick his chips we they banned water from my school because we were playing with it too much and then we went but then we ended up on the news what yes so there was so you were throwing it yeah throwing water at each other and then the teacher one of the teachers lost his temper and said right well if you can't be trusted with water we won't let you have access to any water and then one of the kids told his mum and dad and then they they they rang wheels today and we were an item on the news at the school at the back track do you know what that feels like l it feels like when as a parent you overstep the threat or the repercussion of something so they'll be mucking around and throwing sandwiches around or whatever you go well in that case there'll be no food for the next 12 years and you realize i can't enforce that half an hour later do you want a snack yeah we were a news item there were these formal settings which as we discussed are very different to the settings we were in um but elsewhere corners were cut in other schools this is as an example of contrast meals were served in canteens but without adequate supervision and often with dirty utensils and in some schools the meal was nothing more than a sandwich or opacity to be eaten on the street or in the playground so where you went to school really affected the experience some were having like almost restaurant settings with bone cuts and other kids were sat on street corners eating sandwiches so there was no consistency but nonetheless the original intention of the legislation had come from a good place the idea was the brainchild of two socialist reformers and campaigners from bradford namely margaret mcmillan and fred jowett and the latter would go on to serve in the first ever labour cabinet in 1924 and he had previously attempted to improve the quality of meals given to children at bradford's workhouse and as members of bradford's education committee the pair successfully campaigned for local free school meals in the city of bradford and then used that example to push for a uk wide scheme so it all started in bradford and the question is why and it's because to mcmillan and jowett free school meals were all about the relationship between education and physical improvement promoting healthy lifestyle instilling decorum and manners but mainly and this is the crucial thing ensuring that children from working class homes and children from working class homes and children from working class homes were well fed and able to withstand whatever could be thrown at them all sorts of diseases resulting from malnourishment would they argued become a thing of the past so there was an element of kind of trying to keep kids healthy keeping their immune systems boosted yeah of course giving them a chance i read a really interesting article recently about the importance of food in your educational chances because obviously if you are from a background where you're not eating enough and you're not eating enough you're not eating enough and you're not eating enough and you don't have access to meals that directly affects your ability to concentrate and therefore your ability to do well in the in the classroom and it's you can see how these it's so important in so many ways and it's cruel if uh when children don't have access to this sort of very basic need well also the quote that i keep thinking of in this conversation is the napoleon one an army marches on its stomach like you can't really you can't get a group of people to stay organized and focused on a goal unless they're well fed like exactly with that that's just as true for war as it is for education and any element of society really the liberals themselves at that point they were sold on this idea in part because of a government report which was released in 1904 which pointed to widespread malnutrition and ill health amongst the working population as you said l similar anxieties had arisen out of the boer war of 1899 to 1902 when potential recruits for the army were found to be unfit and school meals and better physical education would provide some of the answers to the question of how to make britain healthy again and we're still dealing with the same approach to social engineering today um for example i'm sure you've seen this occasionally celebrity chefs nowadays are employed sort of revamp school meals do you remember this get rid of fish and chips and chicken nuggets all this sort of stuff put in place something healthier it's kind of difficult to do when budgets are limited um this blew my mind when jamie oliver was tasked with this in 2005 do you remember this oh vividly yeah yeah i would have thought that was exactly nine months ago do you know what his budget was per pupil for a full meal a full meal less oh wow less 37p oh my god per pupil that's that's crazy that is a tough ask isn't it yeah yeah um do you remember in that documentary 2005 he said something in it that i have thought about almost every day since did you watch it what's that yes i did yes i don't remember 20 years ago yeah he said the cuisine in schools are so bad that that kids aren't can't even their stomachs are freezing up they can't even digest and poo is coming out of their mouth do you remember this are you sure he said that i'm so certain he said it i remember him having an issue with turkey twizzlers i don't remember that i also remember him saying about parents shoving mcdonald's through the railings as well do you remember that yeah but i don't remember the pooing out of the mouth but chris who am i to question you are you absolutely sure vivid email hello at oh what a time.com i vividly remember him saying this and then thinking that cannot be true i can see ellis is currently looking that up yeah he's typing let's find out i'm not i'm not i really hope this is wrong uh yeah it's time to junk the junk food says say the guardian 2005 i'm not getting any pooing out of mouth he did say that and ellis ellis i think you can agree it probably would come up on google you did say that our we were feeding our children scrotum burger shite and making the mail hang on guys i found uh an internet forum and this oh my god no he's right yeah chris skull is right for others he was the physician at the south london hospital explaining calmly to camera that he sees children who are so constipated on their diet of fibrous factory food that their colons have become compacted with excrement and they're not going to be able to eat them so he's going to start vomiting their own feces chris skull oh my god i remember that i want to shake you by the hand do you know what i've never tried to google his quote i've just tried to see if it was possible which is obviously it's not is it i found another a forum where people are talking about it he said he was yeah like we're the nutritionist and the children were so constipated they were vomiting feces this is impossible jesus i hope he wasn't saying that when he was doing one of those cookery bits where he's over the stove telling you how to cut it out of your mouth i don't know i don't know vegetable to make a ragu by the way while we're here just let me just tell you about this um well chris i apologize i retract i attract that corrections corner on the fly um but even at these rock bottom prices that jamie oliver's having to deal with at some points councils have decided they can't afford it for example during the two world wars arguments raged over whether free school meals could be justified the 1921 education act had consolidated the earlier legislation but local authorities were not able to do so and so they were able to do so and so they were able to do so and so they were able to do so but local authorities especially in mining areas soon found they could not afford it and so shortcuts are taken in the coal lockouts of 1921 and 1926 the general strike of may 1926 and the depression of the late 1930s school meals essentially took on the character of a soup kitchen you would get bread and soup at best watery stew would be common fare that's what you what you'd get my kids love soup today i will say that yeah that's one of the things they will eat maybe they'd have been like oh my god i'm going to be okay in the depression of the 1930s but generally you just get watered down soup a little bread and that's all you get however the 1944 education act at last saw school meals used on the size and scale envisaged by Macmillan and Jowett at the very beginning. School milk was then added, although that was then snatched away by Margaret Thatcher, of course, the milk snatcher in 1971, when she was the Education Secretary. There's a great quote, this one observer from Liverpool said of her at the time that she has a way of pronouncing the word milk, which invests it with more gloom than any other in the language. Here's another fun fact. A few years later with Britain, a member of the EEC, I love this, this is incredible, which is a precursor to the European Union, Brussels offered to help reverse Thatcher's cuts by providing us with free milk for a six month experiment. Wow. In a pan-European solidarity. So Europe just offered us loads of free milk. Do you think we take it? No, God, no. Correct. We do not, because the government is worried it makes us look like we were too receptive to Europe's charms. I mean, come on, just take the free milk. Let the kids have the milk. If you're not going to be, you're going to be too tight to give the milk. Just take the free milk and let the children benefit from it. And finally, though, what about more recent years? Well, in the 80s and 90s, outsourcing became the name of the game. So sort of private companies would take over, meal quality rising and falling according to the profit motive, essentially. Think of lunch lady Doris using gym mats. There's a substitute for meat in the Simpsons. The old complaints of meals being stodgy, of it being chips, custard, spaghetti hoops all the time, added to the stigma not only of having school dinners, but also of being on free school meals. There really was a cruel stigma to that. Since 1944, educational authorities have been allowed to recoup the cost of meals by charging for that food, except in the cases of need. And over time, this distinction became entrenched so that being on a free school meal became a marker of, and deprivation. And even now, FSM, free school meals, is used in social policy analysis as an indication of those things. As a final interesting parallel, America has a very similar timeline to us. The National School Lunch Act was introduced in 1946. However, privatization of lunchrooms in the 1980s similarly saw a sharp decline in standards. And in recent years, more active government intervention, initially championed by Michigan, has been introduced. And so, as a final question, would you like to guess what unusual funding stream has been directed into free school breakfasts since 2025 in Arkansas, which is Bill Clinton's home state? Where do you think the money has come from that? What unusual unexpected stream of revenue has helped the free school meal situation in Arkansas? Is it from sales of guns? No, it's not. Good guess, though. Chris? I cannot think. What's Arkansas famous for? I don't know. It's not something that Arkansas is famous for at all. No, not at all. And it's a very modern thing, but it's not what you think the educational authority would be linking itself to. I can't even guess. It's revenue from medical cannabis. Yes. Wow. Get the munchies, get a free breakfast. What more can you ask for? Yeah. It's money has been pumped in in Arkansas and it's really helping the situation in that state. I've loved that episode, guys. What a fun episode that was. Tom? Great, great subject. Tom, it was educational. Oh, lovely. Absolutely. And thank you, by the way. I think it's worth saying. It's important we thank him. Dr. Daryl Lee Worthy, who is a fantastic historian who works for the show and gives so much time and effort and provides so much interesting stuff. We just can't thank him enough. And he's really not bad. And he's a great freelance historian and writer. So if you need a historian to write something for you, he's your man. And you can get in touch with him through us. So please do that. Email the show, DM us, and we will point him in your direction. And if you become a supporter of the show on Patreon or Apple, you will get a Tomorrow's World episode where we look at classic Tomorrow's World episodes and see what they're. predictions were for the future. We're looking at the internet, mobile phones, lots more. Go to patreon.com forward slash oh what a time if you want that. And I'm excited to say that is another one of our video episodes. It is. We're doing every month now as well. It's got clips in it and everything like the telly. So sign up and you'll get that in your ears and eyes now. Otherwise, we'll see you next week. Goodbye. Bye. See you guys. Thanks so much. Bye bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Oh, what a time is now on Patreon. You can get main feed episodes before everyone else. Add free plus access to our full archive of bonus content to bonus episodes every month. Early access to live show tickets and access to the Oh, what a time group chat. 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