Many children rely on school meals

The argument

Children living in areas that have been forced to close schools have to go without their free school meals, and this argument treats that as the most immediate harm the closures produce. A school is not only a place of teaching; for some children it is where they eat. The consequence is concentrated on the households least able to absorb it. For some low-income families these free meals were the children's main meal of the day, so closing the school does not merely remove a convenience but removes the day's reliable food. Without these meals they will be going hungry, and unlike interrupted lessons the loss cannot be made up later — a missed meal is missed. Nor can the family readily substitute for it, since the same closures coincide with lost work and income for many of the parents who would have to. What makes children the right focus of help, on this account, is that the gap is specific, immediate, and fillable by ordinary people. People can help by donating to food banks that are giving food to families affected by the school closures and the loss of free school meals, and the mechanism already exists rather than needing to be built: organizations like No Kid Hungry are providing communities with the support they need to keep children fed during the pandemic, so a donation reaches a distribution network that is already operating. Children are also the group least able to act on their own behalf. They did not choose the closure, cannot seek alternative provision, and depend entirely on adults arranging it for them. Because school closures have removed the main meal of the day for children who had no other, this argument holds that children are who you should help during the coronavirus pandemic.

Premises

Counter-arguments

The need is real but the argument does not establish the priority the question asks about, because every sibling position can be given the same structure: elderly people shielding without a way to shop, health workers without protective equipment, newly unemployed households without income, homeless people unable to isolate at all. Showing that a group is harmed does not show it should be helped first, and no comparison is offered. The particular gap identified was also the one most directly addressed by public programmes. In the United States, waivers allowed districts to distribute meals through closures and food assistance was expanded to cover missed school meals; in the United Kingdom a voucher scheme and then a holiday extension followed a public campaign. Where a need is being met at scale by government, the marginal value of a private donation is lower than for needs no programme covers, which cuts directly against the priority claim. The ground of the argument is finally the collateral effect of closure rather than the disease — children were among those least at risk from the illness itself — which invites the reply that reopening schools was the intervention matched to the harm identified. And the action recommended, donating to food banks, serves households rather than children specifically, so the mechanism proposed does not track the position it is filed under.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] That children lost their main meal of the day establishes a real harm, but every sibling position can establish a comparable one, so the premise does not show children should be helped first. [Rejecting P2] This gap was addressed at scale by public programmes — meal distribution waivers and expanded food assistance in the US, a voucher scheme in the UK — which lowers the marginal value of private donation relative to needs no programme covers, while food bank donations serve households rather than children specifically.