Students for Lunch: a Satire

As the principal of Main Street High School for the past 20 years, I receive 10,000 complaints about the school daily from students. The lockers are too small, the hallways are too crowded, the teachers are too stringent—it goes on and on. However, the number one complaint that I hear every single day at exactly 12 p.m. is the poor taste of school lunches. “This tastes like feet”, “Is that a fingernail?”, “I found a whole hand in mine!”, these are the words I’m subjected to listening to and frankly, I have had enough! I’ve spent long, stormy nights in my basement office, trying to devise a way to prepare cheap, yet palatable school lunches to cease the continual complaints.

At last, I’ve developed a solution; we will prepare one sophomore, junior, or senior with the lowest cumulative GPA every day for the school lunch!

I am aware this sounds like a human rights violation, but bear with me. This could actually be beneficial. Assuming the school lunch is as terrible as it’s made out to be, this alternative could be an improvement! By eliminating the feet, I’ll never hear complaints about the lunch tasting like feet again. This also fosters motivation among students to improve their grades. Statistics show that approximately 93.897% of students push themselves to achieve better grades when motivated. What’s more motivating than the fear of becoming part of the school lunch? As the school will not be purchasing food anymore, we will save money which can be allocated to other resources. We can finally get those new iPads for the library. Furthermore, with one student leaving us every day, class sizes will reduce, creating a more comfortable learning environment. Finally, incoming freshmen will be less anxious about starting high school. Yes, people accuse me of being heartless but I do have some concern for freshmen, albeit minimal. Instead of worrying about being a part of the school lunch, they can focus on making friends and good grades, allowing them to enjoy their first year of high school.

Some may suggest alternatives like reducing our school’s expenditure to afford better, healthier lunches, or cooking fresh food on the day it’s served, instead of a week prior. However, these solutions don’t account for the urgency! I can’t endure these constant complaints any longer. One parent even proposed reducing my salary to enhance the lunch quality! But who in their right mind would agree to such impractical suggestions? Hence, these solutions are inadequate.

I intend to present this proposal at the Board of Education meeting tomorrow morning. Naturally, they’ll appreciate my innovative solution to eradicate lunch complaints. Students, be diligent, because my plan, dubbed as “Students for Lunch”, may soon be executed at a school near you!

Rhetorical Analysis

The structure of this satire is a monologue. The proposal to eat students for lunch—because they’ll taste better than the current lunch—comes from the persona of a bitter, old principal who is fed up with the complaints she has been hearing for over 20 years. The rationale for this proposal includes that students will be motivated to get better grades, the school will save money, there will be less stress for freshmen, and it would foster a better learning environment.

The techniques of satire used include reductio ad absurdum and exaggeration. The principal realizes that the students detest the lunch and pushes her solution to the problem to a ridiculous extreme by suggesting that the students should just be eaten for lunch. Exaggeration is seen when the principal describes how many complaints she hears in a day and the students’ comments on the school lunch.

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