The June 11, 1909 NYT reports on concerns similar to those voiced today by some social conservatives:

Speaking yesterday before the National Conference of Charities and Correction at Buffalo, Mr. [Joseph] Lee had this to say about the plan urged by some philanthropists to feed school children at public expense:

The community's present determination to do everything possible for the child has resulted in cutting down the functions of the home. The school, for instance, has taken over the provision of the play and manual training; has introduced medical inspection, the school nurses and in some instances school visitors. Now come such questions as school feeding, and behind that, perhaps, the question of furnishing lodging also. Are all these activities accomplishing the same thing, or do we somewhere cross a line beyond which they are doing a different thing, or even undoing the thing which we started out to do? I think that school feeding represents the crossing of such a line.

The question of public schools providing meals for "less advantaged" children is evidently not new and opponents voiced the same concerns 100 years ago as they do today. It is likely true that an undernourished child is less capable of learning, all else equal. To the extent that the public education system is intended to help create productive individuals who provide positive externalities, or fewer negative externalities, and to the extent that proper nutrition helps that process along, there might be justification for public schools feeding children.

However, as the quote points out, there are few areas of a child's life that doesn't indirectly or directly impact the ability to learn. Once the education bureaucracy has taken it upon itself to ensure "quality of learning" then all areas of a child's life become fair game, including medical situations, home life, and, today, stretching to anti-bullying legislation and the like.

In one sense the mission creep seems to be a direct assault on the freedoms of both the child and the parents. To many there is no compensation for these lost freedoms that justify the mission creep of the education system. For others, the mission creep is worth the expenditure so that no child is left behind. Whether the increased expenditures provide net social benefits would seem to be an empirical question but one that might be impossible to accurately assess. However, Coasian firm theory would suggest that there are limits to what the education establishment (as a quasi-firm) can internalize efficiently. It might not be practical, efficient, or even desirable for the schools to be teaching the three R's, while simultaneously discussing homosexuality with kindergartners (as they propose to do in NC), making sure everyone is healthy, fit, prepared to remain morally uncompromised, prepared to be morally compromised, to make sure that no child is bullied, and on and on.

It is not in the nature of the bureaucrat, perhaps, to recognize the limits of efficient internalization. Thus it is incumbent upon parents and tax payers to at least suggest some limits. Alas, appealing to efficient firm theory is not likely to stir the emotions of the masses.

The story goes on to suggest, much as people do today, that once schools start feeding students and providing medical inspections the country is on the slippery slope toward Socialism, not because of the teachers union but because the state starts to offer cost-effective (if not child-effective) substitutes to the family unit. I have bounced this hypothesis off my colleagues during more than one lunch. If parents are rational economic agents, and it is dangerous to assume they are not, then they are likely to substitute into relatively cheaper inputs to their household production function.

Whether this constitutes State Socialism is a matter of opinion, perhaps, but it seems clear that the politicians and bureaucrats have figured out that some (most?) people demand, implicitly or explicitly, cheaper inputs to their household production function and the politicians/bureaucrats are all too happy to provide them. Unfortunately, when it comes to the care of children, the state's provision of care is what economists would characterize as a credence good - that is one where quality cannot be accurately assessed even after consumption. For example, how much better would Johnny have done in college if he had attended private high school? He can't repeat high-school so we will never know. Producers of credence goods get a little more scrutiny by industrial organization economists and policy (e.g., past limitations on lawyers advertising) but surprisingly not so much when it comes to education (and ostensibly health care in the future).

The NYT story continues on with a kernel of economic intuition coated in the spectre of Socialism:

Anything that enables the family provider to shift his burdens upon the State tends directly to State Socialism. Socialism and the integrity of the family are essentially opposed. While the Socialists talk about "trial marriages" and view with delight the record of increased divorce in this country, amounting in the ratio of one decree to ten or twelve marriages, clergymen like Dr. Samuel Dike point to one chief occasion for the increase. It lies in the gradual "disuse of the family" by the transfer of its "legitimate functions to the Church, school, and other substitutes for the home." The home has been regarded as the cradle of religion, intelligence, industry, and patriotism. Can the State, which sprung from the family, supersede it, or even exist without it?

My understanding of Socialist theory is that the claims of the story are generally correct. The family unit was destroyed under most (all?) of the implementations of State Socialism of which I am aware. Children were turned against their parents and other relatives and as a parent of three youngsters I am not sure there would be anything worse than such an event being caused by pure politics (rather than true criminal behavior).

It is an interesting thought experiment whether the State can survive without the Family. This has me thinking about an Econ Talk podcast from a couple of years ago (to which I recently re-listened) of Bruce Bueno de Mesquita on how politicians stay in power, and how his hypotheses mesh with the concerns of those who see the State achieving an agenda through the children.