My high school and most (public) high schools allow students to come and leave. But again, even with that option, most students went to the free lunch, even if it was mystery meat (we just skipped the meat). Why? Well, if they brought money, they could always buy another snack at school or outside, or they just didn’t bring any money so the option being free food or starve, they picked starve. And also, hey it was free. At the very least the milk, the juice, the fruit, the salad, the rice, or the beans, something will be passable. Also, the school food would likely take less time than going out, so you could spend your break playing or studying or gossiping instead of in line with everyone else getting their lunch elsewhere plus the walk back.
This reminds me of something, though. The only way students can go off campus to buy food is if they actually bring money to school. Most of my high school I didn’t bring money to school. My parents were not that generous with money.
Thank you, WhyNot. You gave me a well-thought-out answer. In high school–we had a closed campus–we could eat in the cafeteria, order lunch items at windows, buy lunch items from vending machines (including hot, canned stuff!), or bring sack lunches. When I attended there were no fast-food places nearby; there are several now. (I graduated in 1967.)
Re-reading the thread, I noticed this bit I missed before. This is the number one reason my son doesn’t eat school lunch. He was waiting in line so long that he barely had time to eat before lunch was over. He’s a junior now and it’s been like this since middle school. They get 35 minutes for lunch.
Except Extreme B is the premise of the thread.That is what people are responding to. You and even sven are acting so shocked that anyone could possibly imagine that packed lunches would be banned, when it’s right in the title.
Even there (and no I’m not, I’ve been talking all along about banned as banned, until this side issue of “kids would rather get fast food” was brought up by Leaffan, not even sven or me) there’s a middle. There’s banned as in, “Jeremy, you can’t bring your peanut butter and jelly sandwich to school, you know that. Now put it in on my desk, go get some Taco Salad, and you can have your sandwich back at the end of the day,” and there’s banned as in, “search their backpacks and frisk the kids for contraband lunches? Force them at the point of a gun to eat an apple? Suspend kids because they ate a contraband baloney sandwich?”
Which version of banned do you think is *truly *more likely? Which enforcement is more like the enforcement of other things banned during the school day, like cell phones, gum and too-short skirts?
This reminds me of a Bill Cosby routine, in which he told about his shop teacher who took his comic book away–before the class hour had begun. The teacher said, "You’ll get this back at the end of the semester. " Young Cosby asked, “Why, does it take you that long to read it?”
The whole point of the exercise is to ban things. Yes, sure, I guess they’d fall foul of discrimination laws if they didn’t accommodate, say, Jewish or Muslim kids, but it could hardly be called a “ban” if all that is required is for a parent to say “I am sending my kid to school with a packed lunch of my choosing”.
And while accepting your point about the stigma associated with free lunches (although I must admit it was never on my radar as a schoolkid in the UK - I did not know which kids paid for their lunches and which ones didn’t) I should point out that I’ve already said that I have no problem at all with schools offering free and healthy lunches to all kids. My problem is with making acceptance of this “offer” compulsory.
But what I don’t accept is that childhood nutrition is a public health problem. Cholera outbreaks are public health problems, ameliorated by effective water treatment. Polio is a public health problem, ameliorated by offering vaccinations free of charge. Childhood nutrition is an individual health problem, if it is even a problem at all.
Incidentally, there are no Jewish or Muslim children, only children of Jewish or Muslim parents. You wouldn’t talk of a monetarist or a neo-Keynesian or post-structuralist child.
Also, childhood nutrition is indeed a serious problem, for all the reasons even sven and others have mentioned.
On the first point - is that the battle you want to fight here? It kinda seems similar to those who are complaining that there’s no such thing as a free lunch. It’s true, but irrelevant.
On the second point, I suspect you and I have different opinions on the function and appropriate responsibilities/powers of the state. I really do see a difference between the state mandating clean water standards in order to prevent cholera and the state micromanaging my childrens’ diet.
Really? He’s right, after all: you can’t fairly assign a religion to a child who is not old enough to decide for themselves. I just used it as a shorthand.
Okay, well I thought we were discussing an actually viable program that could theoretically be implemented in an actual school (bag lunches are “banned”, but with occasional exceptions), not a highly improbable hypothetical with no real world relevance.
We are discussing a real world program that has indeed been implemented in an actual school. That’s what the whole thread is about, distractions notwithstanding.
The article (which was published in the Daily Mail and which I am therefore taking with approximately a truckload of salt) does say that the headmaster in question has said there will be no exceptions. They are making accommodations for children with allergies and special food requirements. Also, in case anyone missed it, this is for preschool-aged children (4-7) at a school in the UK.
You aren’t helping someone if you force them after they decline your services. Helping someone is voluntary.
Let’s say I were to offer to help you post here by proofreading everything you wrote. You decline my help. I force issue and proofread all your posts anyways. Would you not believe that I thought you were incapable of proofreading for yourself.
It’s just inherent. When your force people to do something “for their own good” you are inherently saying you do not trust them to do it on their own.
And, yes that is exactly why teachers teach all the things they do. We do not trust parents to be able to teach academic subjects to their kids. That’s why teachers and public schools exist.
Anyways, I hate the idea for the same reason I hate Bloomberg’s soda ban. I do not think the government has a legitimate interest in forcing people to be healthy. It has interest in protecting people from dangerous substances, but not in the day to day food choices.
Granted, that’s my perspective as an American. I admit the UK culture, especially with its national healthcare has more of an interest, but I’d still say limiting the menu to a single choice is way too strict, and will do the opposite of encouraging healthy eating habits. Every kid has different tastes, and you can’t accommodate them all. And I object to kids going hungry just because they have different tastes.
If you insist on the goal of forcing kids to eat healthy food, I would suggest not banning home lunches, but regulation. It need not be all that complicated, either. Yes, I know this is a bit of a pain on both sides, but it’s better than kids going without.
The other way would be to provide kids with choices that fit their nutritional goals, allowing them to find healthy food they actually like. Three choices would probably be enough, especially if you could mix and match.
And all of this is predicated on it actually being healthy, with individual requirements for every student. I know from experience that athletes, for example, need more food. When all vending machines were closed and all extra items taken off the menu at my school, coaches started noticing their students having much less energy, as they were being fed with the same calorie requirements as sedentary kids. People are different.
Honestly, I think letting kids bring lunches or additional food from home is a much more cost effective means of handling the variation, but I’m not an expert.
I do know that schools are supposed to act in loco parentis, i.e. a substitute for the parent. But that doesn’t mean you get to overrule the parent. Sure, schools do have that right to some extent, but only because parents have ceded it to them. The parents in this school district clearly do not want to cede nutritional control, or this wouldn’t be a controversy. In loco parentis does not fly.
I want to add in that some kids require different foods and or quantities.
Take high school. You could have some little petite girl or skinny boy who eats little and the lunch “ration” is all they need. Now take a football player trying to keep weight AND who doesnt get home till 6-7 will consume loads of food. Some kids bring in 2 lunches.
Now there are some allergy issues and my kids school has a “peanut free” lunch table only certain kids can sit at.
No, I think the rule of “no lunches” is stupid and will force administrators to do backpack checks and have another rule to enforce.
