Monday, February 25, 2008

Craziness in our schools?

Apologies for the lack posting today, I have been otherwise engaged without a decent Internet connection. However now that I am fully online I have just read the following over at Iain Dale's blog.
Is it me? My 10 year old daughter goes to xxxx Primary School in xxxxx, West Sussex, and has taken a balanced lunch box to school since she was 4 years old - she tends to have a chicken sandwich, yoghurt, baked (low fat) crisps, apple or banana and a chocolate bar (usually a Penguin). I now read on the school newsletter, "I am writing to remind you that we do NOT permit sweets or chocolate bars in your children's lunch boxes."

My daughter is a fit child who is absolutely the correct weight for her height. What the hell gives the school the right to demand what goes in our child's lunch box?

Of course, they ripped the kitchens out of this school years ago.
My instinctive reaction as a parent has to be that a sentence should be made from the following words: Off, idiots, sod, bloody, you.

17 comments:

JuliaM said...

Wow! That must be a school that has no other, more pressing, issues to wory about, right? Perfect OFSTED scores, no bullying, no discipline problems, no staffing issues. That must be why they are sticking their noses into lunchbox contents, nothing else to do with their time.

That must be the case, right...?

Anonymous said...

So what do the teachers have for their lunch(es) then? Meusli and a carrot?

Does Penguin really count as chocolates/sweets? I thought it was actually a biscuit!

Surreptitious Evil said...

Yes but you would probably need to have been privately (or Church) educated nowadays to realise that those words didn't actually form a sentence in their current order.

Anonymous said...

"Of course, they ripped the kitchens out of this school years ago."

Indeed. Let's all speculate on when that happened, who was responsible, and what his/her motives might have been.

Unless that's too embarassing.

Andy said...

What is the problem? Would you prefer the alternative - no choccy biscuits just for the fat kids?
Scummy parents don't look after their kids and so it is the place of the state and wider society to step in and try and help in ways like this.

Pete Chown said...

If you literally told them to sod off, I wonder if they'd take it out on your child. I hope not, but there is so little accountability in state education that I wouldn't be surprised.

This is one of the reasons I favour small government: take these people's money away, and you take their power away.

Anonymous said...

Many schools can no longer afford to maintain kitchens because they rarely break even, so they have chosen to shut them down. A lot of schools never had kitchens in the first place.

Even so, the Government should not be dictating what a child can and cannot eat in this way.

Anonymous said...

As I said on Iains blog, have you considered that perhaps it's about the sugar content? And others pointed out the lunchbox conflicts that can occur, though I don't agree with that.

Anonymous said...

Dizzy, your response is far too verbose. There are two words that are far more effective.

nought.point.zero said...

"Lunchbox conflicts"???

Heaven forbid that a child might get jealous that another child has something that they both want!!! I'm sure that never happened in my day...er...

Andy said...

"So what do the teachers have for their lunch(es) then? Meusli and a carrot?"

That is upto them, they are responsible grown ups. These kids aren't and many of their parents aren't so the school is trying to help out.

JuliaM said...

"Scummy parents don't look after their kids and so it is the place of the state and wider society to step in and try and help in ways like this."

Translation: 'Not everyone is obedient to the idea that we have the right to tell others how to live their lives. Some deluded souls even believe that they are free to make their own choices and accept the consequences. So we'll bloody show you who is boss. FOR THE CHILDREN!!'

Anonymous said...

Maybe we should look at it this way... You have the choice to feed your child shit, the school should have the choice to retain any of that food (as they would with other objectionable possessions) and return it to you at the end of the week so they are free to educate without sugar high kids shouting and losing their attention to the class. There we go, the world of choice and free will is once again restored.

Anonymous said...

I think Andy has a point. The objections are based around "parents know what's best for their kids" but: sometimes, no they don't. Or they don't care.

Banning a penguin in of itself seems stupid, but blanket rules are the easiest to implement. Unless you want to try some system of 2 sweets for thin kids, 1 for if they're slightly fatty, then we can argue if a king-sized mars bar counts as one or two etc etc.

Anonymous said...

"That is upto them, they are responsible grown ups. These kids aren't and many of their parents aren't so the school is trying to help out."

And for exactly how much longer do you think Stalin will let us 'responsible grown ups' eat what we want?

Gawd can none of you /idiot/ lefties see where this all ends up?

Zorro

Anonymous said...

andy. You are an idiot. Fuck Off!

Andy said...

Nice manners there Henry!

I'm all for scrapping the nanny state when it comes to grown ups but am not going to make the naive fallacy of applying sound political ideas to the entireity of life.

If you believe in a meritocratic society and equality of opportunity then you would agree with me that we need kids to be fed properly so that they can partake in learning at school.

I wish that all parents were able to raise their kids properly but they're not. If you are to follow the anti-nanny state logic to its logical conclusion then you would not stop parents abusing their kids...

To my mind, making 6 year old kids morbidly obese is a form of child abuse and so the state should step in by doing things like this.

Its not perfect but its a start.

Is that simple enough for you?