HEY TEACHER – LEAVE THE KIDS ALONE!
By ATWadmin On September 6th, 2007Wonder what you make of the news that under plans being drawn up in Wales, children could be shut in to force them to eat healthy dinners at school?
Gates at seven secondary schools would be locked to prevent the daily exodus of children who go to chip shops and burger joints for lunch. Education chiefs in Denbighshire, North Wales, are frustrated that pupils have rejected the healthy menus they introduced last year. They hope that, by locking the school gates, youngsters will have no choice but to use the school canteen and eat something nutritious. Health Fascists! What next, children to be held down and force fed their daily allowance of fruit and veg? What these lousy Education tyrants need to understand that children must be allowed to make a choice and that is the responsibility of their parents to deal with what the kids eat. Better to lock up the Education chiefs.
Good morning David,
When I went to school, no one was allowed to leave the premises at lunch time anyway. If you needed to leave you had to have a signed note from your parents which had to be co-signed by a teacher and then you needed to present it to the prefect posted at all entrances. You either brought your own meal along or ate what was provided.
I see nothing wrong with kids being confined to the school grounds during lunch break. When they gather at chip shops or other outlets they can be unruly. Even on the way home from school there were teachers at the bus stop and the nuns floated about in their car to make sure no one brought bad repute upon the school uniform.
I know your problem is with forcing kids to eat healthy, and we seen on television parents putting chips through school railings. These parents need their head examined. The school is there in place of the parents, they have every right to demand standards within their premises.
I’m surprised you have a problem with this.
Typhoo,
You’re right. When I was at Primary School we weren;t allowed out, we all played in the little playground. At Secondary School, I think there was more latitude -the years have made me forget. My main point is in FORCING the kids to eat what is considered healthy. In my experience, the more you force kids, the more they rebel!
Trust that pukka knob Jamie Oliver to be involved in this.
Kids reject his food so its lock them in.
God i remember being at school during Lent, every Friday we were only allowed to drink utterly revolting putrid soup and werent allowed to leave the playground (not just during Lent). It did us good i reckon. I was almost suspended on several occasions for breaking out to get to the petrol station for crisps.
‘In my experience the more you force kids the more they rebel.’
I think we are sometimes in danger of buying into too much popular psychology. I remember my son rebelling like never before because in his year he had been moved from one class to another which suited him more. He didn’t want to go, all his friends were in that class and he didn’t really know anyone in this other one.
His father and I ended up going down to the school to talk to the Brother there. He said things would settle down, that they had spoken to him before they moved him and that they told him this was in his best interests, it was a higher class. In the end he said kids like something to rebel and push against, they like to know their limits, it tells them somebody cares.
He was absolutely right.
>>the more you force kids, the more they rebel!<<
This is extremely strange coming from someone who believes in discipling children, David!
So kids should be allowed do what they want, in the hope that one day they will come around to the right way of thinking – a very 1960′s hippy attitude to education and upbringing that!
Also, the parents instil all the best principles in their child, but once he is exposed to peer pressure – let loose to spend money on junk food – with not an adult in sight the guy with the "coolest" attitude will always win his heart.
IMO, children should not be allowed buy hamburgers or other such trash at any time, the same as they cannot buy cigarettes. This junk food is is bad for their health and its popularity is turning the once slender and healthy youth of Britain into a nation of Teletubbies.
I remember my school days – just. We were not allowed to leave the school premises unless we went home for lunch. We were expected to have school dinners and what a delight they were, Cottage or Shepherds Pie, Fish and Mash, Spam and Mash and occassional Salads with Greenfly. To follow we had Spotted Dick and Custard, Semilina (with a dash of jam) and Sago. Very occasionaly we had chips. We never had a choice of what to eat, we just ate what was put in front of us. We never complained.
What was important was that we had one and a half hours for lunch. Lunch took half an hour, or just over, and the rest of the time was spent playing football (with a tennis ball), cricket and other boisterous games.
my little 5 year old neice was telling me about school dinners the other day…."they have this yellow stuff, its lumpy and smelly, and they pour it over bits of chicken…yuckkkkk"
)
She prefers her sandwiches of piccalilli, cheese and ham apparently! Cant say I blame her.
Childhood obesity rates are increasing rapidly. It has been calculated that if present trends continue, half of all UK children and teenagers will be obese by 2020. Something has to be done to encourage more healthy eating.
But the other side of the obesity equation is lack of physical activity. The majority of children are left to school in cars and don’t even have to walk to the bus stop, and only a small minority play school games. School playing fields have been sold off to property developers. Somehow, we have got to dramatically increase the level of physical activity if the obesity epidemic is to be reversed.
The rights and wrongs of a lockdown aside, there is no doubt that behaviour will improve hugely at these schools.
Child fatness always is cited as to why diets must improve, but poor diets are partly culpable for delinquant behaviour. Take away the crap, the colourings, preservatives, sugars and chemicals, feed children actual food instead of the product of a food lab, and they’ll begin to become human again.
Pete Moore
I agree 100%. Food additives are in the news Today
There is something in the slogan you are what you eat. Trouble is a lot of the parents don’t know how to cook! A lot of families, (hands up I do it too) tend to buy what is convenient, instead of actually buying ingredients and cooking properly. So colourants and additives are everywhere.
Peter -
Thanks for the link. I have no doubt there’s something in it. My instincts have long told me that when you eat rubbish for any period of time, it’s not only your physical health which deteriorates, but your mental and emotional state too. Chuck in some hyper-inducing additives and you have one contributory factor to delinquent behaviour.
Then a couple of years ago I read of the only (until now) study I’d heard of, of a sample of children who were observed pre and post a change of diet, from rubbish to fruit’n'veg. Virtually overnight their behaviour improved. In the long-term, they were hugely better behaved, calmer and could concentrate for much longer periods of time.
I suppose more research is to be done, but to me it’s obvious.
My school didn’t allow any students to leave the premesis until the end of the day (except 6th formers). When I was in the 6th form, they stopped selling chocolate, crisps and soft drinks but we 6th form block still had a couple of vending machines. I made a tidy profit by taking orders at the door and selling the contents of those vending machines to the school students, not to mention the satisfaction of screwing with their health Nazism.