As a practical matter, if prisons can't control smuggling contradband; how will schools enforce a no food policy? Kids will be challenged to bring in a Snickers. Okay, the road to hell is paved with good intentions, and this policy is probably one of the paving stones.
-- Edited by Bogney on Thursday 14th of April 2011 06:50:40 PM
I wonder if eventually companies will be expected to provide peanut free environments and be held liabel for an employee bringing in peanuts.
Will kids go off to college and expect to have peanut free cafeterias and peanut free dorms? What will be then "next" deadly naturally occuring substance that people will be forbidden from having.
A buddhist story:
A man was walking along the rocks near the ocean and he got his feet cut up, and he decided to avoid the rocks. The next day he walked on the sand and his feet burned from the heat from the sun. The next day he walked in the ocean, but he got cut on the shells and the salt water stung his cuts and blisters. That night, he sat and meditated on the world being covered with a protective coating which would keep his feet from getting hurt.
He went to his master. His master handed him a pair of sandles. "Why cover the earth when you can cover your own feet?"
At my kids schools when they were young there was the peanut free table. It was the table closest to the door. Lots of kids went to that school and nobody ever ended up in the hospital from peanuts.
Everyone serverd peanut free birthday cakes at parties, favors, candy, lunches, whatnot. One day, all of the moms from our kids group of friends were standing around talking. Turns out none of our kids had peanut issues. Years without peanut butter for no reason. Very funny to us all.
-- Edited by poetgrl on Thursday 14th of April 2011 10:12:46 AM
To take it further...what if that child who is so profoundly allergic to peanuts has an incident at school after ALL of the precautions? Who is liable?
Isn't the school setting themselves up for major liability by taking the responsibility to provide a semi-sterile environment?
If a peanut slips by, will the individual parents of a classmate be held responsible? Or will the school bear the final brunt of this policy?
I do believe the banning of the peanut products at the entire school is idiotic, although perhaps well-intentioned, because where does it stop? What happens if one peanut slips through and the child goes into shock? I am sympathetic to the parents plight, but I am also pragmatic in the realities of the way schools are run. I wouldn't take the chance with my child if they were that profoundly allergic to risk the possible exposure during the school day.
I also take issue with the amount of time each teacher is using to take time away from teaching. There are already an infinite amount of distractions in the day and even 30 minutes a day adds up to some profound deficits by year's end. 30 minutes a day to make sure the kids are all rinsing their mouths after snack and lunch and wiping down desks - multiply that number by 180 (commonly required for days of school per year) and you end up with 5400 minutes lost. You end up losing the equivalent of 90 hours less instruction per year, per student in the school. That's staggering. And, frankly, unacceptable.
There are also other alternatives that have been implemented in other school districts - peanut free zones where kids who pledge not to consume peanuts can sit with their classmates.
I also have a difficult time comprehending how the parents were able to use the Americans with Disabilities Act to support their cause when the ADA doesn't acknowledge peanut allergies as a listed disability.
Given the state of my children's respective rooms most of the time, I suspect that they have really strong immune systems. I am assuming the ban on lunches is designed so that the teacher does not have to be trusted either. If the environment is safe, no one needs to give the shot.
Maybe kids with such bad allergies, although "normal" in other respects, should not be allowed to go to public schools - though kids with worse problems do manage. I am not saying that I am for the ban. I am saying that it might not be as incredibly stupid as it sounds.
Having worked in a public school setting for a number of years, I wouldn't entrust anyone to deal with my child if they were that severely allergic, UNLESS my child knew exactly how to use the epi-pen and had a teacher also trained in what signs to watch for.
Too much is going on in a classroom, on the playground, in the lunchroom. What if Susie spilled peanut butter on her skirt that morning? What if the cafeteria ladies didn't notice that ground peanuts or peanut oil was an ingredient in the crap-of-the-day? Even if Johnny doesn't ingest it, he might get a lingering odor which could be dangerous.
My kid was allergic to basically his whole house when he was little. Mold, dust mites, the grass outside, oxygen. You get the picture.
We ripped up the carpet and cleaned the floors. Check. Washed the stuffed animals weekly and kept them to a minimum. Check. Kept him off of freshly mowed grass or made sure he didn't roll around in the stuff. Check. Swept, mopped, vacuumed with him not in the house so the dust mites weren't stirred up. Check. Put dust mite proof covers on all the pillows and bed. Check. Launder linens in hottest water possible. Check. HEPA air purifiers in his room running 24/7 as well as main living area. Check.
It was brutal. Ironically, he seemed to get worse, instead of better. More allergies, more asthma and when he did get sick, he seemed sicker. It was unexplicable.
Changed pediatricians and the doctor said that he was becoming hypersensitive because his environment was TOO sterile. He told me to introduce him gradually to different allegens. He may never be 100%, but he needed to live in the world around us.
He did get better. Still ran the air purifiers, but his asthma improved. So did his allergies. He started playing soccer. He had a normal childhood.
I guess my point is that with something like a peanut allergy, I wonder if it gets worse the longer the person goes without exposure to the toxin. Maybe it is completely different - but can a person with peanut allergy become even more hypersensitive as time goes on - like my son?
What level of risk would you assume with a child that sick? Would you take them on n airplane? Let them go to a birthday party? It's definitely no fun to be the odd man out.
Of course you can't manage all risk. Just as clearly, you can manage some risks. The question seems to be whether or not this risk is worth managing. Putting the responsibilty on a kid - have your epi-pen at the ready - may not be the best idea for managing the risk depending on the kid's age, mental status, etc.
However, I do understand your point. How far does society have to go to accomodate the problems of a few individuals. Seems to me that it depends on how serious the problem (peanut allergies are very serious), how great the risk (don't know), how onerous the solution (pretty onerous), and are their reasonable alternatives that would reduce the risk without such a blanket interfernce with other families (don't know). Balancing the risks / benefits is not easy and clearly will lead to different conclusions depending on one's perspective.
This is classic democratic political concerns - what rights should the minority have to curtail the conduct of the majority? Those tend to be tough questions. Should minority peanut allergy sufferers risk death because the majority likes peanut butter for lunch?
You cannot manage all risk. Certainly a child that is deathly allergic to peanuts knows not to munch on other kids food and to carry an epi-pen. You can't level all the playgrounds because Lord knows, someone might trip and fall when they are running and break their neck. You can't ban all schoolbusses because a child tripped walking off the bus and broke his neck. Shoot, the schools can't even manage to give every person a bare minimum education (which is actually their function), why do they think they can force children to eat/not eat certain foods?
I tend to share the impulse to outrage here. The only thing I would offer in defense is that peanut allergies are so severe, and teachers can't be everywhere to keep kids from sharing something tainted with peanuts with some allergic kid. Is it worth potentially saving one or two lives with a measure that inconveniences everyone and costs many more than they would wish to pay? I guess if push came to shove, I would grudgingly put up with the inconvenience since I would neither want to be the parent of a kid at risk, or the parent of a kid who inadvertently poisoned a kid at risk with peanut residue.
I would be screaming bloody murder over this one, because my picky kids would have probably chosen to go hungry instead. What next, they'll be sending officials into your homes to check out what's in the refrigerators!
In Chicago, you can't really request a transfer. You don't necessarily even get to go to school with your siblings. There are lotteries and wait lists, and you don't automatically get placed in your neighborhood schools. There are gifted schools and magnet schools and performing arts schools, and you get put on a list, put in a lottery. I guess you might get 'stuck' at the no lunch school. I can't imagine. Did you see the food on that plate in the picture? Ewwwwww.
Having recently eaten in school cafeterias and paid a hefty price to do so, honestly, most of it is just crap. Even a grilled cheese sandwich is largely unidentifiable. The burritos are, well, yucky. Pizza isn't good. Chicken nuggets - I would rather go hungry. Notice a trend? Everything is easy to reheat, because little is made from scratch. They don't have the time or budget to make high quality meals. Instead, it's heavy on salt and preservatives.
Sure they have a salad bar, but it's iceberg lettuce with some shredded carrots. Kids don't reach for apples on the cart, although that might be the best part of the meal, besides the chocolate nonfat milk!
My grandmother actually was a cafeteria lady at the school I work at, way back in the 60's and early 70's. They made everything from scratch. From what my sisters tell me, it was delicious. By the time I started attending, it was still pretty good. I can still taste the peanut butter bars they made every Thursday. We begged our parents to eat in the cafeteria, but were only allowed to eat twice per week or so to save money.
I am glad that schools stopped selling sodas in the lunchroom. I don't have a lot of vices, but that is one of them. I know how terrible they are and still have an addiction to them. The less they drink, the better off they are for bone loss, diabetes and obesity.
My kids always had a packed lunch growing up. Very, very rarely did they buy in the cafe. When they did, they didn't rave about the food.
As the extremely picky mom of an extremely picky son, I would have a fit about this. If I couldn't get a transfer, I would pull him out of the cafeteria every day and let him eat his lunch. I can see banning soda and candy, but beyond that serious butting out needs to happen. It disgusts me tho think that children would go hungry while food was thrown away all because some group of bureaucratic dingbats think they know best. My son eats almost the same thing every day, turkey on a roll with a bottle of water and a small bag of chips. I get to decide that he has those chips, not anyone else.
Ok... can I just say that vegetarian food provided by schools SUCK? At least in my experience. I'd be pissed if I had to always eat school lunches. I packed my lunch and I turned out (mostly) fine!
Parents should *mostly* be allowed to parent their children. On the other hand, I am honestly not against charging parents for child endangerment if their child develops "adult onset" diabetes when they're 8 years old because the parent can't feed them properly. They are setting their children up for a life time of health problems simply because it's easier to go to McDonalds than cook a meal. However, that does not mean the schools get to uniformly decide what each children needs.
Very funny to us all.
I am assuming the ban on lunches is designed so that the teacher does not have to be trusted either. If the environment is safe, no one needs to give the shot.