Posted on 05/07/2013 7:53:06 AM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
Public School 244 in Queens, New York has become the first public school to have an all-vegetarian menu. Sounds wonderful, right? A school is offering only healthy choices to students to instill a life-long habit of eating healthy. I am sure there will be other schools that follow. We know the statistics of obesity among our youth in this country and schools are stepping up to educate our kids and help create healthy patterns; except the only part is that they are not educating. Education is the process of giving tools to a student, imparting knowledge and letting students reason and process what they have learned. Teachers and schools have the professional role of acting as facilitators in the learning process. Creating an all-vegetarian menu does not teach students to make healthy choices it mandates it.
There was a recent lesson in a local school in my area where students were assigned to eat an all-vegan diet for the whole day. Outside of school, parents were required to take part in providing meals that their children could eat according to the assignment. The purpose of the lesson was to teach a world-view menu of food that was meat-free as well as encourage students to read nutrition labels and be conscience of calorie counting. The lessons objective was appropriate, but the problem was the assignment was mandatory and was required to be implemented outside of the classroom. The parents were not asked to eat vegan but were required to provide a vegan diet for their child. Many parents felt this was an overstep by the teacher and felt that their parental role was being overlooked in how they implemented nutrition and eating habits in their own home.
Both of these examples reflect a growing trend in our public education system. As an educator, I am concerned about the fact that schools are implementing programs that do not give choice to our students. I am also concerned as a parent that schools are overstepping their role in teaching lessons that contradict my parental rights. What a child eats–or does not eat–is not the responsibility of a school to control. The role of school and education is to give tools of learning and to encourage healthy choices. What happens outside the walls of the classroom cannot and should not be controlled. Many teachers and schools use the excuse that they have to teach concepts and skills because parents are failing to do so at home. This is a dangerous philosophy and it encourages the collective approach to education.
There is a clear role boundary between being an educator and being a parent. Just because I teach a student who is not getting the correct parental nurturing does not mean I have to, or should, take on both roles. I can only control what goes on in my classroom and I have to respect the role of the parent in how they want to raise or not raise their child. Nutrition is becoming the objective of our schools in overstepping the parental role. This village type approach to promoting healthy lifestyles does not encourage personal responsibility. It mandates what a school system deems healthy for the student and does not let an individual or family make their own nutritional choices.
Take note parents of this food gospel and how it is being taught to your children. It is an objective of the public schools and it is growing–and parents are the only ones who should be able to decide the nutritional needs of their child.
Public schools = child abuse.
Nanny State PING!
Hitler would approve.
Adults can survive on a low-fat diet. Growing kids cannot. Neither can pregnant or nursing women.
The problem is that the Standard American Diet (SAD) is so bad that nearly anything works better, in the short term. For most people, going vegan makes them healthier, for a while. It takes about five years for the lack of B12 and fat soluble vitamins really starts to take effect, and the problems begin to appear.
But if you’re a ten-year-old, just entering into puberty, you don’t have five years. Ditto if you’re a three-year-old, or a new mother.
At the very least, they should be making sure that these kids supplement with B12, A, D, and K, and that their diet includes good sources of saturated fat - coconut oil, palm kernel oil, etc.
This article is not about diet, nutrition or healthy eating. It is about control, the liberal obsession.
Response: A simple return to the idea that schools exist solely to teach reading, writing and arithmetic would be most salutary. Schools are not and never will be institutions to provide for the physical, mental and emotional well being of the poor kid required to attend. Schools are not psychologists, social workers, economists, politicians, family supervisors or social engineers etc. People had better stop the idiots currently in control or we will really enter into a tyranny.
I forgot to add that this nanny state obsession started even when I was in elementary school 70 years ago. We used to be required to stand up and show our hands and behind our ears. In the second grade we had to have shots. I guess one could justify such activities on the ground of public health and the prevention of disease yet it opened the door so to speak.
Well, parents are too stupid or gutless to put up with it, that’s the problem.
A teacher dictating a family’s diet? Incredibile.
Whatever happened to, "bleep you and the horse you rode in on," for example.
Sheesh. Free babysitting is worth any price.
After they use the cucumbers to teach the kids how to use condoms, they can serve them for lunch!
Thanks for the ping!
Public schools are Government schools.
Parents lost control of the schools when the Feds started putting money into them.
vegetarians who force their “religion” onto their kids should be charged with child abuse.
Nambla: Get 'em before 8, or it is too late.
"The weak must be chiselled away. I want young men and women who can suffer pain. A young German must be as swift as a greyhound, as tough as leather, and as hard as Krupp's steel." |
BIBLE: Raise up a child, in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.
Proverbs 22:6
Yeah, I’m 60+ and I remember having to say the pledge of allegiance and prayers
Same here. The first antichristian Supreme Court decision came down circa 1948-somebody vs. Illinois. The school then switched to release time education which lasted until my 6th grade year.
“vegan” from the old indian word meaning “lousy hunter”
I’d be sending my girl to school with double ham and cheese sandwiches to sell. Thse poor kids must be starving with no food to eat.
The word is “conscious”. Are there no editors anymore?
Hee hee!
I went to HS with frozen Milky way bars.
Did a GOOD business, and that was 50 years ago!
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