Posted on 11/23/2014 11:39:01 AM PST by RightGeek
In a letter addressed to parents which was leaked to the media today, it was suggested children would have junk food, including lollies, chocolates and potato chips, confiscated if they were brought to school.
“These foods will not be returned to the student until the end of the school day. If your child has chosen to make inappropriate food choices for their lunch they will not be provided with an alternative,” the letter read.
The letter was followed by claims made to 6PR radio that students had already been told their bags could be searched for junk food.
But, acting deputy director general of schools Lindsay Hale said the letter was understood to be a draft, which was sent to only a few people for feedback on the issue.
(Excerpt) Read more at au.news.yahoo.com ...
Sidwell Friends School Menu (where the Obama daughters
attend school):
November 21, 2014
MS/US
All Natural Chicken & Rice Soup
Frissee w/ Bacon & Egg
Dijon Vinaigrette
Avocado & Grapefruit Salad
MG Salmon Cakes
Roasted Red Pepper Risotto
Roasted Asparagus
Warm Cornbread Muffins
Strawberries
*******
December 3, 2014
MS/US
Soup du Jour
Grilled Chicken Salad
BLT Chop Salad
All Natural Burgers
Housemade Vegetarian Burgers
Tree Top Casserole
Sliced Melon
It would appear that many world governments feel that kids will grow up healthy and strong on a diet of celery and carrot sticks.
Notice how it’s ALWAYS a mistake—whenever they get caught—but after that, it becomes policy.
They will torment us unceasingly for they do so with the approval of their own consciences.
Prohibition severely damaged the way people saw the government. This food fight is doing the same sort of damage but it’s the children who are forever altering their view of authority. The government will regret what happens when these children grow up.
Not defending this necessarily, but people should understand that Australia does food in schools quite differently from places like the US.
We do not have school cafeterias. We have never considered it part of the school’s job to feed children. We don’t provide lunches. We don’t have lunch programs. Some schools do have a canteen where kids can purchase food, but they tend to be run by parent volunteers and they’ve become rarer and rarer as more mothers enter the workforce, and so schools have a lot less parental volunteers.
So in Australia, it’s always been normal for children to bring their lunch to school from home.
And, partly, because of that, it has been normal since the start of generally available education, for schools to set guidelines, and even rules at times, on what foods they consider appropriate and inappropriate for school.
Culturally this is the norm here and has been for a long time - and it’s a largely conservatively based norm.
I’m a little confused because you say the school doesn’t see it as their responsibility to feed the kids but it IS their responsibility to police what they bring from home.
I don’t think EITHER one is the school’s responsibility.
That's exactly what I am saying, yes. That is what is accepted here and it's been that way here, right or wrong, since about the 1880s.
It's part of Australian culture - just like having virtually universal school uniforms is.
And because it's been that way so long, it's actually more part of the conservative culture than part of any other. It's the progressives that tend to think schools should stay out of these issues as part of their general tendency to want schools to have as little discipline as possible, so children can be free to do whatever they like without consequences.
Americans are dealing with specific issues with regards food in American schools - I can see that. But those issues largely arise from your culture and your history - because across a lot of the US, it is the cultural norm for schools to provide lunches, specific issues arise because of that cultural norm.
I just think it's important, if people are trying to relate what is happening in some other country (such as Australia) to what is happening in the US - as this thread seems to want to do with it's comment in brackets in the headline, it's important to understand that cultural differences make that more complicated than they may realise at first.
I teach in an Australian secondary school - and over the years I've found myself in quite a few discussions about education with Americans (more over school uniform than anything else) where issues have arisen because of people not understanding the cultural differences that sometimes lead to different decisions.
Thanks for your insights.
The issue isn’t WHETHER the food is good for children, but, rather, WHO is going to make the decision — the parents, or the control freaks.
Thanks for the info! The cultural differences are interesting!
Here, it seems the ONLY discipline liberals are willing to enforce in schools is at the lunch table.
I have no problem with schools offering healthy choices. I just don’t believe dictating what they eat ONE meal a day makes any difference in any kid’s eating habits, whether they bring it from home or purchase it in the cafeteria.
It’s also absurd for TPTB to surmise that the same meal plan works for everyone. The fat kid who does nothing but sit and play video games would get the same lunch as my 6’3”, 160 lb. son burning through 8000+ calories a day during swim season. Because someone sitting at a desk wearing a suit said so. Never mind what his mother knows.
The farm kids around here whose day starts at 5am and ends at midnight would have to follow the same guidelines as the suburban princess whose primary daily exercise is going to consist of doing her hair and chewing gum?
Are the guidelines in Australia as one-size-fits-all as they’ve become here? Can you give some examples of what might be included in the guidelines there?
(I’ll go ahead and contradict my own conservative views and say I have no problem with school uniforms. LOL)
The confiscated chocolates and potato chips are not returned to the students. So they are eaten by the teachers>
It's mostly up to individual schools - the Education Department in some states does set regulations on what can be sold to students in school canteens (in those schools that still have them - all schools used to, but they become rarer and rarer every years) but all it really does with regards to food from home is make it clear that schools do have the right as far as the Department is concerned to set rules that the school regards as appropriate.
Some schools don't set any rules. Others go quite strict and say nothing except what they consider to be healthy foods.
My school (which is actually a private school, but private schools tend to set similar rules on this) says that our students should bring a healthy lunch (which is typically a sandwich of some sort - peanut butter, salad, vegemite, cheese, chicken, or tuna on white or wholemeal bread is most common - but it doesn't have to be a sandwich) and at least two pieces of fruit to eat during the day. They should also bring a bottle of water (plain tap water in a reuseable bottle is fine - because of the weather here, staying hydrated is considered a big deal, so the water is probably the issue stressed most). As long as these guidelines are followed, we have no objection to them also bringing a certain amount of snack food - a packet of potato chips, a slice of cake, a donut, a chocolate bar, etc - or anything else.
The only things we ban are energy drinks. We discourage soft drinks like Coke, etc, but don't ban them as long as the student also has water. Drinks like Gatorade are acceptable for students who have a reason to drink them (some students do do a lot of sport, etc, and on really hot days, such things can be sensible).
Energy drinks are banned because pediatric authorities in this state have said they should be. We follow medical advice. They are also considered by many to have negative effects on a lot of student's learning. (We do make an exception for some kids where a Doctor has asked for an exception to be made - for some kids with certain attention issues, there's some evidence these drinks can actually help them).
We don't police this heavily - if I see a kid who isn't following the rules occasionally, I'm not going to say anything but if I see it happening repeatedly, I would. It is rarely an issue. Most of the time the rules get followed.
Sounds like theft to me. File charges against all who do the confiscating
I’ll bet you the teachers and staff get to eat the goodies after they steal them from little kids.
No, they don't. The policy specifically requires the food to be returned to the kids at the end of the day, and because of that there'd be serious consequences if it wasn't.
If that wasn't in the policy, legally, under the law as it applies in Australia, the food could be destroyed (a teacher can't permanently deprive a student of an object of significant value, but snack foods would not come into that category). If the school has stated such items will be confiscated and destroyed, they can be.
Whether that includes eating them, I'm unsure legally.
In Australia, teachers in state schools are agents of the Crown, and have considerable power over children because the Crown's powers are almost unlimited except where they have been expressly limited by law. Teachers in private schools derive their powers from the doctrine of in loco parentis and except where powers are limited by law, have pretty much the same powers over a student as a reasonable parent does. Under both these principles, the legal right to take food that is considered unhealthy is a minor issue.
Question: Is Australia like the UK in that what they call a private school is what we call a public school?
It sounds like you at least use common sense. That helps! My son was once written up by a teacher for (I’m not making this up) “covertly consuming cookies”. With the bad weather, he’d had to get up at 5am to be at practice at 6 and was feeling “a bit peckish” by 10am so he grabbed a cookie out of his gym bag to eat on the way to class. Busted!
Son was afraid I’d be mad about the write up. I told him the day kids couldn’t buy any drug they wanted in the bathroom before school, I’d try to work up a give a hoot over cookies. ;-)
The guidelines you’ve listed don’t sound too terribly onerous, I could work with them. I still don’t think it’s the school’s job but we have bigger fish to fry at this point, I suppose.
Thanks again for the info! I’m always curious as to how other parts of the world live!
It's a bit the other way around in the UK as well. Let me try and explain it all simply (I have joint Australian and British citizenship and have lived and worked and both taught and had my own children educated in both countries!)
In England, the term 'Public School' refers to a school that is a member of the Headmasters and Headmistresses Conference (HMC - from the days when it was just the Headmasters Conference). These are the most prestigious independent schools (not controlled by the government and what Americans would call private schools). England also has private schools which are the same as what American's call private schools - it's just that unless these are members of the HMC, they are only private schools and are not allowed to call themselves public schools.
What Americans call public schools (funded by the government and controlled by governments) are referred to as 'state schools' or 'government schools' in the UK.
Simple terms - American private school = British Public School OR British Private school or British Independent School.
American public school = British state school or British government school.
Australia then proceeds to make this even more complicated - and in Australia, it differs from state to state to some extent.
The first private schools in Australia were set up as copies of the great British Public Schools, and for that reason called themselves Public Schools in the British tradition. In fact some of them were members of the HMC and so were British Public Schools even though they were in Australia. Some still are, even today (I attended Geelong Grammar School as a boy, which is sometimes considered to be Australia's "best school". It's an independent school under the authority of the Anglican Church, costing somewhere over $50,000 a year to attend - and it's still a member of the British HMC).
But when state school systems (government school systems) were set up in the various Australian colonies (which became the Australian states when Australia became independent) in the late 19th century, some places started using the term 'Public School' to also refer to government schools or state schools in the US fashion. So we wound up with the term public school being used in both the American and British fashion - which got confusing. For this reason, the elite independent schools gradually started referring to themselves as the Greater (or Great) Public Schools (GPS) in some parts of the country and the Associated Public Schools (APS) in other parts. Most of these are independent schools, private schools in US terminology, although to make things even more confusing a couple of the most successful government schools have sometimes been allowed to join them. And there are a lot of other private schools that aren't part of these groups, so aren't supposed to call themselves public schools.
So:
American Private School = British Public School or British Private School or British Independent School = Australian (Greater/Associated) Public School or Australian Private School or Australian Independent school.
AND
American public school = British state school or British government school = Australian state school or Australian government school or Australian public school (in lower case)
It's actually pretty confusing at times, until you get used to it.
It sounds like you at least use common sense. That helps! My son was once written up by a teacher for (I’m not making this up) “covertly consuming cookies”. With the bad weather, he’d had to get up at 5am to be at practice at 6 and was feeling “a bit peckish” by 10am so he grabbed a cookie out of his gym bag to eat on the way to class. Busted!
We try to use common sense - and that's easier in a private school (I teach in a private school which is also an Associated Public School which is a Catholic school, but not part of the Catholic school system because it is an Independent School. Sorry. I'll stop!) that it can be in some government schools. We've got more room for flexibility - but for the most part schools have moved away here from having really inflexible rules and so have governments when it comes to schools. It used to be very bad in the 1980s apparently, but I was still in the Navy then, not teaching.
The guidelines you’ve listed don’t sound too terribly onerous, I could work with them. I still don’t think it’s the school’s job but we have bigger fish to fry at this point, I suppose.
I should also note that at my school, if a boy's mother (it's an all boys' school) said she felt she had good reasons for not following our rules on something like food because she knew her son's dietary requirements better than us, we probably wouldn't argue with her. Legally we do have a certain degree of authority to 'ignore' parents, but it's very rare that that such conflict is a good idea, and we're not going to do it over what is in a lunchbox. But most parents want us to act the way we do - if they didn't like the way they operated they wouldn't be handing over the cost of a new family car every year in school fees, but would have chosen somewhere else to send their kid :)
I actually think that is a big part of why things are a bit different here - people have a lot more choice in most places as to where they send their kid - even if you only want to use the state system, in most places, you'll have a choice of at least three or four different secondary schools, and maybe as many as ten primary schools (most Australians live in the suburbs of the five biggest cities - it'd be a bit different in a rural area). If people had less choice - if your kid had to attend one particular school - I think people would be a bit less tolerant of the idea of schools exercising so much power. Here - if one school is too strict on food, you can probably find a different school that cares less.
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