Posted on 02/17/2005 8:36:23 PM PST by CounterCounterCulture
By Kim Vo
Mercury News
In the underground economy of school lunches, third-grader Siobhan Rickert explained, the demands are straightforward: ``If you give me this cookie, I'll give you this pretzel.''
But no more. This month, Ormondale School in Portola Valley began cracking down on lunch swaps. No more trading mom's turkey sandwich for a peanut butter and jelly -- or exchanging chocolate chip cookies for, well, just about anything you want.
Ormondale joins a smattering of Bay Area schools that have banned swaps, citing food allergies and concerns that, unbeknown to their parents, students following kosher or all-organic diets were sneaking pepperoni at lunch.
(Excerpt) Read more at mercurynews.com ...
Can't swap lunches but I bet the kids are still swapping spit in the hallways.
Society is implying that schools raise children not parents.
Knowing what to avoid when one is allergic doesn't always enable one to avoid the allergen. My son has a severe allergy to peanuts and when he was in junior high schoool, he bought some home-made chocolate chip cookies at a school bake sale which had peanuts included as an ingredient. Since I made c.c.cookies all the time, he thought he was safe by
avoiding the peanut butter cookies. Fortunately, there was a supply of Benadryl in the nurse's office!
No, socialists are raising convicts.
I lived within a block of school and had a pass to go home for lunch on the way back I would stop at the candy store and pickup some treats to sell when I got back to school for kids who couldn`t leave the school grounds.Guess I should have been behind bars.
What about gifts? Instead of swapping, could two children voluntarily give/donate some of their food to each other?
unbeknown to their parents, students following kosher or all-organic diets were sneaking pepperoni at lunch.
Maybe their parents should teach their children to like their diets. (eating kosher for religious reasons, or eating organic for presumed health reasons) Besides, the children might gain valuable life experiences (such as diversity!) from trying new foods.
Parents of food-allergic children should teach them to avoid foods that might contain the allergens, including avoiding foods with unknown ingredients (such as other people's food).
At snack time in 1st grade many years ago, I regularly traded half of my orange for half of another girl's fruit roll-up.
excellent post I agree
let kids BE kids ..If the kid has a allergy ,the parents would know and so would the kid ..Again , govt being BIG DADDY
Hey, do you want to trade or not? There's other kids in this lunchroom too.
Your point is valid, but I think lawyers are behind this...both the money hungry ambulance chasers and those who have to defend the school system against them. If not the lawyers, the insurance company. Decisions like this are always defensive.
Those simple-minded kids only think those are their lunches, given to them by people they think are their parents. Those lunches really belong to the school system, which will tell the kids what to do with them.
Hire a hundred extra staff to check in every kids luch as they come to school and then stand behind them during lunch to make sure they don't trade?
If kids these days are anything like I was when I was in school they will go out of their way to trade lunches just because the "system" says the can't?
My kids can't trade their food, because I say they can't AND it is a school policy. My children attend a Jewish private school. We have a kosher kitchen and we keep kosher. Though most families send kosher food with their children for lunch, not all is prepared in a kosher kitchen. My children cannot swap food because of the differing religious standards, and I would not be a happy girl if the school were to allow trading of food. I give my children what I want them to eat.
I used to buy lunch at school (back when you actually had to BUY lunch), but the kids who carried their lunch were always swapping stuff. Big deal. If I had kids today, there is no way in h*ll they would go to public school. If a kid has allergies, it is the parents' responsibility to teach them about it and let the teacher know as well. Life-threatening allergies are extremely rare, percentage wise. Why should all the children have to lose their freedom to protect the collective bureaucratic @ss of the state?
No kidding! And probably had peanut butter at least once a week...and not a single kid in my school ever dropped dead because of it. I got my butt wore out with a belt, and I never heard of CPS. And time out? As Jeff Foxworthy says "where was this when I was a kid?" I still laugh when I hear parents talking about giving kids a "time-out." I guess there is some parallel to standing in the corner like we sometimes had to do, but that was back when kids were actually taught to respect their parents and by the time they were old enough for standing in the corner, they'd already learned not to scream at, hit or ignore what their parents/teachers told them.
Ever watch "Supernanny?" Her techniques may be all fine and good, but relatively useless without a couple of good spankings to get these brats' attention first.
Trading your bean sprouts for a slice of pepperoni (assuming you could find a sucker who would go for that) - bad.
Getting an abortion without having to notify your parents - good.
Trading your organic soy chips for some Pringles - baaad.
Being taught how to put on a condom at the age of 12 or 13 - gooood.
Do you, or anyone else here, have any idea why that might be? I've been wondering about that ever since all the panic about peanut butter even being allowed into some schools, because some kid had such a terrible allergy that even smelling it would cause them serious trouble.
Seems to me that if you're that allergic (in other words, sickly), maybe you should be doing the "boy in the plastic bubble" thing, and let everyone else live normal lives, instead of imposing your problems on everyone else.
Twinkies rule!
Wow! How concerned the school is about the wishes of the parents.......watch their concern for the wishes of the parents transmogrify into hostility to the parents when the subject is on campus birth control pills or off campus abortions, courtesy of the school.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.