Ok, so you know what? Our backyard fence IS my kids school fence. We live literally 30m from our school, and my kids are NOT allowed to come home for lunch! Once they cross that fence line, if I want them home before they are dismissed at the end of the day, I have to go to the school myself, sign them out at the office, and then collect them personally from their classrooms.
Doesn't make an ounce of difference to the teachers though who regularly send them home to get their hat, or their drink bottle or their homework book, or whatever else they have forgotten to take with them on any given day! I regularly take their lunches over to them too - if I've been up late working and am too lazy to drag myself up early enough to make their lunches, I'll make it later on and take it over to them. It's great in winter when I turn up at the classroom doors with fresh hot, pumpkin soup and warm bread rolls. My kids become the toast of the classroom! Funny about the reasoning behind the canteens in the US - I am actually studying a Bachelor of Human Services in Child Protection right now, and I just wrote a program last Semester to run in Aussie schools providing them with a hot breakfast and nutritional education each day, for that exact reason! I see it in all 3 of my kids classes (only 3 of my kids are old enough for school) - other kids turning up hungry and then with nothing but a cup cake or a mars bar for lunch. The program I wrote is designed to give them a hearty, healthy breakfast, low GI and high on "brain foods" to help them to get through the day and actually be able to learn rather then listen to their tummies grumbling all morning, and having no attention span because of it! Oh, and btw, I am a huge advocate for forced sterilisation of women until they attain a certain level of parental education and a certain age and are able to prove their ability to provide for their kids. Sure, it breaches about every single human right in the book - but what about the rights of the poor neglected and abused kids that did not ask to be born and who are delivered square into the middle of the poverty cycle with few prospects for their lives except to continue the cycle themselves through lack of education and resources. -----Original Message----- From: pdml-boun...@pdml.net [mailto:pdml-boun...@pdml.net] On Behalf Of John Sessoms Sent: Monday, 15 March 2010 5:02 AM To: pdml@pdml.net Subject: Re: question for the brits American to English translation From: Bob Sullivan > We came home for lunch in my day ('50's) Only the kids who rode the > bus had to stay in for lunch. > I can see the grade school from my house, but my kids took lunch in bags. > There are fewer stay at home moms to fix lunch for kids, and it's > easier to control the day if you keep the kids in school. > > I always thought of the school lunch program as a conspiracy between > the USDA and the Wisconsin Dairy farmers to get rid of surplus cheese. > I changed my mind when I learned about school breakfast programs. > It's a sad state of affairs when the kids come to school to hungry to > learn, and when the parents are so negligent. At least this feeds them... Different school systems - different rules - different reasons. Thinking back on my elementary school days, I think there were a few kids there who lived close enough to the school to go home for lunch. Not many did, because even then a lot of mothers got jobs outside the home once the kids were old enough to go to school. I grew up in a lower middle class part of town, and I think I was the only kid in my grade whose mother didn't work in one of the cigarette factories. The school breakfast is a much later addition. Early to mid-70s if I remember, although it WAS driven in part by concern that the USDA was having so much surplus food to warehouse. It was actually originally proposed as a cost cutting measure, because distributing surplus food to the schools cost less than destroying it. I don't know that I blame parental neglect for kids going to shcool hungry as much as I see parental ignorance & poverty. Parents who don't know any better, or don't have the resources, rather than parents who don't care. -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List PDML@pdml.net http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions. __________ Information from ESET NOD32 Antivirus, version of virus signature database 4943 (20100314) __________ The message was checked by ESET NOD32 Antivirus. http://www.eset.com -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List PDML@pdml.net http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
