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Posted by bulshoy Promoted 762 days 7 hours ago 1328 views
editorial
Education / General Education
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Seventeen years later, elementary school has become a different place than the one I remember.
I used to dread this week. Back-to-school meant that the short Northern Ontario summer was already over. Nothing but freezing cold, snow and (gulp) learning to look forward to. Now that I have a child (and many friends with children), back-to-school is a relief of sorts. It now means a reprieve from daycare bills, along with a lot more free time. This year, as I prepare for my child’s inevitable first day of school, I have been asking other parents how school has changed since I last set foot in an elementary school. The answers surprised me.
The first thing that shocked me was the sheer number of items that children can no longer eat in their lunches. Back in 1986, nobody had, say, peanut butter allergies. At every lunchroom table, one could find half a dozen kids eating a peanut butter sandwich (myself included). These days, peanut butter (and indeed any nut product) is not allowed in most schools. Some schools have also banned any seafood product, yogurt, and in extreme cases, milk. Were there fewer occurrences of food allergies back in ’86, or just less awareness? Why do these products have to be banned from schools? Shouldn’t the student with the allergies be required to make their own arrangements, rather than ruining lunch for the rest of the students?
Still on the topic of lunch, childhood obesity has recently been getting a lot of attention in the media. Kids are fatter than ever, we are told. Accordingly, some schools have policies in place regarding healthy food. My nephew’s school, for example, does not allow students to bring certain items in their lunch. The ban list includes pop, potato chips, chocolate or candy, and sweet pastries (such as Joe Louis or Flakies). Back in my elementary school days, it was up to the parent to provide a proper lunch for children. I could bring a 2 kg bag of sugar as my lunch, and the school would say nothing. Are parents today deemed so incompetent that they can’t be trusted to provide their kids with a decent lunch? Why do the schools have to “play parent”?
Yet another difference between today and yesterday is the recent introduction of “fitness breaks”. Teachers must now include at least 20 minutes of in-class physical activity within each school day. When I was in school, recess was enough activity for us. There were sports to be played and fights to get in. These activities kept us reasonably fit. What do kids do during recess in 2006? They sit on their asses and play handheld video games or watch videos on their PSPs. There were no PSPs in 1986, so we had to make do with basketball, football, kickball, and other physically demanding games that end in “-ball”. Maybe the 20-minute “fitness breaks” aren’t such a bad idea after all.
Very briefly, here are a few of the other changes that I’ve noticed. Teachers can no longer punish kids by whipping them with leather straps (probably for the better), school buses now carry video cameras to catch troublemakers (in my day, the bus driver would kick your ass if you misbehaved), and bullies can now use the internet to humiliate other students (instead of the old-fashioned lunch money rolling). Those are just the ones that I can think of. I’m sure there are many more.
If anyone reading this is 25 or older, be happy that you went to school in a slightly different time. It was a time when parents still had the final say in your life, bullies had to work to humiliate you, and nobody dropped dead because of another student’s lunch. That’s enough reminiscing for me, though. I feel old enough as it is.
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