Monday, January 4, 2010

Litterless Lunch Tyranny

A while back I received a note in one of my children's schoolbags.


Seems that the school as decided to go litter less lunches in order to help the environment. Which is a load of horse pucky, but I will get there...later.

This note is all "rah rah go mother earth" and how this was an initiative of the student environmental club (headed by a teacher, but I'm sure she didn't influence this project. Right?),further explains how classes will be monitoring the garbage brought in and consequently classes will be graded on their adherence to the new "policy" ( Ummmm I thought this was just an initiative? That got upgraded quickly) and the class with the best adherence will win a prize.

Oh goody...So now we have a teacher run agenda, that will put a specific special interest group in a position to "monitor" their fellow students to see if they are complying and appropriately accepting peer pressure programming to modify their own behaviour. Thus at an early age reinforcing the idea that one should sublimate themselves to the dictates of a special interest group and peer pressure.

Lovely. Just freaking lovely.

Accompanied by this proclamation from the school was a shopping opportunity, one must be fashionable while giving one's Borg like compliance. Charming lunch kits with special sections that are easy enough for all children to use and understand. All parents should be relived because the sections are divided and labeled in such a way that your child will not be eating snack before lunch.

How these kits facilitate this except in their imagination I have no clue, except that they have helpful cute pouches in them. Also I could care less what order my child eats their food in. I send a balanced selection of food that I KNOW she will eat. So what if she goes bat **** crazy and commits the sin of eating her blueberries and applesauce before her sandwich. Will the nutrition dissipate into thin air because it was not eaten in the preferred order of the general population? Conversely does a chocolate bar have more nutritional value if eaten after a sandwich? I think not. Send good food and order is no consequence.

Imagine how your child will feel part of the "Team" with co-ordinated lunch kits in the class. I guess it is sort of the uniform of the litter less lunch fascists, I'm not sure. But contriving and driving a need to purchase something in order to belong in a child as a fund raising activity for the school is sick, manipulative and frankly disgusting.

I spoke with the Prince and they are very excited by this new program, kids learn responsibility to the planet, will teach them how to work cooperatively with in the community for a common goal and it will ultimately save the school money as there will be less need to have the dumpster emptied. Ah ha....bungo. bango. BINGO.

I informed the Prince that I will not be complying with their new project, that If I chose to buy an food item, that heaven forbid, came in "packaging" I would not, as they so helpfully suggested, unwrap it and put it in a politically correct reusable container. This to me only teaches my child to do things that LOOK good, but actually are no more then "useless feel good window dressing" on a real issue. And I will buy these sorts of things and I will send them to the school in my child's lunch as long as they are a LEGAL product.

I also made it clear that I take my job as a parent very seriously. One who is more interested in training their child to be a secure individual who will not bend to peer pressure, If one has any expectation of their child standing up to the peer pressure of a passed mickey, drug of the day or a "come on baby you know you want to", you gotta start young.



I'll keep working on that using this example thank you very much.

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