Tuesday, February 12, 2008

A Real Subject

Nanny Knows Best is a great blog- unfortunately it has the effect of making me become extremely pi annoyed, shall we say. Best taken in small doses if you don't want your head to explode at the sheer unthinking stupidity of the British government. There's an awful lot of material over there if you're looking for something to rant about.

Anyway, one story about schools having staff poke around in children's lunch-boxes to make sure that they were only eating govt. approved foodstuffs stood out.

Now it seems that dinner ladies could soon be used to monitor school lunchboxes, in order to ensure that children are eating healthy meals.

Under Nanny's "obesity strategy" (give me strength!), there are plans to force all schools to implement a "healthy lunchbox policy".

Good grief!

Seemingly parents may even be asked to sign a form agreeing to ban unhealthy foods from their children's lunches.

It seems to me that if schools are so worried about fat kids they might look to themselves first- and actually have PE classes make the little blighters actually do some exercise. Set a basic standard of fitness and then have the tender little blossoms have to pass the test to obtain a passing grade in the subject. It amazes me that so many complain about kids becoming more unhealthy and overweight but the simple solution of having them exercise to pass PE, rather than just having them turn up once a week to play football or hockey, for example, isn't even on the radar.

I'm sure it wouldn't be too difficult to calculate how far or fast the average schoolchild can run, how many push ups or pull ups they should be able to do and turn that into an end-of-year test. No doubt some will complain that this will discriminate against plump children or the like but it's no different than maths classes discriminating against the less intelligent. Smart kids will pass their written exams, fit kids will pass their PE exams.

You know, it might even make some of the less scholarly pupils feel good to get an "A" now and then too.

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