A good use of technology in Houston schools.


A student slides a tray toward the cafeteria cash register with a healthy selection: a pint of milk, green beans, whipped sweet potatoes and chicken nuggets -- baked, not fried. But then he adds a fudge brownie.

When he punches in his code for the prepaid account his parents set up, a warning sounds: "This student has a food restriction."

Back goes the brownie as the cashier reminds him that his parents have declared all desserts off-limits.

But why not just get rid of the brownies all together? Are there kids who need brownies for health reasons? Or does the school make too much money from selling them and this is just their way of appeasing disgruntled parents?

1 comments

Blogger Evan Jones  said...

I think you nailed this one. Food should be part of the education. Allowing students to teach educators what they're willing to eat has things rather backwards. Of course it's easier to give them brownies, if brownies is what they want, but the use of the technology you describe to merely say no on a selective basis is part of the strangely pervasive practice, I think, of controlling the few in order to ignore the many. You would probably find that the majority of students with uninvolved parents strongly support the new policy, since they will continue to get whatever they want. However, the school district should do what's right because it's right in the first place, and not as the result of some ulterior motive.

Wednesday, February 22, 2006  

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