Should schools strictly regulate diets?

[Covenant]

The moment some teacher tells you that you have to exercise in PE class, they're saying they have more authority to make decisions about what you do with your body than you do. Is that something you flatly refuse too?

Kiddies don't have the same rights as adults. Accept it. If your parents agree that the school can tell you what to eat, then the school can tell you what to eat. Boo fucking hoo.

...

Why? Because you say so? I'd say that if the parent sends a note asking the school to exempt you from this program, then you should be. But if you think the school should be obligated to respect your wishes just because you say so, you're dead wrong.

That's not what we're talking about though. If my parents did indeed opt into a program whereby my eating would be regulated (hypothetically speaking, I am afterall graduated from college) then yeah, that's understandable. But I said the Hall Monitor, not the parents. Parents are indeed allowed to make rules regarding the diet of their children, for better or for worse.

Schools certainly have the right to confiscate food items in class, or in the halls, or in gym, or anywhere else. I'm not attempting to say I should be able to eat what I want, when I want. But there shouldn't be a mandatory program that enforces a form of confiscation as the way to avoid the kids eating junk, and that's what we're talking about.

Afterall, what is the purpose of this program? To make kids healthier? To make them lose weight? Most of that is tied to a lifestyle that extends far away from the school, so what the school is doing is punitive at best and futile in general. Offering healthy foods only, taking the garbage out of vending machines, and making these options affordable are good. Pairing this with a compulsory physical education program is better, and even better if you offer after-school sports.

If there's a rule that says "No Candy" and defines candy as wrapped-up candybars and that's it, then that's rather ineffectual. Are we going to regulate a kid's salt content? Confiscate non-diet soda? Will we leaf through their sandwiches and confiscate the high-fat meat inside? I know kids who never even ate much lunch--that's not exactly real healthy either, should we compel them to eat? What if we take their food away and happen to find something that their religion allows and isn't going to kill them via food allergies, do we make them eat it?

Diet is such an important thing that we usually leave it up to the parents and the individual to make those decisions. If the parent wants to get the school involved, and the school wants to help keep their kids honest, I'm all for that. I'm also all for getting all the fried food, candybars and non-diet sodas out of vending machines. If you absolutely MUST have a pgoram to monitor my eating, I want it conducted with the highest degree of professionalism as to understanding my specific dietary needs and requirements, or I want to be able to opt out of it as easily as having my parents call the school and say so.

[Uraniun235]

Apparently, one of the teachers at the high school has a student who will bring in and consume an entire two-liter of Dr. Pepper during her ~80-minute class. That's twenty liters of Dr. Pepper a month consumed in her class alone by this kid!

I don't know about the merits of leaving it to the teachers to police what snack foods are and aren't acceptable in their classes - some teachers just won't give a shit. It'd probably be more effective to simply ban anything but water from classrooms in general - hell, at the very least, I'm sure the custodial staff would be highly appreciative.

You were allowed to eat during class in high school? I was in high school from 1992-1996, and we weren't allowed to have any food or drinks with us in class.

I was in from 99-03. What I posted was something one of the teachers told me about that happened last year. I can't remember what the building policy was but some teachers were okay with it as long as you weren't a distraction.

[Darth Servo]

When you take away my bag of homemade cookies, you better give me something as filling that won't:

d) mess with my medical condition, such as me having diabetes and now you've played havoc with my planned-out insulin schedule

Um, what kind of diabetic goes around all that often with COOKIES?

[Covenant]

When you take away my bag of homemade cookies, you better give me something as filling that won't:

d) mess with my medical condition, such as me having diabetes and now you've played havoc with my planned-out insulin schedule

Um, what kind of diabetic goes around all that often with COOKIES?

A diabetic can eat anything they like if they plan their insulin accordingly. Maybe he really likes his cookies and before he goes out to do Cross Country he's planned out his long-acting insulin to operate properly. A diabetic does not need to avoid cookies any more than any other form of carbohydrate, it's a misconception that they'll mess with you. It just requires you to be intelligent about your insulin levels.

Afterall, this is someone's lunch. It's a bit of their own comfort during the middle of a school day. Maybe the kid is 8 and really likes having a cookie? It's not the job of the school to regulate the way a parent wants their kid to eat, and especially in the case of a diabetic a child's parents and his own doctor should have absolute say over any school nurse. This is something that diabetes educators have said time and again, and something you'd hear if you attended one of the meetings our local hospital sets up to educate the School Nurses in how to manage diabetes.

Also, just as an aside, I think that this level of regulation even with an opt-out option, makes someone's eating habits into another battle that teens are going to be fighting back against. Good eating habits should be encouraged, exercise emphasized, and bad food options eliminated altogether, but it's a bad idea just to take food away. The people most likely to be obese are poor people and people in bad neighborhoods. It's expensive to eat and if your area is dangerous it is hard to justify going jogging. By offering dirt-cheap healthy food alternatives that are satisfying to kids as well as available to parents as an alternative to bagged lunches and pizza, you'll encourage a lot of people to make this their choice and teach healthy eating habits that will last outside of school.

[Darth Wong]

That's not what we're talking about though. If my parents did indeed opt into a program whereby my eating would be regulated (hypothetically speaking, I am afterall graduated from college) then yeah, that's understandable. But I said the Hall Monitor, not the parents. Parents are indeed allowed to make rules regarding the diet of their children, for better or for worse.

So why does it have to be an opt-in program instead of an opt-out program?

Schools certainly have the right to confiscate food items in class, or in the halls, or in gym, or anywhere else. I'm not attempting to say I should be able to eat what I want, when I want. But there shouldn't be a mandatory program that enforces a form of confiscation as the way to avoid the kids eating junk, and that's what we're talking about.

Why not? You can't just state your position as an axiom.

Afterall, what is the purpose of this program? To make kids healthier? To make them lose weight? Most of that is tied to a lifestyle that extends far away from the school, so what the school is doing is punitive at best and futile in general. Offering healthy foods only, taking the garbage out of vending machines, and making these options affordable are good. Pairing this with a compulsory physical education program is better, and even better if you offer after-school sports.

So it's pointless to do anything to mitigate the problem unless you can solve it? What the fuck kind of attitude is that? In reality, kids often eat worse at school than their parents think, because their parents are no longer supervising them. I know of several kids who bring their allowance money to school and use it in the vending machines. I know one kid whose dad brings him junk food unbenownst to his mother, while he throws away the healthy lunch his mother prepared for him (don't ask; there are obviously some issues in that family). At the higher grades, the use of personal allowance money on junk food is widespread and virtually endemic.

If there's a rule that says "No Candy" and defines candy as wrapped-up candybars and that's it, then that's rather ineffectual. Are we going to regulate a kid's salt content? Confiscate non-diet soda? Will we leaf through their sandwiches and confiscate the high-fat meat inside? I know kids who never even ate much lunch--that's not exactly real healthy either, should we compel them to eat? What if we take their food away and happen to find something that their religion allows and isn't going to kill them via food allergies, do we make them eat it?

Why do you think it would be so fucking complicated to ban junk food? You make it seem as if a teacher would have to consult a huge book of regulations or something, when any idiot can just look at a typical lunch and see whether it looks like junk.

Diet is such an important thing that we usually leave it up to the parents and the individual to make those decisions. If the parent wants to get the school involved, and the school wants to help keep their kids honest, I'm all for that. I'm also all for getting all the fried food, candybars and non-diet sodas out of vending machines. If you absolutely MUST have a pgoram to monitor my eating, I want it conducted with the highest degree of professionalism as to understanding my specific dietary needs and requirements, or I want to be able to opt out of it as easily as having my parents call the school and say so.

You make it seem as if "no more junk food in the school" is some kind of rocket-science program which will require all sorts of highly qualified professionals. What a load of bullshit; you're just deliberately overcomplicating the concept in order to pretend that it can't be realistically implemented.

[Darth Servo]

A diabetic does not need to avoid cookies any more than any other form of carbohydrate, it's a misconception that they'll mess with you. It just requires you to be intelligent about your insulin levels.

Wrong. Its an EXAGGERATION, not a misconception. I know since I'm a type-1 myself. Even with an insulin pump, a diabetic can NOT maintain proper regulation of glucose as well as a healthy person can. And cookies are just empty calories anyway.

Afterall, this is someone's lunch. It's a bit of their own comfort during the middle of a school day.

Just like the bon-bons are part of the 600 lb person's comfort?

Maybe the kid is 8 and really likes having a cookie?

A kid isn't smart enough to know what is and isn't good for them. I have yet to see a kid that DIDN'T like cookies.

It's not the job of the school to regulate the way a parent wants their kid to eat, and especially in the case of a diabetic a child's parents and his own doctor should have absolute say over any school nurse.

But the kid's parents and doctor are NOT on school grounds. They CAN'T monitor what the kid eats and school. So who does that responsibility fall upon if not the school?

This is something that diabetes educators have said time and again, and something you'd hear if you attended one of the meetings our local hospital sets up to educate the School Nurses in how to manage diabetes.

I've been to MANY of such education meetings, thank you very much.

Also, just as an aside, I think that this level of regulation even with an opt-out option, makes someone's eating habits into another battle that teens are going to be fighting back against.

The fact that teens fight against just about everything thats good for them is irrelevant.

Good eating habits should be encouraged, exercise emphasized, and bad food options eliminated altogether,

And how do you do that WITHOUT taking away the food the kid brought from home?

but it's a bad idea just to take food away.

Because you say so?

The people most likely to be obese are poor people and people in bad neighborhoods. It's expensive to eat and if your area is dangerous it is hard to justify going jogging. By offering dirt-cheap healthy food alternatives that are satisfying to kids as well as available to parents as an alternative to bagged lunches and pizza, you'll encourage a lot of people to make this their choice and teach healthy eating habits that will last outside of school.

And how does this help YOUR side which is for the school to NOT be able to take away the kid's candy?

[Covenant]

This is a lot to sift through so I'll make two posts instead of one huge one.

So why does it have to be an opt-in program instead of an opt-out program?

Doesn't have to be. They both achieve the same end result.

Why not? You can't just state your position as an axiom.

I didn't mean to. I don't believe having a mandatory food seizing program is more helpful than risky, to be more clear, especially not if we've already made the effort to eliminate unhealthy food items from school cafeterias and vending machines.

So it's pointless to do anything to mitigate the problem unless you can solve it? What the fuck kind of attitude is that? In reality, kids often eat worse at school than their parents think, because their parents are no longer supervising them. I know of several kids who bring their allowance money to school and use it in the vending machines. I know one kid whose dad brings him junk food unbenownst to his mother, while he throws away the healthy lunch his mother prepared for him (don't ask; there are obviously some issues in that family). At the higher grades, the use of personal allowance money on junk food is widespread and virtually endemic.

Actually, what I said was that it's better to mitigate the problem than go all-out and turn it into a war on food. Like I said, it's better to offer good physical education requirements, offer safe afterschool activities to encourage exercise, and to remove all the unhealthy food options from vending machines and school lunch lines and replace them with healthy things. That's mitigating the problem right there, and removes the problem of kids using allowance to buy junkfood. Since there's no junkfood in the vending machines, there's nothing to confiscate or for them to buy besides healthier things.

Why do you think it would be so fucking complicated to ban junk food? You make it seem as if a teacher would have to consult a huge book of regulations or something, when any idiot can just look at a typical lunch and see whether it looks like junk.

Ahh, the eyeball test, yes. That's not very reliable, especially since a lot of people have pretty warped perceptions of how to manage weight, what is healthy, and who exactly has trained these idiots how to recognize the junk bits? Afterall, if obesity is such an epidemic, should we trust these same legions to make healthy choices for our kids? Banning candybars is easy, which is why I called it a 'No Candy' ban. But a sandwich can be just as unhealthy, especially when layered up with cheese and mayo and on white bread, so that's hardly a healthy option either. So I'm saying, it's complex, and that the school's job shouldn't be to regulate what kids eat, but what they offer. And they should offer only healthy, healthy things.

Sure, stealing my candybar or my bag of chips might save me the evils of those terrible calories, but is it really necessary to add that extra level of invasive control after we've already cleared the crap out of the lunchline?

I'm not trying to overcomplicate things, I'm just saying it's rather offensive to advocate people taking my food away because they think I'm too stupid to know how to balance my diet properly, and that this teacher happens to know exactly what it is I need to eat. It seems like a reactionary, bullshit response to the problem of kids sitting on their ass too much at home. A kid who eats right and exercises, but has a few snackfood items at lunch at school will stay thin and the sedentary kid who was forced to toss his candybar at lunch will stay heavy. I'm not saying we shouldn't try to do things, even if we can't do it all the way, I'm saying this is going to do absolutely nothing of merit, and simply cause a great deal of protest, complicate the problem, and turn kids off healthy lifestyles.

[Covenant]

Wrong. Its an EXAGGERATION, not a misconception. I know since I'm a type-1 myself. Even with an insulin pump, a diabetic can NOT maintain proper regulation of glucose as well as a healthy person can.

True, I was incorrec to say that.

Just like the bon-bons are part of the 600 lb person's comfort?

The bons bons aren't what is making the 600 pound person fat. And by making him give those up you're going to make the transition to a healthier life that much harder. Really, people shouldn't be told they need to give up their little snacks that make them happy. If they knew it's really not impossible to lose a lot of weight just by making small changes and getting active, without losing that one thing that they love, I think more people would be willing to try. That's what I'm saying--keep the cookies, but make gym class 10 minutes longer, and start it out with a jog.

But the kid's parents and doctor are NOT on school grounds. They CAN'T monitor what the kid eats and school. So who does that responsibility fall upon if not the school?

It falls on the school to act in the interests of the parents, yes. To enforce what the parents wanted the kids to eat. Which is why I'm against confiscating what the parents put in their lunch, and for removing all the bad things from a lunchroom and vending machines.

Here's a better question--if the parent willfully desires to feed their kid crap, does the school have the right to step in and take that kid's lunch away? Right now we're resting upon the idea that the parent doesn't want their kid to eat what's in their lunch, or that they just gave them 5 bucks and told them to buy it there. Now, if we remove all the unhealthy things from every purchasable venue in the school, and deny them off-campus lunch, how can the student buy things the parents wouldn't like? And at that point, what further responsibilty does the school have to second-guess the parent and remove offending articles of food from the lunch they packed?

The fact that teens fight against just about everything thats good for them is irrelevant.

It's not if you're actually approaching this with the intent to change the way people are going to live. Slamming salad greens down a kid's throat and ripping the candybar out of his lunch is going to aggrivate the problem even further. You'll have taken a non-issue and made it into a fight, and the only way for the kid to fight back is by eating badly. How is this helpful? Isn't that what we wanted to avoid?

And how do you do that WITHOUT taking away the food the kid brought from home?

By offering only good stuff in the vending machines, encouraging kids to go out to sports and having a rigorous phys-ed course that all kids take? You're focusing on one goddamn food item a day of around, what, 200 calories or so and forgetting the fact that healthy eating is a lifestyle choice. If you eat like a dumbass and sit around all day, not eating a candybar isn't going to do two shits of difference.

If we can do all of this, and all the parents agree, and the kids don't take to eating fried food like some sort of fetishized secret pleasure, then we might be onto something here. But we really need to work on teaching kids how to live a healthy life once they leave school, and show them why this helps them and how they can continue doing it.

It's like the so-called "Freshman Fifteen." I never gained weight in college, but a lot of kids did. Choosing for them what they can eat is all fine and dandy, but eventually they will be able to make their own choices. Railroading them into good food won't help anything if they don't know why, and choose to do so on their own once they've slipped out of school's grip.

And how does this help YOUR side which is for the school to NOT be able to take away the kid's candy?

I'm saying the Candy is a non-issue. If you want kids to be healthier, give them places to play and be active afterschool and during school, and make the new healthy food in your school very, very affordably priced. Eating healthy is expensive, take the cost out of it for the kids and they'll do better. Give them safe places to do sports and they'll stay healthy. And teach them more about how to stay healthy and how weight is gained and lost and you'll have kids who know better how to manage themselves. All the candy-stealing does is remove some calories from that day's lunch. Without all the other things I mentioned, it won't mean a thing. And with those other things, it's really unimportant to give up that piece of candy.

[Darth Wong]

So why does it have to be an opt-in program instead of an opt-out program?

Doesn't have to be. They both achieve the same end result.

So what's your problem then?

Why not? You can't just state your position as an axiom.

I didn't mean to. I don't believe having a mandatory food seizing program is more helpful than risky, to be more clear, especially not if we've already made the effort to eliminate unhealthy food items from school cafeterias and vending machines.

You're supposed to explain WHY it's a bad idea. Saying "I believe" does not constitute an explanation why. It only changes your argument from axiom to religion.

Actually, what I said was that it's better to mitigate the problem than go all-out and turn it into a war on food.

It's NOT a war on food! It's a war on JUNK food, you fucking moron.

Like I said, it's better to offer good physical education requirements, offer safe afterschool activities to encourage exercise, and to remove all the unhealthy food options from vending machines and school lunch lines and replace them with healthy things.

Thoroughly irrelevant to your declaration that this is a bad idea. Do you understand that "A is bad because B might work better" is bullshit pseudo-logic? That's leaving aside the fact that there's no reason why you can't do those things AND ban junk food from lunches.

That's mitigating the problem right there, and removes the problem of kids using allowance to buy junkfood. Since there's no junkfood in the vending machines, there's nothing to confiscate or for them to buy besides healthier things.

There are no variety stores anywhere near schools? No ice cream trucks that drive by the front lawn? No hot dog vendors that swing by? It's not hard for private enterprise to see an opportunity and take advantage, and I've seen all three. Moreover, there are plenty of parents whose kids pack their own lunch, especially at the higher grades.

Ahh, the eyeball test, yes. That's not very reliable, especially since a lot of people have pretty warped perceptions of how to manage weight, what is healthy, and who exactly has trained these idiots how to recognize the junk bits?

As I expected, you pretend it's actually hard to look at a package of Oreo cookies and say "hey, that's junk food". The scheme doesn't have to achieve 100% accurate identification to do good, moron.

[RedImperator]

Actually, I'll back Covenant here on account of the fact that enforcing a junk food ban would likely be a fiasco. At the very least, it would tie up resources better spent elsewhere. It's certainly within the school's legal power to do so, and to take the necessary measures to make the ban mean anything: inspecting lockers and bags, suspending the inevitable black marketeers who'll take advantage of the situation, laying down detentions and suspensions for possession of junk food, et cetera, but there's a price you pay for those actions. The school's primary mission is education, and I'm all for making the little bastards howl when it comes to cracking down on anything that interferes with that, but junk food doesn't and between the time and effort spent effectively enforcing such a ban and the ill will it would generate with the students, it doesn't strike me as being worth it.

[wilfulton]

Actually, the reason kids are getting fatter in general doesn't have so much to do with they're not eating as healthy as they used to as schools, think "no child left behind." like to have the kids sitting on their asses all day long absorbing mindless drivel from aforementioned idiot teacher, versus being physically active, which actually helps burn those extra calories, and also requires the body to maintain a certain level of muscle tone, which burns even more calories (a pound of muscle requires quite a few calories to maintain, which is why our bodies are so eager to break it down if it isn't being used, an evolutionary quirk that happens to be very counterproductive in the modern era of fast food) .

I don't like to diet myself because diet is just Die with a T on the end. I often end up eating a lot of junk food when I go home on leave, but then I'm usually active, because I'm spending a lot of time walking the dog, climbing mountains, etcs, actually moving, versus sitting around sedentary all day long. I actually lose weight back home.

Additionally, the "healthy" alternatives these schools tout off are no better than the candy bars they want to confiscate. Things like juice, canned fruit, etc. are actually loaded with additional sugar. At most providing "healthy" alternatives would turn into a bureaucratic blunder, and who is going to fund this program? As it is, the schools are already complaining they don't have enough money for things like mathematics and science, which are all so important as to be part of "no child left behind." The irony is really sick, actually.

[Covenant]

So what's your problem then?

I don't have one? I just said they achieve the same result. I prefer an opt-in rather than opt-out school program for the same reason I prefer opt-in rather than opt-out advertising and spam. I prefer opt-in, but it's not like it'd break my heart if it wasn't. I just wouldn't want it to be absolutely mandatory in a public school.

You're supposed to explain WHY it's a bad idea. Saying "I believe" does not constitute an explanation why. It only changes your argument from axiom to religion.

I already stated several reasons, none of which you really responded to, you just listed them in a quote and moved on. If you're going to take kid's food away, you need to give them food back. If you take my chips, my soda and such then you need to supply me free of charge with a selection of equal food items, otherwise you're making a bigger problem than you're solving. And if your solution to taking the food is giving it back AFTER school then you're just delaying accountability without trying to solve the problem.

And if you need to provide me with a variety of free foods after you confiscate my lunch then that means that already overtaxed school budgets in these low income areas that need healthy food options more than the affluent neighborhoods need to free up more funs. From taxes? From cutting more programs? Athletics, arts, music and other extra-curriculars are often already the ones axed first when a school needs to cut back on operating costs. You'll be stealing from peter to pay to paul by asking teachers to gut their extracurriculars or gym in order to pay for the free food to swap for the junk food. And you can't just take junkfood and throw it out and not give anything back, since that's tantamount to thievery and certainly not acting as an appropriate steward of the student OR the parent's interests.

And now if you're offering these free foods you need a wide enough selection for Kosher diets, Vegan diets, diets of other people whose special dietary needs I don't even know of. This is, afterall, a public school and you need to make these kinds of allowances for them. This all costs extra money since now you need to have not only a variety of foods but have a variety onhand in case you need to yoink a food item from a kid. You don't need a goddamn buffet of course, but you'll need something, otherwise you're risking discrimination lawsuits ontop of complicating a rather frivolous issue.

Special dispensation can be given, of course, to all those kids. But to make this fair and make it apply within the context of a public school and to make it actually worthwhile is far, far more effort than simply letting the kid eat his goddamn cookie.

[url = http://diabetes.niddk.nih.gov/dm/pubs/p ... /index.htm]Here's a link to a study that offers some good inferences.[/url]

The DPP study here was conducted to examine the effects of a drug versus intensive physical counseling in reducing weight and other risk factors of diabetes. "The metformin and placebo groups also received information on diet and exercise, but no intensive counseling efforts," and the study--intended to go on for 10 years, ended after 3 because the results were so overwhelming that it was unfair to those who were in the less effective groups to continue the study.

The real variable was, of course, intensive education and counseling. The "striking results" showed that just giving people some information, telling them what to eat, and making them take a pill is far, far, far less effective at controlling their weight and removing risk factors than education and turning it into a personal choice.

So, what I'm saying is, taking away some stupid goddamn candy isn't going to do a thing. You're forcing people to do something, not educating them about it or making it a personal choice. These kids may indeed gain less weight than they would if they ate their candy, but they will still gain weight if their lives are sedentary and their other two meals are unhealthy. What's worse, by denying them the choice and failing to invest the effort in education, you're going to set them on the path to adult obesity. If or if not they eat their candy bar may impact their weight by a few pounds, it's true. I think it's foolish to focus on it though, especially because of the resistance in the educational process it would cause. You'll be doing them a disservice while also requiring a greater allocation of resources, which sounds to me like a horrific ratio of benefit to cost without any real hope of longterm success into adulthood. It's a masturbatory program that addresses weight without addressing the reasons for weight.

There are no variety stores anywhere near schools? No ice cream trucks that drive by the front lawn? No hot dog vendors that swing by? It's not hard for private enterprise to see an opportunity and take advantage, and I've seen all three. Moreover, there are plenty of parents whose kids pack their own lunch, especially at the higher grades.

Ice cream trucks? Hot dog vendors? I've had zero experience with either of these anywhere near my schools, but I may as well concede that this would make things problematic for the people who want to regulate what kids can eat, since I believe you and that would be a problem. I'm not sure how I would interpert it though, since I'm really not looking to regulate their eating, just what the schools offer.

If you want to poke through their lunches and make sure they haven't snuck a hotdog or some candy bars in there, you're still going to have to offer them some food in exchange. Taking a kid's lunch away and not giving him a decent meal in exchange, for free, isn't even good for the learning process since you'll tired and hungry.

As for kids who pack their own lunches... so? They will for the rest of their lives as well. It's sad that some kids will choose to eat nothing but garbage, but some people will always choose to eat nothing but garbage, and will continue to do so once they've escaped highschool and move onto college. Leave their lunches alone, educate them and offer alternatives, and you've got a better chance of making them change their behavior on their own--which has a much greater success rate than forcing them to do it.

This isn't to say that taking their food away wouldn't help any of the weight issues or health issues. In a strict sense, of course, it would--if we can be sure they aren't just going to go home and eat it anyway or over-eat at dinner due to hunger. I'm not sure anyone else has advocated my 'food-swap' idea so I'm still operating on the assumption other people are asking students to either go hungry or pay up if they want to eat.

But I'm saying that the amount of effort it would take to enforce this, the care it would take to present this in a way that doesn't cause a backlash, and the very minimal impact it would make overall adds up to a scenario where you're buying a five million dollar bandaid for a scraped knee. Candy is not making out kids fat! Poor lifestyle choices, lack of exercise, portions that are too large even when of normally healthy items and parents who have made these same mistakes are at fault. You can lose weight and eat your candy. I don't think it justifies the invasion of privacy.

As I expected, you pretend it's actually hard to look at a package of Oreo cookies and say "hey, that's junk food". The scheme doesn't have to achieve 100% accurate identification to do good, moron.

Who says the kid is walking in with a goddamn pack of oreos with the wrapper? Let's say I've got a baggie of chips? Junkfood? Sure! But they're with olestera, so they're not so bad. Can I eat them? How about wheat thins? Are those junk? They're really no better than cookies for you. Is a thing of string cheese contraband? How about granola? That's generally no better than a cookie either, and sometimes even worse than your average cookie.

You're targetting candybars, processed foods, cookies and sodas. Sure, it'd be nice to be rid of these, but it's really just an artifical and arbitrary response to the problem. Are you going to ask students to check their lunches at the door so they can be processed by food technicians? Or do you really not even care that much? By just crossing off obvious things like a goddamn oreo without looking at the big picture, like that the kid is skinny and on the track team, you're making this insultingly simplistic. I don't think you or anyone else believes in going through someone's lunch, tallying up the fat and calorie content of each slice of bread, piece of cheese, and drop of mayo on a sandwich in order to see if the kid is really eating properly. It's just stomping on the most obvious spectre of obesity in kids, candy, without looking more deeply into the problem.

So what I'm saying is moronic about this approach is that it doesn't actually make kids eat healthier, it just takes away the harmless little crap foods they eat that everyone knows are bad for them, and criminalizes a behavior that isn't even a real cause of childhood obesity. For every incredibly fat kid whose diet of beef jerky, powdered donuts and 20oz soda you temporarily alter, there are going to be so many more kids who are just having their diets disrupted for the worse without any tangible benefit. It would actually damage the process of kids eating properly by teaching them the ass backwards idea that to lose weight you need to give up your candy item but not look at what's on your sandwich. These are the sorts of things that people are afraid of hearing when they want to diet, and which turn them off of it, and that's a pretty piss-poor result if your objective was to help kids make a transition into healthy adults as they become more independant and in charge of their own eating habits.

[Darth Wong]

I already stated several reasons, none of which you really responded to, you just listed them in a quote and moved on. If you're going to take kid's food away, you need to give them food back. If you take my chips, my soda and such then you need to supply me free of charge with a selection of equal food items, otherwise you're making a bigger problem than you're solving. And if your solution to taking the food is giving it back AFTER school then you're just delaying accountability without trying to solve the problem.

Those aren't reasons, fucktard. Those are elaborations upon your belief system. None of them actually indicate any harm done to anyone, unless you think that taking away junk food is harm.

And if you need to provide me with a variety of free foods after you confiscate my lunch then that means that already overtaxed school budgets in these low income areas that need healthy food options more than the affluent neighborhoods need to free up more funs. From taxes? From cutting more programs? Athletics, arts, music and other extra-curriculars are often already the ones axed first when a school needs to cut back on operating costs. You'll be stealing from peter to pay to paul by asking teachers to gut their extracurriculars or gym in order to pay for the free food to swap for the junk food. And you can't just take junkfood and throw it out and not give anything back, since that's tantamount to thievery and certainly not acting as an appropriate steward of the student OR the parent's interests.

Or I could simply say "too bad so sad for bringing in food which violates our policies, we don't have to give you shit."

And now if you're offering these free foods you need a wide enough selection for Kosher diets, Vegan diets, diets of other people whose special dietary needs I don't even know of. This is, afterall, a public school and you need to make these kinds of allowances for them. This all costs extra money since now you need to have not only a variety of foods but have a variety onhand in case you need to yoink a food item from a kid. You don't need a goddamn buffet of course, but you'll need something, otherwise you're risking discrimination lawsuits ontop of complicating a rather frivolous issue.

Yet more examples of you trying to make a very simple concept appear complicated by pretending that it will turn into a giant civil-rights issue.

Special dispensation can be given, of course, to all those kids. But to make this fair and make it apply within the context of a public school and to make it actually worthwhile is far, far more effort than simply letting the kid eat his goddamn cookie.

Bullshit. It's only complicated because you choose to make it complicated.

[url = http://diabetes.niddk.nih.gov/dm/pubs/p ... /index.htm]Here's a link to a study that offers some good inferences.[/url]

The DPP study here was conducted to examine the effects of a drug versus intensive physical counseling in reducing weight and other risk factors of diabetes. "The metformin and placebo groups also received information on diet and exercise, but no intensive counseling efforts," and the study--intended to go on for 10 years, ended after 3 because the results were so overwhelming that it was unfair to those who were in the less effective groups to continue the study.

The real variable was, of course, intensive education and counseling. The "striking results" showed that just giving people some information, telling them what to eat, and making them take a pill is far, far, far less effective at controlling their weight and removing risk factors than education and turning it into a personal choice.

So, what I'm saying is, taking away some stupid goddamn candy isn't going to do a thing. You're forcing people to do something, not educating them about it or making it a personal choice. These kids may indeed gain less weight than they would if they ate their candy, but they will still gain weight if their lives are sedentary and their other two meals are unhealthy. What's worse, by denying them the choice and failing to invest the effort in education, you're going to set them on the path to adult obesity. If or if not they eat their candy bar may impact their weight by a few pounds, it's true. I think it's foolish to focus on it though, especially because of the resistance in the educational process it would cause. You'll be doing them a disservice while also requiring a greater allocation of resources, which sounds to me like a horrific ratio of benefit to cost without any real hope of longterm success into adulthood. It's a masturbatory program that addresses weight without addressing the reasons for weight.

Hey fucktard, what part of "doing A does not preclude doing B" do you not understand?

There are no variety stores anywhere near schools? No ice cream trucks that drive by the front lawn? No hot dog vendors that swing by? It's not hard for private enterprise to see an opportunity and take advantage, and I've seen all three. Moreover, there are plenty of parents whose kids pack their own lunch, especially at the higher grades.

Ice cream trucks? Hot dog vendors? I've had zero experience with either of these anywhere near my schools, but I may as well concede that this would make things problematic for the people who want to regulate what kids can eat, since I believe you and that would be a problem. I'm not sure how I would interpert it though, since I'm really not looking to regulate their eating, just what the schools offer.

I'm looking to regulate their eating.

If you want to poke through their lunches and make sure they haven't snuck a hotdog or some candy bars in there, you're still going to have to offer them some food in exchange. Taking a kid's lunch away and not giving him a decent meal in exchange, for free, isn't even good for the learning process since you'll tired and hungry.

I don't have to offer shit in exchange. The nutritional value of junk food is zero in the first place; he isn't losing anything.

As for kids who pack their own lunches... so? They will for the rest of their lives as well. It's sad that some kids will choose to eat nothing but garbage, but some people will always choose to eat nothing but garbage, and will continue to do so once they've escaped highschool and move onto college. Leave their lunches alone, educate them and offer alternatives, and you've got a better chance of making them change their behavior on their own--which has a much greater success rate than forcing them to do it.

So? We can at least rub their noses in the fact that they're eating like shit, instead of mollycoddling them and pretending that they're actually mature adults capable of making their own decisions. Too many teens labour under this delusion as it is.

This isn't to say that taking their food away wouldn't help any of the weight issues or health issues. In a strict sense, of course, it would--if we can be sure they aren't just going to go home and eat it anyway or over-eat at dinner due to hunger. I'm not sure anyone else has advocated my 'food-swap' idea so I'm still operating on the assumption other people are asking students to either go hungry or pay up if they want to eat.

But I'm saying that the amount of effort it would take to enforce this, the care it would take to present this in a way that doesn't cause a backlash, and the very minimal impact it would make overall adds up to a scenario where you're buying a five million dollar bandaid for a scraped knee. Candy is not making out kids fat! Poor lifestyle choices, lack of exercise, portions that are too large even when of normally healthy items and parents who have made these same mistakes are at fault. You can lose weight and eat your candy. I don't think it justifies the invasion of privacy.

You haven't presented a shred of evidence that any of your extra complications are necessary; you simply say they will happen.

As I expected, you pretend it's actually hard to look at a package of Oreo cookies and say "hey, that's junk food". The scheme doesn't have to achieve 100% accurate identification to do good, moron.

Who says the kid is walking in with a goddamn pack of oreos with the wrapper? Let's say I've got a baggie of chips? Junkfood? Sure! But they're with olestera, so they're not so bad.

Yes they are. Eat real food.

Can I eat them? How about wheat thins? Are those junk? They're really no better than cookies for you. Is a thing of string cheese contraband? How about granola? That's generally no better than a cookie either, and sometimes even worse than your average cookie.

I would think that any reasonably intelligent teacher can look at the granola bars with chocolate chips and figure out for himself that this isn't one of those health-food granola bars. Duh.

You're targetting candybars, processed foods, cookies and sodas. Sure, it'd be nice to be rid of these, but it's really just an artifical and arbitrary response to the problem. Are you going to ask students to check their lunches at the door so they can be processed by food technicians? Or do you really not even care that much? By just crossing off obvious things like a goddamn oreo without looking at the big picture, like that the kid is skinny and on the track team, you're making this insultingly simplistic. I don't think you or anyone else believes in going through someone's lunch, tallying up the fat and calorie content of each slice of bread, piece of cheese, and drop of mayo on a sandwich in order to see if the kid is really eating properly. It's just stomping on the most obvious spectre of obesity in kids, candy, without looking more deeply into the problem.

There you go again, pretending that it has to be done with exacting precision and 100% accuracy and 100% coverage or it can't be done at all. As if monitors can't just stroll through the lunchroom and watch for kids eating obvious crap. I grow weary of pointing out that you don't need perfection, and watching you retort about how difficult it would be to achieve perfection. You're completely ignoring the point, asshole.

So what I'm saying is moronic about this approach is that it doesn't actually make kids eat healthier, it just takes away the harmless little crap foods they eat that everyone knows are bad for them, and criminalizes a behavior that isn't even a real cause of childhood obesity. For every incredibly fat kid whose diet of beef jerky, powdered donuts and 20oz soda you temporarily alter, there are going to be so many more kids who are just having their diets disrupted for the worse without any tangible benefit. It would actually damage the process of kids eating properly by teaching them the ass backwards idea that to lose weight you need to give up your candy item but not look at what's on your sandwich. These are the sorts of things that people are afraid of hearing when they want to diet, and which turn them off of it, and that's a pretty piss-poor result if your objective was to help kids make a transition into healthy adults as they become more independant and in charge of their own eating habits.

For the umpteenth fucking time, doing A does not preclude doing B. Enforcing a junk food prohibition does not preclude dietary education. Your idiotic false dilemma fallacy is not a valid criticism of the idea.

[Covenant]

For the umpteenth fucking time, doing A does not preclude doing B. Enforcing a junk food prohibition does not preclude dietary education. Your idiotic false dilemma fallacy is not a valid criticism of the idea.

I'm not saying A precludes B, I'm saying that A works against the efforts of B, so that doing both ends up with a net result less than just doing B by itself. Enforcing this kind of aggressive search-and-seizure would weaken the positive effects of dietary education and offering healthy choices. Doing them both may still be progress, but doing everything except the ban would be more progress in the long run and less troublesome to everyone in the short run.

[Lord Woodlouse]

Wrong. Its an EXAGGERATION, not a misconception. I know since I'm a type-1 myself. Even with an insulin pump, a diabetic can NOT maintain proper regulation of glucose as well as a healthy person can. And cookies are just empty calories anyway.

He'd be better with a chocolate bar, or perhaps a glucose drink, in case of emergency. Though that's probably against school rules to carry them around and eat/drink them on school grounds outside the canteen I'm sure they'd make an exception for him due to medical reasons.

Of course he's saying he needs it for medical reasons and in the next breath as comfort food (and as a type 1 diabetic I can certainly sympathise, I love to eat all kinds of junk), so there's a bit of a contradiction there.

I certainly don't think a school lacks the right to take food off people for diet control reasons, especially with parental approval, but I don't like the idea all the same. I struggle to figure out why it's their concern.

[RedImperator]

I certainly don't think a school lacks the right to take food off people for diet control reasons, especially with parental approval, but I don't like the idea all the same. I struggle to figure out why it's their concern.

That's related to my problem with it as well. It's off mission. It's not like a dress code which is in place to lessen or eliminate distractions and competition over clothing which interfere with the learning process. What a food code is trying to do is important, but not essential to education.

Every rule has a cost. Enforcement takes time--time of the students, time of personnel. It's disruptive: when a teacher has to stop a lesson to confiscate a candy bar, that's the entire class brought to a halt plus however much time it takes to get them back on task if it turns into an argument or a showdown between the teacher and student (something which is always a possibility). It's time lost for students who are suspended for having junk food--and if you want to be serious about enforcement, that's what it's going to come down to. "We'll take it from them if we catch them" isn't good enough.

In this case, the way I'm seeing it, the costs aren't worth the benefit, especially since not only will it not benefit the learning process in any real way, it can't see how it will do very much to combat adolescent obesity. I fully support emptying the vending machines of crap and serving healthy food in the cafeteria (and pricing it so it undercuts the hot dog trucks if you can't get a city ordinance forcing them away from the school or just bar the students from leaving school grounds during the day). There's no reason the schools should be encouraging bad eating habits, but a food code won't do enough to combat obesity to justify what you're paying to enforce it.

[Faqa]

Obviously, the school CAN go head-to-head with the kids on this, but come on. Why? Why go about a route that the kids smell as a direct challenge? Tell a typical teenager "you can't" or "you have to" and it will immediatly become their life's work to do or get out of doing whatever's stated.

The measures taken to enforce such rules would have to be positively bulldozing and invasive. You'd need regular backpack checks, strict monitoring of the lunch hour, for a start. Is it REALLY worth it? Y'all can't keep DRUGS out of your schools, and you think keeping out junk food(which would be far more widespread) is doable?

I do support the healthy-option bit. No reason to encourage the issue. Keep water fountains and water bottles in the machines, plus some variety of fruit juice that isn't unhealthy crap. Though please keep at least one Coke slot as well - the sugar rush IS useful after all-nighters.

Passively discourage unhealthy eating, sure, but stepping up to actively banning it is a losing battle that earns you too much ill-will.

[wilfulton]

In all actuality, I'm thinking a search and siezure operation of junk food in schools would be at best a fool's gamble. Okay, let's say you can keep kids from bringing junk food to school. No problem, but how do you plan to stop them from pigging out on ding dongs and ho hos after school? Search and siezure of junk food would not only result in lots of pissed off kids (waah, get over it, I know...) but it would be thoroughly futile as the kids, although maybe they would eat healthy in school, would resume eating shit afterward.

To say nothing of the cost of instituting such a program (what you want the teachers to get off their worthless asses and patrol the halls for Bobby Blubberman taking a hostess break, which you damn well know he'll do just because you told him he can't).

[RedImperator]

In all actuality, I'm thinking a search and siezure operation of junk food in schools would be at best a fool's gamble. Okay, let's say you can keep kids from bringing junk food to school. No problem, but how do you plan to stop them from pigging out on ding dongs and ho hos after school? Search and siezure of junk food would not only result in lots of pissed off kids (waah, get over it, I know...) but it would be thoroughly futile as the kids, although maybe they would eat healthy in school, would resume eating shit afterward.

This argument doesn't fly. By the same logic, schools shouldn't attempt to stop kids from smoking either, since you can't stop them from lighting up as soon as they get home, and as long as they did it outside in a properly designated smoking area on breaks (like teachers have to), the academic, safety, aesthetic, and non-smokers' helath impact of smoking is negligible. There are reasons why a food code isn't a good idea, but "they'll just pig out at home anyway" isn't one of them.

To say nothing of the cost of instituting such a program (what you want the teachers to get off their worthless asses and patrol the halls for Bobby Blubberman taking a hostess break, which you damn well know he'll do just because you told him he can't).

This is the second fucking time in this thread you've made a broad, insulting, utterly unjustified generalization about teachers. Would you care to justify them, or, failing that, retract them? Or should I just classify you as a worthless ignorant twat and treat you accordingly from now on?

[Darth Wong]

In all actuality, I'm thinking a search and siezure operation of junk food in schools would be at best a fool's gamble. Okay, let's say you can keep kids from bringing junk food to school. No problem, but how do you plan to stop them from pigging out on ding dongs and ho hos after school?

Why do you and Covenant think that it's necessary to enforce some sort of complete ironclad lockdown? I'm just talking about having the lunchroom monitors seize obvious junk food. It's not a big deal, it wouldn't take any extra personnel or cost any extra money to enforce, and yes, it wouldn't be 100% effective or single-handedly solve the obesity problem. So what? it's still not a bad idea; you only make it a bad idea by pretending that it has to be some sort of perfect shield, thus exaggerating the difficulty of it. We're not talking about nuclear missile defense here, for fuck's sake. It's not a gigantic disaster if some warheads get through. And if lunchroom monitors can break up people arguing or being rude, it's hardly a huge imposition upon them to say "hey, no soda".

[Uraniun235]

By the same logic, schools shouldn't attempt to stop kids from smoking either, since you can't stop them from lighting up as soon as they get home, and as long as they did it outside in a properly designated smoking area on breaks (like teachers have to), the academic, safety, aesthetic, and non-smokers' helath impact of smoking is negligible.

You guys get smoking areas? The district I work in has a blanket ban on all smoking on school grounds.

[Molyneux]

By the same logic, schools shouldn't attempt to stop kids from smoking either, since you can't stop them from lighting up as soon as they get home, and as long as they did it outside in a properly designated smoking area on breaks (like teachers have to), the academic, safety, aesthetic, and non-smokers' helath impact of smoking is negligible.

You guys get smoking areas? The district I work in has a blanket ban on all smoking on school grounds.

Would that be because the kids are underage, perhaps, rather than any other reason?

The school likely wouldn't want to be seen condoning behavior that's downright illegal.

[Covenant]

Well, they were talking about strict regulation, not just "Hey no soda." That's not very strict regulation afterall, so if I grossly misrepresented your point of view, I apologize and retract my criticism of a simpler, less invasive method as overly complicated.

I still think it would generate far more ill-will among students than is useful, and be detrimental to the process of actually explaining to kids that you can balance crap food in a diet, and that eating healthy needn't be a form of self-inflicted torture.

Now, I'd like to offer a sort of compromise. How about if kids can have one piece of junkfood? I can have one candybar thingie, but no chips. I can't buy any junkfood at school, but I can bring one unhealthy snack for lunch and I can't take it out in classes or in the hall without it being confiscated. That helps kids realize that it's not about an all-or-nothing approach, but that about healthy balance, and plus it'll give enough room to maneuver that I doubt most kids or parents will have an issue.

It would also transition nicely into the educational materials.

[RedImperator]

By the same logic, schools shouldn't attempt to stop kids from smoking either, since you can't stop them from lighting up as soon as they get home, and as long as they did it outside in a properly designated smoking area on breaks (like teachers have to), the academic, safety, aesthetic, and non-smokers' helath impact of smoking is negligible.

You guys get smoking areas? The district I work in has a blanket ban on all smoking on school grounds.

Pennsylvania's laws are fairly loose. And even if they weren't, in an urban school, "school grounds" extends a couple of yards past the exit.

Why do you and Covenant think that it's necessary to enforce some sort of complete ironclad lockdown? I'm just talking about having the lunchroom monitors seize obvious junk food. It's not a big deal, it wouldn't take any extra personnel or cost any extra money to enforce, and yes, it wouldn't be 100% effective or single-handedly solve the obesity problem. So what? it's still not a bad idea; you only make it a bad idea by pretending that it has to be some sort of perfect shield, thus exaggerating the difficulty of it. We're not talking about nuclear missile defense here, for fuck's sake. It's not a gigantic disaster if some warheads get through. And if lunchroom monitors can break up people arguing or being rude, it's hardly a huge imposition upon them to say "hey, no soda".

Here's the problem with that: if you're not going to be serious about enforcement, then it becomes one more rule the kids know is basically a joke. I think you're underestimating the logistical difficulties even a limited enforcement scheme like that would entail: you have three or four lunch monitors overseeing two or three hundred kids in a given lunch period. Soda is pretty easy to spot (it's easy to stop at the front door, too, if you have bag checks or X-rays in place, which many schools do), but shit like cookies or potato chips, that's easy to hide and hard to spot from a distance. A junk food ban, even a limited one, would realistically be easily evaded and roundly ignored. Kids would get caught, but if the only punishment is confiscation, well, so what? It's a $.69 bag of cookies. Part of the reason kids are getting fat is because junk food is cheap; the occasional confiscation isn't a deterrent.

Now you can say, "well, even if you only catch a small percentage of the junk food, it's still however many empty calories that aren't being consumed". And that's true. But every time a kid does slip something past, it reinforces the lesson, "The administration can't or won't back up its talk". Every unenforced rule erodes discipline, and half-enforced rules are even worse, because it looks like the school is trying, but is impotent.

Now will the school descend into anarchy because little Jimmy snuck a bag of Cheetos past the lunch lady? No, of course not. But it does damage discipline, even if by a fairly small amount (I don't necessarily think the amount will be small, but I'll be conservative here), but the benefit to be gained here is, when all is said and done, miniscule, and the benefit doesn't go towards the school's core mission. In my opinion, it's not worth the tradeoff.

That said, I think a ban on just soda would be workable, for the reasons I listed above. And it would have more benefit than a ban on Ding Dongs or Oreos, because IIRC, soda is a much bigger culprit in adolescent (and adult) obesity than snack foods. Not to mention there are good aesthetic and hygene reasons for keeping it out: when it gets spilled, it dries into a nasty, tacky coating that attracts ants and roaches.

Also, just so you know, I'm strictly speaking about high school students here. I don't know enough about elementary ed or the psychology of elementary student bodies to speak knowledgably about it--you probably know more than I do, seeing as you have kids that age.

[Darth Wong]

Here's the problem with that: if you're not going to be serious about enforcement, then it becomes one more rule the kids know is basically a joke.

With all due respect, in high school I am convinced that most high school students feel that most of the rules are a joke.

I think you're underestimating the logistical difficulties even a limited enforcement scheme like that would entail: you have three or four lunch monitors overseeing two or three hundred kids in a given lunch period. Soda is pretty easy to spot (it's easy to stop at the front door, too, if you have bag checks or X-rays in place, which many schools do), but shit like cookies or potato chips, that's easy to hide and hard to spot from a distance.

Even forcing the students to hide such foods from the lunch monitors would be an improvement, in the sense that the kids aren't openly confronted with other kids' junk food all day long. You don't know what it's like when your kid asks why the other kids have all kinds of food that your kids are not allowed to have. Do you have to tell them that all of their friends are idiots? Is that really a good thing to do? If the other kids have to hide it, at least they're not shoving it in your kid's face, or telling your kid that his mom packs a crappy lunch because she never lets him have <insert junk food name here>.

A junk food ban, even a limited one, would realistically be easily evaded and roundly ignored. Kids would get caught, but if the only punishment is confiscation, well, so what? It's a $.69 bag of cookies. Part of the reason kids are getting fat is because junk food is cheap; the occasional confiscation isn't a deterrent.

Now you can say, "well, even if you only catch a small percentage of the junk food, it's still however many empty calories that aren't being consumed". And that's true. But every time a kid does slip something past, it reinforces the lesson, "The administration can't or won't back up its talk". Every unenforced rule erodes discipline, and half-enforced rules are even worse, because it looks like the school is trying, but is impotent.

Now will the school descend into anarchy because little Jimmy snuck a bag of Cheetos past the lunch lady? No, of course not. But it does damage discipline, even if by a fairly small amount (I don't necessarily think the amount will be small, but I'll be conservative here), but the benefit to be gained here is, when all is said and done, miniscule, and the benefit doesn't go towards the school's core mission. In my opinion, it's not worth the tradeoff.

Personally, I always thought that openly flaunting rules tends to weaken the authority of the school. If kids are sneaking junk food around, that doesn't really have the same effect.

That said, I think a ban on just soda would be workable, for the reasons I listed above. And it would have more benefit than a ban on Ding Dongs or Oreos, because IIRC, soda is a much bigger culprit in adolescent (and adult) obesity than snack foods. Not to mention there are good aesthetic and hygene reasons for keeping it out: when it gets spilled, it dries into a nasty, tacky coating that attracts ants and roaches.

That's the thing; if you think you have to ensure that each kid gets the perfect diet, that's pretty much impossible. But cutting out certain well-known poisons would be pretty easy.

Also, just so you know, I'm strictly speaking about high school students here. I don't know enough about elementary ed or the psychology of elementary student bodies to speak knowledgably about it--you probably know more than I do, seeing as you have kids that age.

Kids that age are accustomed to a lot more teacher oversight. High-school kids are a particularly vexing disciplinary problem because they labour under the delusion that they are full-fledged responsible mature adults, and should be treated accordingly. You don't hear elementary schoolkids whining about their "rights" whenever a teacher tells them to do something they don't want to do, but you can't shut up a high-schooler when he gets going about his "rights". It's like "rights" are a new toy that they pick up around the age of 15, and they're so excited that they can't stop talking about them or expecting everyone else to be impressed by them.