Slashdot Mirror
School-Lunch Monitoring System for Parents
karvind writes "According to Yahoo, three school districts in the Atlanta area last week became the first in the country to offer the parental-monitoring option of an electronic lunch payment system called Mealpay.com. The system was initially designed as a convenient way to make sure children bought lunch without worrying that lunch money would get lost, spent on other things or stolen. But on parent's request online meal-monitoring option was added and now parents can see all of a student's lunch purchases."
They need it more ethan little kids do.
ah so now the 'Revenge of the Nerds' will be complete!
Wonder how long till those damned jocks start getting their lunch money stolen..
muahahaha
wtf.."You failed to confirm you're a human.."
I understood sometimes dupes were posted here a few days later but this is verbatim of something posted today. Come on guys...
12 year olds are entitled to many rights.
One of them shouldn't be hiding your lunchtime purchases with money given to you by your parents.
Where is the violation of rights here? The parents want to know their money is being spent in a wise manner.
Canibalism. They wont ring that up on their silly machines.
"Plans are for fools! Oglethorpe, the plutonian (Aqua Teen Hunger Force)
Now they need to install a monitoring system to kids underpants to track their toilet visits and we're done. Who cares that kids grow up pissed-off and psychotic? We better treat them like some kettle. And if they ever get over the edge - blame TV & computers.
This is a great idea. We all know how well things usually turn out when personal information about underage students is put online by their school district.
Not to mention, I wouldn't be surprised if more than 50% of the students' parents don't pay for their lunches and they are on a reduced/free lunch program funded by tax-payers.
You have to teach students to eat well before you can expect them to eat well. I'm tired of seeing parents who only make a home cooked meal once a week, live off of hamburger helper and delivery pizza, send the kid to grade school and middle school where the provided lunches are fried everything (hamburgers, hamburger pizza, spaghetti with melted cheese, cheese sandwiches, hotdogs, weiner wraps, macaroni and cheese, fish sticks, chicken nuggets and so on) - and some how expect them to make the same wise meal choices that YOU don't make for YOURSELF or FOR THEM or that their SCHOOLS have made for them thus far.
The fact is that children will have a better appetite for better things if they're used to them. A kid who grows up on steak, potatos and veggies will prefer that whereas a kid that grew up on over-salted, over-sugared, mostly-synthetic boxed/pre-packaged/ready-mix/vending machine/deep fried/fast food/delivery/microwavable/tv dinner foods will prefer those types of foods.
But hey, if parents don't want to take responsibility for it - that's all good.
I am glad to see more stories targeting the average age of slashdot users.
School-sanctioned bullying of fatties. Greedy little turds.
I remember an interview with him in Playboy a while back.
Can't remember the exact quote, and I'm too lazy to look it up, but esesntially it said "Being my son's father, I forbid him from listening to Eddie Murphy and Richard Pryor tapes, but I really hope he's sneaking them behind my back.".
This school lunch thing is all kinds of lame. Any parent who subscribes to this should be ashamed.
...Also, I didn't know Buggalo could fly.
Schools ought to provide lunches for all children. The current situation where some kids get subsidized lunches while others bring their own lunches is one more method of separating children into castes within the school and that, in turn, leads to animosity. Whether it is the rich kids mocking the poor kids or the kids with Libertarian parents mocking the kids with parents on the dole, subsidizing only a fraction of the children leads to unnecessary divisions.
Public schooling is free. The lunches ought to be provided free as well. The cost to feed a handful of students is only marginally cheaper than feeding all the students and a school district can fully feed all the children in any school by prioritizing expenses.
In regards to the article in question, in my day we had things called monthly menu calendars which parents who were interested in what kids were eating could pick up at the school office. There wasn't any choice in a meal. If a kid was eating the cafeteria lunch, it was plain to see what was being eaten. I fail to see how a computerized system makes this any better. Nor do I see how giving kids a choice in free lunches makes the cafeteria cheaper and easier to run.
Next week we'll be reading a story about how some criminal hacked the system and found out what everyone had for lunch!
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I'd checkout the site but it's giving errors claiming to be Internet Explorer only.
It seems that this isn't exactly Big Brother watching you every minute, but it does bring up some questions. First, how far down the monitoring does this go? Does it bring in further monitoring of kids? The concept is not bad in this context, but how far does it go out of context?
School is a public place. Parents (whose money is being spent) probably do have the right to know how that money is spent, and if it brings to light that a child is being bullied out of lunch-money sooner, that can't be anything other than a good thing.
But I worry about the seeds being sown, and the harvest we will reap. When a child is constantly being placed under surveillance in different circumstances, and knowingly so, it will tend towards the 'norm' of that child's cultural world. It will become accepted rather than questioned - what are the benefits? What are the costs? Is it worth it ? I fear for a future when the question is not 'why are we under surveillance?', but 'why are you not watching out for XXX?'.
"They" (and by 'they', I mean 'we') are sucking the lifeblood out of personal freedom, one pinprick and one drop of blood at a time. More and more freedom is being just handed over, and the responsibility that went with that freedom dies a little too. Without the responsibility for actions taken, there is no choice in life - welcome to the herd mentality, and kiss goodbye to that magnificence of spirit - individuality.
Quite a leap from telling parents about their childrens lunching habits, but as Francis Xavier said "Give me the children until they are seven and anyone may have them afterwards". Young minds are receptive minds, and missionaries tend to understand indoctrination better than most.
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
theirs not too much wrong with this, but their's the whole 'what next' aspect that is really frightening. As soon as soemthing becomes the norm harsher things are more likely to be accepted.
A few years ago, one of the local IT start-up reached an agreement with the school board that is similar to this.
:) As you can probably guess almost every student signed up for 10 cards (morality? What's that?)- The pilot testing was withdrawn after six months.
What they offered was a debit-card look-a-like that uses prepaid credit to buy cafe food.
However they made a fatal mistake...
To maximize their chance of success in the pilot school (which was the one I attended, they had a plan where each new card would automatically get 10 dollar credits-
They never saw it coming
pity
I do wonder about forcing kids to do things this way. Are they being set up to rebel against healthy food when they are able?
You know, at some point parents need to give their kids a little bit of space. Sending their kids off to school is a good first step and I think common sense would suggest that parents should spend a little more time encouraging children to communicate with them. If a bully is stealing their money or the lunch program sucks, the best surveillance system is the kid's eyes. Or maybe we should fund education a little better so schools and classes can be a more reasonable size where teacher observations together with well-balanced kids can work out normal human solutions. This seems like a better solution than teaching the kids to depend on surveillance cameras. On the other hand maybe the institutions putting in these systems have a vested interest in teaching the next generation to be accepting of cameras everywhere.
Now the untrusting catholics can monitor their children's meals to see if they're participating in lint.
Are parents that emotionally detached from their kids? I mean, couldn't you just ask your kids what they ate for lunch?
Yeah, kids make mistakes, but they're still human. If your body wants protein, you're gonna crave a steak. If your body needs calcium, you'll crave some orange juice or vegetables. I don't think we really have to worry too much about kids buying six dollars worth of snickers bars every day.
In fact, the only situation where I could see this being used is for anorexic teenagers, to make sure that they're actually purchasing food. Which sounds great, in theory, but considering the fact that anorexia is usually linked to domineering parents, a history of sexual abuse, and an inescapable urge to be in control of something, then monitoring an anorexic's every food purchase is not a good way to help them regain control of their life.
This is just ridiculous. They're your kids. They're not supposed to be convenient, they're supposed to be huge pains in the ass who are hard as hell to raise right. You can't just slap a tracking device on them and monitor and measure everything they do so you can fit them into a spreadsheet report.
If you can't ask your kids what they had for lunch and get an honest answer, you have a much bigger problem than the lack of an online monitoring service.
That's overkill. Complaining that your child is drinking too much juice? Pop beverages, I understand, but juice? Why not tell her to become more active and burn off those extra 150 calories.
Besides, buying bottled water doesn't make any sense to me. Just bring it from home.
Yaahh...That was the only way I could get video game money...by scrimping on lunch.
Okay, seriously... in grade school lunches were paid up front to the teacher a week in advance. Then I went to the lunch line and was given whatever the days' lunch was. My only "choice" was white or chocolate milk. This was done using pen and paper.
In middle school I paid for lunch daily with cash and my choices were "expanded" to include an additional "malt" (in quotes because it wasn't a malt.. it was a reformulated dairy product they called a malt.). This was done with cash, or parents could still prepay and it was done with..pen and paper...
In high school, I could leave the campus and go to any fast food place I wanted. What kind of control is that? Right after I graduated, the campus (all of them in the area) were "locked down" and students were not allowed to leave... for their own safety.
So now the schools are offering cookies and other non-healthy items (making more money that way) and then got the school system to pony up for a new computer system to track what the students are purchasing under the guise of "helping the parents make more informed decisions" (making more money that way), all the while getting students accustomed to the idea that monitoring of their purchasing activities is a GOOD THING(TM)?!?
It's no wonder our students are so dumb... they're being educated to be sheep.
Perhaps this article, then, is not intended that way, and is placed under YRO for some other reason.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
Next they will inplant a camcorder in student's stomach and parent's will know if their children actually ate what they had bought.
Uhm, so? WTF does this have to do with our rights online?
No big deal, just bring the junk food with you to school so you don't have to buy it. I imagine that is already what happens at most schools, with state regulated healthy meal plans and no vending machines.
I got really thirsty one day and caved in. My fellow boycotters pooh-poohed me. I had sold out to the man.
Libertarian: label used by embarrassed Republicans, longing to be open about their greed, drug use and porn collections.
Oh yes, Big Brother has been around a while. Great job /. for picking up such fresh news. :rolleyes:
... it is a replacement for educating children about good habits and nutrition. I'm not saying it's currently perfect in its execution, but if appropriately used this could be a very handy tool for the parents that want this control.
Maybe my view on this is slightly skewed because down here a lot of kids still take a packed lunch.
I'm looking at it this way; I have a fifteen year old sister who's going through that 'difficult kid' phase and isn't really eating all that well. She's basically wafer thin and refuses to eat a lot of stuff when she's around her mother and whenever I visit them I don't recall seeing her eat much at all. It's the kind of thing that leads to disorders.
If there was a system I could pre-pay meals for her and keep a track of them for my largely computer illiterate mother, I would. It would just be another tool to help us make sure we do our level best to help my sister turn out OK.
There are a lot of good reasons to keep track of a kids eating habits these days, despite the h4x0r paranoid among the slashdot crowd not being able to see them.
... might actually be your big brother?
-- I prefer the term "karma escort."
This system won't help with kids with eating disorders like you describe. A child can easily buy the food, which would be tracked, and then simply throw it away, or eat it and then purge it immediately afterward.
"Why don't we simply pre-emptively incarcerate all kids in padded cells?"
Seriously, what the fuck is it with these "all or nothing" attitudes?
They're children. They need to be treated as such, but always to a point.
You can't wrap them up in a blanket of ignorance, but at the same time you can't give them free reign to run their own lives when they're barely into the double digit age bracket.
I would love to have checked it out but:
"Your browser is not supported for use with this site. This site requires Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.5 or above on Windows platforms or Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.1 or above on Macintosh platforms. You can download the latest Microsoft Internet Explorer by clicking the link below."
Imagine my suprise to learn that this school lunch site was offering me the latest Microsoft Internet Explorer for Linux. But then I follow the link provided only to learn there is no such critter. It would seem that this WWW isn't so world wide, you have to use a proprietary browser that is only provided for an extremely limited number of OS.
Forget the whole big brother issue, this concept should be banned on the browser issue alone.
. Quit playing Monopoly with Bill. Switch to one of many non-Microsoft products today.
But at least it would show it was purchased in the first place. This could be used to put together a better behavioural picture of what might be going on.
Again, not a solution to a problem, just another tool in figuring out if there is one.
Let me put it this way, I won't go home tonight, look at the tools in my shed and expect my car to fix itself. I'll take each tool and apply each one in such a manner that will allow me to see the bigger picture and repair it.
See what I'm saying?
The parents may know what the money is being spent on, but they cannot know who. It's no different than giving your kid a credit card which she uses to buy clothes or jewelry, which she sells and buys drugs.
When I was in Jr. High I had a friend (yes, I really did) and he was on the school lunch program so every day he could get in whichever line he wanted and only had to show his card. But he never ate lunch. Instead he would go through the line where you get a hamburger and fries for a buck.., and then sell it for fifty cents.
Love that dirty laundry...
.. just make sure that your kids get a good solid breakfast at home. Then it woun't matter much, what they eat at lunch. Especially if they are fed another sustaning meal _at home_ later in the day as well.. Alternatively, have them bring fruit and water for lunch.
It's not an epedemic, it's not a signess, it's not genetic, it's not something you can catch... it's what you eat!
>the h4x0r paranoid among the slashdot crowd not being able to see them.
A man unable to make a choice ceases to be a man. (A Clockwork Orange)
So.. Do you advocate random drug testing?
Because pissing into a cup really promotes self-esteem.
How about DNA/pregnancy testing?
We need to intervine if Jack/Jane is depressed or pregnant as soon as possible.
I know.. you want what we have today, no real education, at best a prison, at worst a day-care center.
We're putting the infastructure in place to give Jonny his Prozac with (or in) his burrito. Move along.
I happen to live in the Atlanta area. I happen to go to school. I happen to go to a school that is using Mealpay. Here's how it works in practice. Every student is assigned a six (new kids get 7 digits now) digit number. This number is used to log into the school's computer network and to buy food at lunch. At every checkout line is a small keypad where we punch in that number. Once we do that, the lady working the register punches in what we buy on a touch screen. We can either pay for it cash or have it automatically deducted.
Most of that you could have gathered from the article, I know. Anyway, I think its a decent system compared to our old one. Before we had to either bring cash every day or go down to the cafeteria first thing in the morning to drop off a check and hope you get to homeroom on time. Now all I have to do is go online and a few clicks later I have food tommorow. My mom doesn't really care what I pick up at lunch and even if she did she is way to computer illiterate to figure out how to look up what I've been eating. Also the line moves much faster now that the whole thing is mostly automated instead of waiting for the lunch lady to find my name among a million others in the computer.
What do Saddam Hussain and Little Miss Muffet have in common? They have Kurds in their Whey.
Works until the bullies find out that they can beat you up to get your code/card and get all the lunch they want. Thus saving their own lunch money for other things.
Or it works until the kids find out they can trade with their friends who have cash, get less for their "money" and go buy their video games with your so called lunch money.
You have now screwed your own kid and made another kid richer in the process. Good job parents!
We can sit here and complain about the lunch lady now becoming 'Big Brother' but that really misses the real issue...
You're all already letting your kids submit to a far greater 'Big Brother' system by enrolling them in a public school. The system gives the kids little choice in what they can learn, little voice in how they receive their education, make them follow strict routines, teach them to be unquestionably obedient to authority figures, punish them for not coming (or trying to leave early), and even the 18 year olds in high school still have to get permission to use the restroom (How offensive is that? I bet no one here even find the notion that an almost grown up adult has to get permission to take a shit). If that doesn't sound like Big Brother, then I don't know what is. We number our students (ID numbers, student rank, IQ, SAT scores, etc.), we label them (Satisfactory, Needs Improvement, etc), and control every minute aspect of their lives for 12 school years for most of the day for 9-10 months a year.
So while I sympathize with those who do not like this system, I find most of the 'Big Brother' labels superficial at best. You all tolerate what is attached with public schooling now but suddenly take offense to this?
If you're truly worried about Big Brother, you wouldn't be sending your kids to a public school just to become another cookie-cutter member of society.
From TFA: It's a concern because federal health data shows that up to 30 percent of U.S. children are either overweight or obese.
There's a simple solution to this that is quite cost-effective as well: Kick the kids out. When they arrive home from school, make them go outside. That's what my parents did. An hour on the computer had to be matched by an equivalent hour outside. The length of the outside hour was, of course, not enforced, and often ballooned to a few hours of hide and seek (do people play that any more?), rollerblading, and bike riding. We were then met back at the house with juice, fruit, popsicles, cheese, crackers, etc.
Then again, I suppose the parents most interested in the food-tracking system are the ones who enforce bizarre standards such as curfews and grounding, take their children to the gym instead of enrolling them in gymnastics, and medicate like there's no tomorrow for any minor behavioral inconvenience.
-- I prefer the term "karma escort."
And the parent post has it right, what the hell is wrong with 12 more oz of juice? Not soda or kool-aid, JUICE. 150 calories? This mom sounds like she's pushing her daughter into "only thin girls get the boys."
It's times like this I regret being a libertarian, because Mrs. Mary Carol Eddleman should have never been allowed to breed.
-paul
Pistol caliber is like religion: everyone has their favourite, and theirs is the only right choice.
but I don't have a problem with this.
Once kids get much past 10 or 12, it becomes increasingly difficult to change their eating habits.
And with the evidence mounting that junk food contributes to a wide range of diseases I don't see how parents keeping on watchful eye on their children could be a bad thing.
A message from our sponsor
"So.. Do you advocate random drug testing? Because pissing into a cup really promotes self-esteem."
You're asking the wrong guy. I work in the mining industry where random drug testing (and blanket drug testing across sites) is commonplace and a required safety practice. I'm used to it. I don't think kids should be drug tested however, I don't care what little Billy does in his spare time as long as he isn't disruptive in the school as far as that goes.
"How about DNA/pregnancy testing? We need to intervine if Jack/Jane is depressed or pregnant as soon as possible."
That's a big leap you're taking, but fine, I'll bite.
I was almost a father at fifteen years of age, so please listen carefully if you'd like to know what goes through the head of a kid in that situation.
Testing for pregnancy or DNA screening is totally insane. It also wouldn't help after the fact, unless you could somehow weed out the kids that were more likely to start fucking at an early age.
Honestly, I am really finding it hard to argue your points down here, because I don't see the relevance of them. You seem to suggest that parents don't have the rights to monitor their children, when this couldn't be further from the truth. They have every right to monitor what their children do. I've said it already today, this is just a tool. How it is used is up to the parents.
Shitty parenting will always be shitty parenting, no matter if they're able to monitor their kids purchasing habits or not.
Pizza with White *OR* Chocolate Milk
Crap (iffy hamburger, cheese with bread, leaves, etc)
Most people seem to go for the pizza. It's provided by dominos, and is really pretty tasty. It isn't the best thing for students health-wise, and I think the Crap isn't much better. The school recently banned soda machines, but they sell water, flavored water, and snacks. The point is that parents can watch what we buy, but it's not going to make us any healthier.
And that stuff with the 4 oz and getting an extra 12? Is anyone REALLY satisfied with 4 oz of juice? I know I wouldn't be, but I drink from the water fountains anyway. It's amazing! Free drinks! But people still buy water from the machine that is 20 feet away from three different fountains.
If I could rearrange the keyboard, I'd put U and I together.
Reading this article a certain little point comes to mind here. This system does not monitor what children eat, the only thing it is doing is showing what the children purchase and nothing else.
Once you purchase something you could always swap certain items with another kid or even drop it in the bin if its not to your taste.
Your parents are going to be happy that you've been eating your veggies + mineral water, while your friend who is on diet is going to be more then happy giving you that piece of steak + soda.
The problem is not about being able to use the money on junk food here, its the education they have been receiving from a young age which tells them that "Fast Food == Good", "Fast Food == Easy" and "Fast Food == Tasty".
Havin' it large, livin' the life, Welcome to the land of the rising sun.
There was a system being tested in Australian schools (Queensland from memory) that provided a similar service, although it depended on a kid using a card at the tuckshop (Aust. for cafeteria). The parents are able to select the foods that their children are allowed to purchase - ie. healthy salad roll + o.j. rather than a nourishing meal consisting of chocolate and doughnuts
Checking the registration shows it is registered through Domains By Proxy, so no owner information is available.
On their web site, only viewable on IE as previously stated, there is no contact information, and to contact customer support, only a form and 800 number are listed.
Pete Carr Owner Chatmag.com
finally a business plan on /. that might actually sell!
Think about it! There is a woried parent born every minute! A woried parent with disposable income!
You could even make a RPG style HUD for parent desktop computers, so multiple children can be monitored at the same time! For an extra fee you could even throw in partner monitoring.
For a brief period, I worked for the company behind this software (www.horizon-boss.com). At the time of my departure, the coding standards for this organization were abysmal. Everything was written in VB and the CTO was the .NET equivalent of Cooter from the Dukes of Hazard. It amazes me that such poor software gets engrained into the fabric of our tax dollars and children's lives. My advise parents, if there is an option to pay online, resist the urge.
the mod must have no education and little life experience. i guess that qualifies him to mod based on opinion, because there is nothing else left.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
Uhhh, I'd go a bit further than saying that monitoring their children is a parent's right, I'd say it's their god damn responsibility.
How we know is more important than what we know.
My problem here, besides finding the whole idea quite aberrated and obnoxious, is that these kids will grow up being monitored with gps, cells, what they eat, how they spend, what they do on the net, etc. etc., and - god forbid - they will grow so used to being monitored that when grown up they will accept more easily all the stuff their government is even now trying to impose.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
Is that you Hanzosan?
Other than the good points already made, I'd like to add one: _everyone_ needs some privacy. _Noone_ is a 100% extrovert that actually likes having someone watching them (or over their shoulder) 24 hours a day. Even the most affectionate cat, if you own one, wants to just be alone and left alone now and then.
It seems that the way it's heading for children these days is basically monitored all day long: what you eat (via this), where you go (via GPS), exactly when, what and how many hours you've played on the computer, etc. Geeze, talk about pure stress.
Plus, this kind of 24h a day surveillance is one of those things that say "I don't trust you one bit, and nothing you could ever say or do will make me believe a word you say." It's not a fun message to grow up with.
Plus, in this case it's not even just privacy, taking away even what little freedom that kid had to start with. When I was a kid I'd want to occasionally save a little and buy something else. Dunno, a book, a cheap toy, something. But now nosiree, bob, the money will go directly to the cafeteria, and the kid gets to just receive whatever meal the parent selected (because if you take anything else, momy and daddy will know).
As someone else put it, "why don't you just lock them up in a little cell, then?"
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
At Redwood High School in Marin, California we have a system that allows for students to have accounts for lunch in which parents can deposit money into and can also control what the child may or may not eat in addition to setting a spending limit and tracking what the student eats.
I wouldn't call myself h4x0r paranoid (although I guess that's for others to decide), but in terms of helping your sister turn out ok - what about instilling a Big Brother mentality? What about teaching responsibility and a sense of ethics, even in situations where an authority figure is absent and there's no fear of direct punishment?
I'm not saying that this system couldn't help prevent parents keep track of eating habits to try to prevent/fix an eating disorder. As others have pointed out the tracking is fairly easy to circumvent, but I personally don't think this is a bad idea for countering that one particular problem. I just worry about how it's attempt at a fix for one problem could cause more, and not just for someone with an eating disorder but all of the other students who haven't done anything of note but are nevertheless forced to grow increasingly comfortable and familiar with the details of their lives being tracked and published. Call me h4x0r paranoid, but that just doesn't sit right with me.
If you get nervous, just remember that there are a few billion other people who don't really give a damn.
Not to mention, I wouldn't be surprised if more than 50% of the students' parents don't pay for their lunches and they are on a reduced/free lunch program funded by tax-payers.
This is easy. If MY tax money is feeding the kids they get NO CHOICE. I want to pick what they eat. Nothing but carrots and soy milk. Why should a taxpayer give his money for a kid to eat greasy fries that will make him 50 pounds overweight, so when the kid becomes a 40 year old, taxpayers will once again have to pay for his high blood pressure medicine??
What irritates me is people bitching about thier tax money. Walk a mile in thier shoes.
I was one of the kids that got free lunch, why was that because some ass in a cadilac with NO insurance rear ended my dad and destroyed his back.So while a high priced lawyer and a low priced lawyer fought it out my family was on welfare or disability i didnt know at the time all i know was i was poor. Feed me carrots and soy thats fine all i know is i got free lunch(and everyone else knew also) those days made me who i am today, i would be very different if it never happened.
See you either take a lot of shit or you fight back, well i dont like taking shit. the path i took when i was young wasent exactly straight and narrow nor do i have much tolerence now.
Its no excuse and i never used it as one it was my choice the path i chose.
when you are younger its the whole world against you if i had known that time would have made everything much sweeter i would have chose different.
Until you are there please dont complain some people need the free lunch for good reason.
I am posting this anon so this fact of childhood poorness will stay hidden from my wife.
While typically I'm against things like this, I think ultimatly some good could come from it.
School lunch programs are a joke in this country. The food is barely etible, and are hardly healthy. When the parents start checking their children's lunch purchases and say to their kids "Hey, why are you only buying garbage?", and the kids say "This is the best they have to offer.", the parents might wake up a little and start demanding a little quality and nutrition in the lunch programs.
Of course, it would be better if the schools just spent the money on quality meat and vegibitels now instead of this monitoring program, but hey, I'm not a school administrator.
The Internet is generally stupid
- Spaghetti, mixed in with sauce in a large vat, cut into small pieces that are easy to ice-cream-scoop onto a tray.
- French bread pizza, also known as a mozzarella-parmesan-cheddar blend and runny sauce, baked onto a piece of bread and topped with soggy pepperoni
- Mexican Day: Cheese Quesadilla. Different from the non-redundant "Quesadilla" in that you are expected to be fully nourished by one small tortilla, folded in half and filled with a non-generous helping of grated cheddar.
- Hot dog. Not kosher, not turkey, not the kind that plumps when you cook it, but the random-pig-guts kind. With one mustard packet, two if you're nice to the lunch lady. They ran out of ketchup. The relish is contaminated with mayonnaise.
People in the real world do not desire such foods, reputable restaurants do not serve them. School lunches lead to confusion as there is little correlation between them and good food in the real world (this may explain the popularity of establishments such as The Olive Garden and Pat & Oscar's...). Perhaps if the food in school lunches was healthy, not untasty, eater-friendly, and had corresponding "real food" equivalents, people would have better eating habits.-- I prefer the term "karma escort."
Reading articles like this one, make me realize the huge differences between USA and Europe. This could not have happened in a European country, not even under the most conservative administration I can imagine.
:(
What kind of personality these kids are going to develop being under such close surveillance!
Very sad thing to read on a Monday morning
www.lemonodor.com A mostly Lisp weblog
BARTER
Hear recorded Slashdot headlines on your phone! New service beta testing. Just call (248) 434-5508
Just another confirmation that the US is not really for any freedom at all.
If Iraq, Iran, North Korea et al is the axis of evil, USA must be the mass orbiting that axis...
What about buildig confidence on love and trust?
I was a "free-lunch" kid, too. But even at the age of thirteen or so, I knew what a handout was and that someone somewhere was paying for it when it isn't their obligation. So you know what I did? I brought my own lunch or I starved. Usually, I starved. Granted, I was also a wrestler, so I probably wouldn't have eaten the school food anyway (gotta make weight), but I wasn't about to go to the office and ask for my ticket from the office lady who gives them out to kids in the free lunch program, then go stand in line and wait my turn for a freebie.
And just because my one parent might have thought it was a necessary option (and I suppose no matter what your circumstance, you feel obligated to feed your kid even if it means a handout) - that doesn't mean that I felt it was the right thing for me to do.
And you know what? To this day, I bitch about my taxes. It's my money. My time. My hard work. I'm sorry for other people's hardships, but that's their problem. I have obligations in my own family to attend to, without making sure some grubby kid somewhere gets a free pork sammich at school because his parents couldn't provide it for him.
Now, as a tax payer, if they wanted to feed the kid properly - I might not mind so much. But why should I feel compelled to give a kid a couple bucks every day so he can have what amounts to 50 cents worth of the crappiest battered and fried fishsticks dipped in rank heart-attack tartar sauce?
2. Write an add-on that evaluates this data and makes appropriate parenting suggestions from a database of professional opinions and parenting models.
Oh great, I can just see Clippy popping up now:
It looks like your son is turning into a lard-arse! Would you like to:
Isn't it better (and not a sur(Or)welliance :) to make an online webshop where kids and parents can order a meal before going into school by using credit card or be billed monthly?
Think back to PTA meeting on the 13th day of the 13th month - debating the faulty calendars the school purchased the year earlier.
Homer: "brrrrKirk: "Uh, I for one would like to see the cafeteria menu before the school day. I don't like the idea of Milhouse having two spaghetti meals in, uh, one day."
At my school ( in India ) , the system is quite simple , and it works well . Everyone is provided food by the school , and you cannot get your own . The school makes sure that the food is
.
.
.
a) Healthy ( made in a clean and hygienic environment )
b) Nutritious and balanced
c) Tasty
If you meet these criterion , then there is no need to have any alternatives availabele . As always , you can make an exception for special cases
As an interesting side note , the food given here is all vegetarian , very cheap ( the school manages the whole thing itself , it does not contract it out to any other agency ) , and subsidised by a private trust fund ( it is a private school ) . The cost per student works out to be very low , but you still have no dissatisfied students . No mess , no fuss , and the parents can rest easy , knowing that their kids are getting good food
I like the school food , but I don't like some of their administrative policies , so here is the link to my school's website to be Slashdotted
http://www.sathyasaiindore.com/
I'd love it if this was implemented at my daughter's school. I have a responsibility to make sure that my daughter eats well; it's just part of the general responsibility of care that I have.
I've tried asking her what she had for lunch; sometimes she tells me, sometimes she doesn't. I've tried to get her to eat more healthy stuff at school; sometimes it works, more often it doesn't.
We're going to have a word with the school, to see if they'll do anything. I would consider it part of their general responsibility towards the children in their care, but they may not see it that way. They may also be simply unable to properly monitor and control the lunchtime eating habits of so many children. If this sort of system was available, making sure that our daughter is eating well more often than not would be that much easier.
As for what some other posters have said, we rarely have take away or pizza. I cook dinner pretty-much every night of the week, and we always have fresh fruit in the house. Kids will be kids though, and our daughter seems to have inherited my sweet tooth (and luckily, her mother's love of fruit too).
Really, I'm as paranoid as the next slashdotter, but I don't see this as a privacy violation, or a violation of any other right. Of course, my daughter's only five - if you're using this to try to fix the eating habits of 13+ year olds, you're probably fighting a losing battle.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
We've had something like this at a few schools in the uk for ages now. At one girls school I used to visit they had cards that monitored their meals, due to problems with anarexia, miss a couple of meals in a row...bam...visit from the doctor. To be honest though, you Americans need this more than anyone else..
is obviously something the parents neither have nor are they willing to build and teach it to their own kids, if that's all they can think of. What a brave new world.
"People who are willing to sacrifice essential freedoms for security deserve neither freedom nor security."
B F
...for you parents who don't have problems with controlling every aspect of your child's life at school, since those of us without sprogs obviously don't have a clue about parenting.
It's called "taking 5 minutes in the morning to make them a sandwich." School lunch in US schools is utter slop anyway, in most cases.
Cole's Law: Thinly sliced cabbage
Hey,
In Turkye we got some private schools had someting like that. Also system say where is current loc of student, is he/she attend classes, spend how much etc etc.
Probably they uses RDIF or someting...
I think its very nice.
[My english is better than most other people's Turkish, so please point out mistakes politely. Thank you.]
Since one of the main causes of anorexia and bulimia is parents who tie their approval of their children to what the children are eating, it's only going to make it worse.
Anorexia is an intergenerational problem that feeds on too much information. It is aggravated by over-weighing, obsessive calorie counting, and putting a huge emphasis on what someone has had to eat in a particular meal, rather than what sorts of foods one is used to eating.
Giving parents information on individual portions chosen by the children is only going to cause more eating disorders. A parent who tends to edge on the obsessive about food or is anorexic will transmit this anxiety to their child if they see a list of the child's food and start making disordered comments on it.
The effect of being agitated about things the child has chosen for herself is much greater than the effect of giving the child small portions at home.
It is quite likely, therefore, that this system will in fact increase anorexia rates. It's well documented that under normal circumstances no human being should *ever* have direct control over what someone else is allowed to choose to eat, any more than it would be psychologically healthy to control when and how someone else shits.
It's safe to choose what food you put on the table or serve at the prison cafeteria, etc, but the choice to put that food in one's mouth or take it off the shelf must be one's own. Breaking that boundary is deadly.
The obvious exception is when health professionals have to save someone's life by controlling their eating, so the psychological risk is counterbalanced by a more immediate threat.
Parents' rights, childrens' rights... this is just dangerous.
Fruit juice is quite healthy (as part of a balanced diet of course!).
What marketeers call "juice" often isn't.
Don't confuse reality with mega-corp marketing.
Why is that crap available in the school's cafeteria anyway? OK, while juice is fine in some cases, soda is definitely not. Nor are fries and burgers, so why do they sell those?
Now the schools are installing monitoring systems to see what kids are buying. No doubt some corporation is behind that scheme.
Why not make everything a lot simpler? Cancel the outsourcing of the school cafeteria to a big caterer and start serving healthy food. Use charge cards that parents can charge up and can only be spent at the cafeteria, so no leakage occurs to McDonald's.
Really, sometimes the world can be made a lot simpler by pushing corporations out of the loop.
The happy few who survive until adulthood without becoming suicidal won't know how to make any outrageous demands - you know, such as human rights and similarly "liberal" stuff. As an added benefit of this child conditioning and selection, you'll never have to worry about election recounts again, as everyone brought up this way will have no difficulty accepting dynastic succession...
In related news, an enterprising young 14-year-old student at Marietta Middle School found out that the old saying, "There's no such thing as a free lunch" isn't true - when he hacked mealpay.com... By the way, try to go to mealpay.com with firefox - It sends you here: https://www.mealpay.com/UnsupportedBrowser.aspx Your Browser Is Currently Not Supported Your browser is not supported for use with this site. This site requires Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.5 or above on Windows platforms or Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.1 or above on Macintosh platforms. You can download the latest Microsoft Internet Explorer by clicking the link below. Download the latest Microsoft Internet Explorer browser Your current browser: Netscape Version 5.0 Oh, and it even has a nice little "microsoft certified partner" logo on the site :)
I'm going to spoof my user agent and see if the site works fine. I'm sure it will, that's for a future post though.
A lot of people seem to be saying that kids are given too much freedom, and that is why they are so reckless when they become adults.
I disagree. I think that kids are irresponsible because they don't have enough resposibility. And responsibility can only come with freedom -- the freedom to make choices and make mistakes.
This is a different kind of freedom than the freedom to play computer games all day or get expensive gadgets without working. It is a much more mature freedom.
But you can't pick and choose what freedoms they get, because otherwise it isn't real freedom. If you're going to be a responsible parent you need give them the responsibility related freedoms (jobs, self-motivated education and the sense that their gadgets come from money saved up in a responsible way, though possibly with parental subsidy) with the other kids of freedoms (allowed to stay out late, go to parties, etc.)
Both of these kinds of freedom prepares them for the adult world, where you are free to go to parties and have to pay the bills. What happens now is kids get out of high school and either go to college and get drunk all the time and get into abusive (receiving or giving) relationships that don't give them any real training in another life responsibilty, building mature relationships, or they go into the work force and have a really hard time dealing with 9 to 5 jobs because they've never had to balance fun freedoms with responsible ones.
This causes a lot of problems. We have a culture that romanticizes our youth. Why is it this way? I think it is this way primarily for the same reasons kids go off to college and act irresponsibly -- they're not ready for life responsibilities and dream of the care-free past. Unfortunately, that just leads to sucky adult lives.
If you learn how to balance fun and responsibility as a youth, with parental support and guidance when you mess up, then your life is fuller.
I blame parents, not the system. Parents need to decide that they don't need to work as much, that the schools job isn't to raise mature adults, and that being scared that your kid might f-up on your watch and shame you isn't an excuse to reign them in until they leave the house (so it's someone else's problem.)
Even if you want to blame the system, it isn't like it is taking away your ability to parent. Computer games and T.V. are rotting your kids minds? Then don't have a T.V.! Your kids have weird ideas about relationships and sex? Then you'd better sit your butt down and talk to them about it -- not just a lecture as to why something is or isn't good, but a heart-to-heart talk where the goal is for you to respect the other.
I can't think of a single parental role that the system has taken away that you can't take back if you choose to.
And if you say you need to work jobs to pay the bills, then I suggest you own less stuff and you start getting politically active and fight to remove us from a system that requires every generation work more than the one before it.
What comes first, finding a teacher or becoming a student?
Why does the site kick you to an 'unsupported browser' page if you use Firefox? I spoofed my user agent to be MSIE 6.0 and the site works perfectly fine and looks the same as it does when I pull it up in IE 6.0. Did Microsoft give them some sort of kickback to block Firefox out?
MOD PARENT UP!
I agree wholeheartedly.
"taking 5 minutes in the morning to make them a sandwich."
And where exactly are those five minutes going to come from? - you've got to be joking!!
Any kids of mine want sandwiches to take to school they make them themselves. (Well, they do when my wife's not at home, anyway.)
This will have the exact reverse of the intended result simply because people of all ages need to experience the trust of others to learn the full meaning of being trustworthy. In my experience those who cannot themselves trust are not trustworthy, and that speaks volumes about the people who procured this abomination.
Let me give you some insight into privacy from a kid's point of view, because that's one of the things I still haven't forgotten. Much as I'd actually like to.
My most unpleasant memories are the pure stress associated with growing up with a mother and grandma who wanted to know _everything_ I do, every move I make, every breath I take. I usually had a parent coming with me to summer camps, or at least to the same town, to be damn sure what I do there too.
But wait, it goes downhill from there.
The first problem with that is receiving an endless stream of advice, typically in the form of being told how everything I ever did was wrong. The way I walked, the way I talked, the way I combed my hair, the way I ate, etc. They just had to tell me what minuscule detail I did less than 100% perfect. Even if I decided to, dunno, clean up my room or whatever, the usual "encouragement" was being told how I did it wrong.
Unfortunately that meant that it seemed most of the time like why-the-heck do I even bother, because everything I do is wrong anyway. Probably the only "right" thing to do was to sit and stare at a wall, or something.
It leaves permanent damage. I'm in the mid-30's now, and I still have to overcome an instinct to not even try whenever I want to start doing anything. I do overcome it, but somewhere in the back of my brains there's a circuit that _still_ says "mom probably wouldn't approve _that_, either." And I don't mean for doing anything bad, but even for mundane stuff like throwing the laundry into the washing machine: mom would probably disapprove of the temperature it's set on, or the exact quantity of detergent, or whatever.
Think you know better than to do that? Well, tell that to the lady in the story who got her knickers in a knot about her daughter buying 4 oz of juice to wash the food down with. ("Nooo! It's 150 calories!") Geeze, 4 oz is a _third_ of the liquid in, say, a can of coke. But even for that some retard had to basically go and tell her child, "no, again whatever you decide is wrong, and I know better than you."
Yeah, I'm with you about the license-to-breed part: I wish such retards were prevented from breeding, because I foresee some very serious psychological problems in that daughter's future.
But let's go back to my story, because it goes downhill from there.
The other problem about parents knowing everything is that they just had to talk to _everyone_ about it. And I really mean _everyone_, including perfect strangers on the street or the new cashier at the supermarket. A lot more positively than the feedback _I_ got, too. I guess they were very proud of me, or something, which isn't unusual for a parent. (Would have been nice to also tell _me_ that, though, instead of only negative feedback.) But still, every minute of my life was dissected
Why is that a problem? Because knowledge is power, and it gave others power over my life too. E.g., I couldn't tell a little white lie like "sorry, can't go with you there today, I haven't finished homework yet." Everyone already knew, or was going to be told, exactly at what hour I really finished homework and what did I do after that. _That_ kind of being a public figure essentially leaves you with a lot less choices of what you can do without losing every single friend you still have.
As late as high school, mom actually phoned my girlfriend to tell her basically "oh no, he does have plenty of time today." And not even tell me that she interfered. That was the end of that relationship there and then.
You know, other kids grow up dreaming of becoming an astronaut or a jedi or something. My nice fantasy was about the day when mom will finally STFU (Shut The Fsck Up) about me. Quite a nice fantasy too, but sadly just as unrealistic as the one about jedis. Still hasn't happened.
I actually liked school. It was the time when I finally had some time without someone looking over my shoulder.
Ironically, that's also a large factor in what drove me
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Big Parent is Watching You
Schools in California have been doing this for years. Every child has a lunch number associated with them. When they get lunch or buy something like Powerade or similar crap, they have to put type their number into a keypad. Their parents can call their childrens' cafeteria's and a complete record of what they ate can be read off or printed out for them. This is also a good way to track food poisoning.
You're a member of a society, and the rule is, people in a society look out for each other. That's how it works. Your hard-earned taxes are put to work for other people who have the misfortune of being poor, but that doesn't make them bad people. I was a free-lunch kid because my mother was staying at home raising us and we were living on my father's teaching salary. Guess what? We pay teachers crap. Pretty pathetic. Even smart people can be poor.
My parents taught us to be hard-working, ethical people, and encouraged us to study and think about what we wanted to do with our lives. I went on to college on a full ride based on my academic merits, not because I was poor.
While the lunches weren't great, I would like to think that growing up to become a contributing member of society (I'm now a teacher, too.) Would that be considered money well-spent? Don't assume that poor means someone is inferior to you, or that they're poor just because they want to mooch off of the taxpayers.
Just like your moral standards dictated that you would rather starve than take a hand-out, my family's choice of having one parent be a teacher (you're definitely not doing it for the money), and one be stay-at-home for the sake of raising children properly dictated our financial situation. However, while keeping your pride is great, that's no reason to starve a growing body and mind.
"Give a man fire, and he'll be warm for a day; set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life
We have this system implemented in some schools in Portugal for years...
But at least it would show it was purchased in the first place. This could be used to put together a better behavioural picture of what might be going on.
How? She'll buy whatever she thinks will keep the 'rents off her back and either, as the GP says, toss it in the trash or puke it into the toilet bowl. I fail to see how this helps identify the problem at all.
I like the whole idea, but for a whlly different reason.
The next time you find out your kids have been fed crap (as witnessed in the UK recently by the fights celebrity cook Jamie Oliver had to put up to get decent food introduced) you have a nice, clean, court admissable track record.
Ah, liability. That school obviously still has a *lot* to learn about tracking - it cuts both ways.
(and no, I would never track my child - how else can you teach what trust is about?)
= Ch =
Insert
What ever happened to bringing lunch to school in a brown paper bag. It's not only cheaper to make lunch this way, it's also a good way to ensure that the child is eating what the parents want them to. That is unless they trade, or don't eat the food, which could just as easily be done on this card system. The parents also don't even have to do anything, since most kids over the age of 8 can, or should be able to make a sandwich. and put some premade snacks in a bag. Maybe the schools with the card system should just stop selling unhealthy food. Then the parents wouldn't have to worry about monitoring what they were buying, because they could only buy good stuff. This is just another bad application of technology to make up for the shortcomings of the system.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
I went to school in the 1960's, we had a system where the parents would write the child's lunch order on an envelope that enclosed the correct payment. The envelopes were collected in the morning and lunch was delivered to you in class. No problems with bullying from other kids or knowing what your kid eats for lunch, but...
If a kid were so brave as to suggest that this was an invasion of privacy the average teacher would quite literally slap them across the head for being a smart-arse. If you "stole" the money from the envolope to spend after school the beating would be enhanced by the use of leather or cane. In both cases the teacher would inform the parent who was also quite likely to smack you around a bit.
The scary thing about this little trip down memory lane is that my generation are now firmly in control of the planet.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
We spent our lunch money on lunch because we were HUNGRY! If we lost it, we were HUNGRY. That strange pink meat that, I swear was horse, tasted great because we were HUNGRY!
When rearing our children my spouse was always saying, "make them wear their jackets". My response? If they don't wear their jackets and they spend the whle day feeling cold, they'll figure it out for themselves. It only took a couple of really cold days in shorts and shirt sleeves and the kids made the connection. Perhaps it had to do with my parents. They never gave me crap over not wearing shoes. After stepping on a few rusty nails and having a chunk of glass dug out of my foot, I figured it out all on my own! I still enjoy going barefoot AND know when it's reasonable to do so.
The majority of young adults, slashdot !representative, these days are pretty skittish when it comes to trying new things. As a parent, I was fearful for kids safety when they were growing up, but decided that over their lifetimes they'd be better off if they learned to take care of themselves. I'm proud that they are extremely independent while skeptical of 'the way things should be'. Eldest is off this fall for a year in Europe. School in Paris, travel in France, Czech Republic, and to Malta. Last year at age 20 she took off for England, France, and Italy for a month, on her own.
I would have never had any money to buy anything. i saved up my lunch money and secretly took packed lunches into school. My parents figured it out after a while as I made no attempt to hide the money i had mysteriously accumulated. But they didn't stop giving it to me.
sudo killall humans
Who sees the kids for 8 hours a day? The system.
Who sees them for maybe 4 hours when they're not going out, playing sports or sleeping each night? The parents.
I blame parents for a lot too, but the education system at the least bears much responsibility for the state of our children.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
Last year MealPay had failed to credit my son's account twice. Let me tell you, explaining to your child why has the cafeteria people stamped his hand three days in a row is an embarassing experience for both parties involved. (To those of you unfamiliar with the practice, cafeterias put stamps on childrens' hands when they run out of money on their accounts.) I called MealPay to find out what happened, and the Tech Support lady there told me *I* had to call Gwinnett County school board and tell them that their credit card payment module in MealPay's software isn't working. You guessed it right, I am paying for my son's lunches with a check now. One of two or three paper checks that I have to write a month.
Haven't visited the US recently, huh?
I don't know what the situation is like in the US, but where I grew up in Canada, many kids brought in lunches, and many bought lunches (or a component or two of their lunch - like a salad or a carton of french fries to go with their sandwich). There was no shame in having a homemade lunch.
While I don't mean to brag about my mother and she certainly made her share of mistakes in raising me, I also think that she did a lot of things right, and I particularly liked her system with regards to cafeteria food and think that I'd use it with my own children.
Essentially, for four days of the week, she'd make me a healthy, homemade lunch consisting of fresh fruit, a nutritious sandwich, and a small bottle of milk. On the fifth day (usually Fridays), she would give me money and encourage me to buy anything of my choosing, even if that was fish sticks and french fries or pizza, insisting that I deserved a treat once in awhile and that fast food was not particularly unhealthy when eaten in moderation.
I don't really see the point of this system, I guess. Even if children do choose to eat unhealthily for lunch, parents still have control over two meals of the day, and can control how often the children have access to cafeteria food. I don't see why they shouldn't use this as an advantage to feed their child good, nutritious food instead, which I'm sure that many of them don't.
What say we all note down the serial numbers to each note we hand our kids and ring up the bank after work to see where the money went.
Get realistic people, its just another gadget that will eventually sit on the "nice idea, but we dont need it" shelf
Um, this isn't the first. In Iowa, specifically Iowa City, this was implemented 2 years ago in junior high and high schools and 1 year ago it was implented in elementary schools. There are both pros and cons for the system, but after a while, people get used to it. I'm currently 16 and attend one of the high schools it was implented in and yes, my friends and I laughed at it when it was introduced, mainly because we have drivers licenses and jobs.... and the school now wants to monitor what we eat.
I don't really consider it to be a violation of my rights..... Your parents already know what you eat. I eat at least 10 meals with them every week. Most parents never login to the accounts and never look at what their student eats because they TRUST them. The main key is trust. At 16, if you cannot trust your child to choose lunch then there are much larger problems. I will go to college in 1 year..... Who cares if I get a cookie or something else. It's FOOD, not drugs.
The system we use will also allow parents to decide what their students can eat through the crappy web interface for the program. So, kid #1 comes up the cash register and types in his PIN and shows the cookie to the lunch lady. She then tells him that he's not allowed to have cookies. In return, kid #1 turns to the kid behind him, normally a friend, says, hey buy this for me and hands kid #2 the 50 cents.
When you come up to the food place, you type in your 5 digit PIN number. (yes, which are assigned to you in order by your last name, so you could pretty much just type in somebody elses PIN and no one would ever notice..... and to make sure you don't do this, they ask you if you are Alex when you type in Alex's PIN, just in case you were stupid enough to say no.) The first trimester of school, lunch was twice as slow because 1., the lunch ladies & computers, well let's just say it was a challenge for them to use a touch screen and a mouse. 2., irresponsible students would forget their number, so they'd have to find somebody to look it up, which would keep the line clogged for several minutes. It was much more convenient to just use cash without the system. Later on after people figured out how the system worked, it became faster and more convenient than having to use cash.
There were several security problems with the system..... the parent number was a certain value higher than the child's number and by default and the password was always "password" If people wanted, they could go through number by number, yes they just increase by 1 everytime and 1., see how much cash is in each account as well as getting the students name OR just make it so the student couldn't eat anything.... an unpleasant surprise...
So, yes it was a pain in the beginning and it's insulting than your parents don't trust you to pick food, but once people have gotten used to it, it's become more convenient.
How about if the Cafeteria provides a reciept that the parent can ask the kid to see later in the day?
The high school lunch menu for my district is published online, so I reviewed it the other day. It's crap. What isn't deep fried mystery meat and the vending machine special is catered Papa John's Pizza. I have no reason to believe that things are any better in Atlanta. Now, thanks to modern technology and a sense of humor, parents can watch their little darlings shoveling this crap down their respective slop chutes instead of some alternate fat that they sneak from the vending machine, McVomit's or the local 7/11.
Forget teaching anything, like privacy or the bill of rights. Forget about a healthy diet, because even if the chow at home is healthy (and it probably isn't) the slop at school negates any benefit from home. But what really makes me irate is that the same administration that subscribed to this insanity absolutely forbid a parent to observe class in session in the public school.
The only real solution these days is to send your children to a good private school, if you can afford it and if you can find such a school, or home school your kids. If they're at home, they can get a decent lunch, and the parent won't have to take the time to watch lunch room videos.
Its about time somebody regulated on these little fat ass kids. So check the food, and pull them away from the damn XBOX for a few minutes so they can actually play outside or something *enter oh shit look here*
Having had to be involved in the setup of a district-wide installation of a lunch purchasing system w/PayPal ties, I am fully aware these systems have been available for a few years. That being said, if the parent does not actually go online, setup their account, and go through the training (albeit simple), they do not know what is being purchased with their dollars. In our case all purchases must be made with an id number so all intake is logged. This can be bypassed by Susy buying an item for Billy... but you get the idea. All items do get logged so if your kid does spend your money on "Cookies, frech fries and a soda" you can know about it.
The system is ok, based on an apache/java and you can use any browser to get to it, unlike www.mealpay.com, which REQUIRES IE!
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing. Emo Philips
Some public school districts in Missouri have had a web-based parent monitoring system for several years now as part of a student management program written by a company called SIS (http://www.sisk12.com./ This includes not only the lunch balances, but homework assignments and grades as well.
first wtf why yro post!
There are other places (Like my local school district) that have been using a similar system along with student photos and all to prevent faking it out for 10 years now. What makes them the "first in the country?"
When did Minnesota stop being part of the country? We've had this little monitor what we eat for a year now. I learned that an extra piece of pizza costs $1.50 more through this system. They can also put money into our lunch accounts online.
My school recently implemented something similar (although offline) because a group of students were using prepaid lunch cards to launder money into cash to buy various pills and drugs.
We have a similar system at my high school - it's really quite irritating that we can't buy lunch with legal tender anymore. It's possible to monitor the purchases, but most parents don't; it's more an issue of convenience to kids who forget their money.
Compromise: electronic system AND cash both accepted?
How? She'll buy whatever she thinks will keep the 'rents off her back and either, as the GP says, toss it in the trash or puke it into the toilet bowl. I fail to see how this helps identify the problem at all."
If you think it's that simple, then I suggest you start taking more notice of the people around you and the way you interact with them.
Perhaps I was born with an uncanny gift (hint, this is sarcasm) but I have an amazing ability to pick with startling accuracy when I am being lied to.
Maybe I type with an accent and you didn't quite catch what I said earlier, this is not an easy solution. Parents that brand it as such will not see any benefit from it, and they're crappy parents anyway. This would be a useful tool in many cases, when combined with natural intuition and a little human empathy.
Fuck, I swear some days this is like nailing wet shit to a wall...
Most parents can't seem to be bothered to take an interest in their childrens' academics, what makes these schools think they will care what their students eat? How about a system that lets parents know what their kids have for homwork? It could have instructions to help the kid with the lesson and additional material that the parent can review with the kid. I can see a billion times more use from that.
My children and I have a relationship and something established called communication.
There have been some damned lame arguments for the support of monitoring our kids. For Chrissakes - I want mine to learn and live and grow - how they will, with my guiding hand in tow, no doubt, but only on one side.
Mine are young still, and I protect their innocence, but I encourage independance and free-will. They know the rules:
Be Safe
Have Fun
If you're not eating right you're not being safe. Your diet will produce negative consequences:
sickness
lethargy
bad habits
stunted life
blah, blah...
Being safe and forging that idea through communication with my children has prooven to be a fantastic idea on all of the important counts, like implementation for one. Kids are little adults - that's why I want to maintain innocence if I can. It's the only thing that seperates us really.
Respecting your kids should come easy. Communication should as well because if you're not living with that than this rediculous "child-monitoring" craze seems OK to you.
I wish those fucking cluless parents would wise-up. It's their kids that will be leading our country and world one day.
My old school - one in a small town of about 7000 in Illinois - has had this sort of thing going for two years now. You load up your student account with money, and then that is used to pay for meals. Parents can go online and check students' grades, eating habits, disciplinary records, etc.
And it sucks. I am in one of the districts that is getting this meal thing. You want to know the real story? Well here you go.
Here's our menu at lunch:
fries
chicken and fries
wings and fries
bacon cheeseburgers
cheesesteaks
hotdogs
ice cream
calzones
pizza
nachos
quesadillas
plus various specials every day.
The only healthy thing that is offered at my school is subs, which is what I get most of the time. Of course, the sub line is the least popular line. At least 1/4 of the school just gets a basket of fries ($1.00). You might think that having parents being able to see that their kids are just buying $1.00 fries every day would be a good thing. The fact is that the parents of the kids who are doing that are the parents that just don't give a shit. The parents that actually care (like mine), will see that their kid is not a dumbass and actually buys a well balanced meal. The sad thing is that I have to go out of my way to find something healthy to eat every day. More kids would eat more healthy (or is it healthier?) if more schools served healthy foods. The majority of teenagers are too lazy to care, but if you gave them more options, chances are they would purchase healthy foods more often. However, at the moment there is only one healthy item that is available to us every day.
On another note, this plan will not work simply because kids by other kids food. It makes sense. Why should two friends go into the same line and wait to buy food when only one of them can buy food for the both of them, and then the other friend just pays him back. That's what I do. Once a week my mom will see me buy nothing because my friend is buying me a chicken basket. However, on Friday she will see me buying 4 quesadillas, 2 for me and 2 for my friend. Everybody does it, and it will screw up all the "statistics".
Also, people can buy food on another person's account fairly easily. When you buy food at our school you have to put in your student ID (except at the grill line because it slows down the line). A picture ID comes up on the screen, but what happens if the picture is blurry? What if they got their hair cut? What if they let their hair grow out? What if they're a freshman and they haven't had pictures yet? It's a problem now and it will become a bigger problem once this new meal tracking system is in place.
Regarding a comment somebody made way above me made about most kids having a free/reduce lunch, in my area (the area where the meal tracking system is going to be put in place) only about 10% of the students are on that kind of plan.
O ya, and I go to this school http://www.cobbk12.org/~kennesawmountain/
The government is doing this to get parents monitoring their children, children monitoring their parents, children monitoring other children, parents monitoring other parents, and in the end, everyone will monitor everyone, and if you do something that isn't 100% accepted, like walk with a limp because you sprained your ankle, you will be arrested for commiting thoughtcrime and you will be put to death.
When I was in school, lo these 15-20 years ago, we did not have access to soda, chips, cookies, candy, sweets, fried foods, or other bad things. (I attended, primarily, Mesa Public Schools in Mesa, AZ.) I remember lunches of quesadillas, bean burritos, grilled cheese sandwiches, baked hot sandwiches; all with salads, vegetables, fruit and milk. I went to school in the days of Ketchup as vegetable, so at the beginning of the decline.
If the parents - as a group - want the school and the district to serve healthful, nutritious food, then they need to get the school and the district to *serve* healthful, nutritious food and stop selling junk. Rather than using the cheap technological fix, they should be *parents* and responsible for what is available. As with toys, removing the temptation does a great deal to solve the problem.
My kids take their lunches because they don't like the food the schools serve; raised on healthful foods, they're not fond of industrial food service stuff. We work with the schools to improve the lunches on the pitiful budget allowed them, but we have managed to get the sugary stuff cut back. We've got the soda machines out of the halls, which is an improvement.
A parent could give a child $20 and within two days that money's gone
Honestly, if I were to give a kid $20 for a week's worth of lunch? Well, thats all he'd get. I'd make it very clear to him that if he spent it in two days, that's his problem, not mine.
But why should I feel compelled to give a kid a couple bucks every day so he can have what amounts to 50 cents worth of the crappiest battered and fried fishsticks dipped in rank heart-attack tartar sauce?
No one on a free or reduced lunch program has ever gotten any cash at all. The program simply doesn't work that way. You get a free or cheaper lunch.
And no school lunch program has ever made money in history. There's no mark-up on school lunches, in many places there's a mark-down, because the school takes in less money than it actually takes to make the food, so has to make up the difference out of its budget. (This was the exact reason that the first meal at my school was one dollar and the second was 2.20 or something...the meal actually cost 2.20, it's just the school made up the difference for the first meal.)
So saying it's 50 cents worth of food for 2 dollars is idiotic. Now, the school is obviously run by the government,and thus inefficent, but the inefficency is more than made up for by the prices the government gets...if you were to make any school lunch, it would cost at least the price you paid for it.
In fact, I dare you to make any nutrionally balanced meal for two dollars or whatever the going rate is now. No, wait, you have to make like ten different meals, so there's a menu. And all of them have to be something many kids will eat.
And, BTW, quite a few of us think providing meals for poor children is a hell of a lot better use of tax money than what laughingly passes for 'education' in this country. That's like the best possible justification of taxes in existence, feeding children who do not have enough food. And unlike food stamps or welfare, we know the money isn't going to support lazy parents, it's going to support kids who literally have no other options.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
30 years of evidence shows that anorexia and bulimia, while existant, are virtually a non-issue as a serious public health problem. Lindsey Lohan is about the only American LOSING weight nowadays, while all the rest of the kids and adults are getting seriously fat. They've got drastically increasing type 2 (dietary) diabetes rates to prove it. Jesus, get out of the house and look around you. You want to talk about deadly boundaries? Look no further. The CDC diabetes and obesity maps for the last 15 years track each other in lockstep.
There may be a few overexposed upper middle class teenage princesses that are wasting away because daddy's an asshole, but parents for most kids need control of what goes down the pie hole if they want their brats to live long enough to slap them into an old folks home.
Luke, help me take this mask off
Yes, because these things are great.
I go to a school where they've just implemented these. So, not only have the queues got *longer*- the staff don't know whether chips are in the "snack food", "vegetable" or "potato based" section of the program for the system, but the cards snap in half if you so much as look at them. Half the staff refuse to use them, as do the kids- who now go over the road to stock up on E-numbers because chocolate has been banned (for making people hyper- bear in mind they actively *encourage* the purchase of energy drinks).
Encouraging healthy eating? Don't make me laugh. They put big signs up around the place saying "eat 5 portions of fruit and veg per day"... but won't actually sell them because it's *not profitable*. This is a school, for pete's sake- it's not supposed to be profitable.
People visiting cannot get a cup of coffee, as it's hell to try to get round the system when you've not got a card. And the machine for depositing your cash in the first place crashes regularly. All on an unsecured network.
Technology is so *obviously* the solution.
Or they could just let us have the *choice* of eating healthily, rather than telling us "Chocolate is bad for you. Shut up and eat your burger- we want your parents to think you're buying meals, not snacks."
Hey, I don't care anymore- 7 more exams and I'm outta there for good.
I was getting really mad at all the posts until I saw this one, redeeming the threads.
You touched on a very serious subject. Remanticized Youth. I think marketing has run the gamut of advertising to adults, so they target youth. Seeing it is so successful, lets target adults as youth.
Another thing, kids want structure, they crave it. You think that the crappy stuff they're into isn't structured? It is. Check to see the structure they follow in TV programming alone. Want to solve a real problem? Get rid if the Cable/Satellite/Antenna TV, it' shouldn't be where your kids learn things about life. We haven't had TV for 5 years and our kids are better for it. As a matter of fact, they're usually whacked out after a weekend away where there is TV.
Another real insight I liked was about working to get more stuff. Despite what your kids tell you now, they will enjoy a ball and bat over a new PS3. You just need to show them how enjoyable they are, and that means cutting the overtime. Are you living to work or working to live?
"Creation is messy. You want genius, you get madness, two sides of the same coin." --Steve Jobs
I agree completely. Today's children are no more evil, stupid, lazy or whatever than they were 100 years before. The only thing changed is their conditioning, in other words: how are they raised, what experiences have they gone through. You will harvest what you planted.
Applying the authority to track children, to 'make them eat the right food' etc shouldn't be a surrogate for stuff you messed up in your own life. Don't desire them to be more perfect than you are, and if you do, do not force it upon them. Life has become stressful and demanding enough (also for children) without going the extra miles of being Mr Perfect son.
Instead of applying authority, set a good example. That will render you their respect FAR more than forcing them to do stuff and tracking them all the tome to see if they obey.
True, the key being 'as a part of a balanced diet. The american association of pediatrics has stated that fruit juice (even pure fruit juice) has no nutritional benefits over whole fruit.
f ull/pediatrics;107/5/1210
m ?site=http://www.appleproducts.org/qanda.html
http://aappolicy.aappublications.org/cgi/content/
The AAP state that toddlers and preschool aged children should be limited to just 4-6 ounces of one hundred percent fruit juice. That is a limit though and not a minimum.
Q: How many servings of beverages should a child over the age of two consume?
Children over 2 are supposed to drink 12 ounces or less (and avoid the sugarwater concotions entirely), and usually drink twice that.
http://pediatrics.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.ht
Not the end of the world, of course. But when I was growing up, I think my parents and I overestimated how healthy juice was. It would have been better if I ate whole fruit and drank water.
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
I gather you think prison is "cruel and unusual punishment" then?
It should be interesting to see how well you's survive there, in an environment that many survive for years.
like that come on what happened to land of the free if kids cant even buy snacks at lunch. I see no reason for this at all. Its stuff like that that makes me want to pack up and go back to england.
Now me, I never had anything to worry about. Mom packed us a sack lunch each day. IIRC, we were allowed to buy a milk once a week and a cafeteria lunch once a month. ^_^ And I had a tendency to circumvent things as the cafeteria ladies thought I was a darling child and had no problem with filling my lunch sack with food left over at the end of the lunch period. Ah, the days of coming home with bread bags (it's what my mother tended to package the sandwiches in) full of greasy cold french fries...
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.