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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."
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.
Oh yeah, I'm 21. But I remember.
And obviously not a parent. There's nothing wrong with having this as an option, as long as the child is informed. If you can trust your 12 year old to make reasonable choices - like not spending thier lunch money on crap it wasn't intended for - there's no problem, and you won't need this service. If you aren't sure - you can check that the child is doing what they tell you. A parent's main means of knowing that thier child is growing up well is reliable information about the childs activities, which is getting harder to come by due to "children's rights".
A 12 year old has a right to all the privacy I as a parent feel safe giving them. Each child is different - some may need this in order for parents to get the information they need in order to help thier children grow up healthy and happy. What if the child is being bullied out of thier lunch money or something? This would be a good way to find out and remedy the situation.
Dignity and responsibility don't instantly come at 18 (My 12 year old is actually more responsible that my 22 year old), but when one can actually handle all that life can throw at you. Before then, we parents want to be able to prepare our kids so they can do that.
Soko
"Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm." - Anonymous
"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.