Reapist posted:
I don't think any school should be peanut free zones. No kid should have to suffer cause another kid can't have peanut butter. I think a kid with allergies should be separated and watched over. But no, we don't want them singled out. Hell, if it was my kids that was allergic I would want all kids to know they couldn't have it.
I worked at a "peanut free" school for a while a few years back, and i originally had the same view as you until one of the teachers explained a few points to me:
1) I asked "why not have the kids who cant have peanuts eat their lunch separate from the kids who can?". The answer was this: kids dont wash their hands. They might say they do, they might even go as far as to turn on the tap and twiddle the tips of their fingers about under the water, but they will avoid the soap at all costs if they feel they can get away with it. And no matter how much supervision is given, unless the teacher stands over each kid individually and watches them wash properly (something NO school has time to allot into the schedule), someone will slip through the net. And if "someone" had a peanut butter sandwich for lunch, they could pose a problem for the peanut allergy kids. Some allergies are so severe that all you need to do is touch peanuts and then touch them, and you could cause a reaction. Is that really worth it just so little Johnny gets to have his pb&j that he could eat at home anyway?
2) Every school has bullies. And kids dont always understand the severity of situations. Where am i going with this? About a year before i started working at the school they had an incident where a boy attacked a child with peanut butter, knowing she was allergic he thought it would be "funny". He wiped his hand across her face when it had peanut butter on it. The girl could have died, her allergy was pretty severe. While that kind of incident isnt likely to happen all the time, you know it WONT happen if peanuts are banned from the school grounds.
and finally, yeah there is always the issue of making people feel singled out. Especially when you're dealing with kids, who feel stuff like that acutely, its much more fair to say that everybody cant have it, rather than basically saying "you're different, sit over here with the other "different" kids and feel like a freak". It's just easier in the long run.
Plus from a liability standpoint, the school are your child's guardians during the school day. You hold them responsible for your child's welfare. They are held liable if something happens to your child during the school day. So if your child goes into anaphalactic (or however you spell it!) shock and dies because the kid next to him had peanuts for lunch, you're going to want answers from the school as to why this was allowed to happen (plus lets face it, in this day and age you are also very likely to sue the school for allowing it to happen).
No kid is "suffering" because they cant have a peanut butter sandwich for lunch, they can eat that sh*t at home any time they like. It's not going to kill them to have something different for lunch when they're at school, and it makes the environment much safer for the other kids.
Anyway, i'll let you get back on topic lol
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