Let them eat chips

I couldn't resist coming out of hibernation to write something about this brilliant story. Since the beginning of the new school year, schools in England and Wales have been obliged to follow new guidelines (‘Jamie’s Law’) covering what types of food they can serve to pupils. This has meant that state schools have been serving healthier food without chips, burgers and lard. Fizzy pop drinks – usually very high in sugar – have also made way for milk, water and fruit juice.

The law was introduced as a final attempt to turn back the increasing rate of childhood obesity in the United Kingdom. As well as the obesity issue, children with diets high in salt, sugars and fats are more likely to under-perform in their studies, can concentrate for less time and are more likely to develop mental illness, heart problems and diabetes. Parents had campaigned for this policy change and Tony Blair at his most populist agreed to convince Gordon Brown to spend an extra 2p per child per day to improve the situation. No one would argue that the law was a much needed first step towards solving the problem.

Well, some people would. Some mothers at Rawmarsh Comprehensive in South Yorkshire have taken matters into their own hands to ensure that their kids get chips and burgers if that is what they want. The children aren’t allowed out of school during lunch break (a rule designed to prevent tobacco abuse and burger binges). So, Julie Critchlow and her comrades have taken it upon themselves to buy fish, chips and burgers at the local fast food joint, drive to the school with the fatty yum-yums and feed them to the pupils through the locked school gates.

Asked why they were subverting government policy with this pro-burger direct action, Critchlow gave a confused and multi-faceted answer which meandered around claims that they were supporting ‘free choice’, that the children ‘don’t like’ the healthier food and that queuing time and lunch-break reductions mean that kids didn’t have time to eat their food. Which they didn’t like anyway. Maybe her head is too full of chips to see the damage she was potentially handing out to the kids, or maybe this is symptomatic of a larger malaise at the heart of modern society?

What I’m talking about is the modern ‘do nothing’ style of parenting whereby kids as young as seven have the ‘right’ to decide for themselves what to eat and parents give up the responsibility of caring for and controlling their offspring. The net result of this laissez faire attitude is a generation growing up who know more about their entitlements than their duties, who have been taught to believe that every opinion is valid as fact, no matter how poorly it is thought through, who view parental and institutional control as inherently wrong and ‘fascist’.

Don’t get me wrong: we all like the odd burger and chips. I just loathe the idea that eleven year-olds are somehow expected to decide what’s best for themselves even though we all know that given the chance, the answer would be: Playstation, chips and no school. That’s the point of parenting, surely?

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September 18, 2006 | Filed Under Politics, UK 

Comments

3 Responses to “Let them eat chips”

  1. Rhys on September 18th, 2006 2:01 pm

    I'd not heard this story. Crazy stuff.

  2. Nick on September 20th, 2006 10:54 am

    That is a great story. You can just imagine tbe parents feeding their kids chips and burgers through the school gates like wild animals at the zoo. Chips are a way of life in Yorkshire.

  3. Arif on October 4th, 2006 4:35 am

    I only wish that someone would pass a law like that in the US. Your statement "a generation growing up who know more about their entitlements than their duties, who have been taught to believe that every opinion is valid as fact, no matter how poorly it is thought through" completely nails the problem with some many younger people I'm meeting these days - it is as if the concept of duty as part of the social contract has totally escaped them.

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