Bettina has had enough.
See here and here for the context. I hate to go “back in my day” on you again, but I cannot recall a single time in my school days when we had any kind of food, much less treats, in the classroom. No birthday goodies from parents, no food rewards from teachers. I have no idea when this practice got started, or when it became prevalent. What was your experience in school with food in the classroom, especially treats? Leave a comment and let me know.
I should add that as I was thinking about this, I was remembering how in elementary school we kids would pass around Pine Brothers honey flavored cough drops as if they were candy. They were sweet and had the consistency of gummi bears, and since they were cough drops we got away with it. Something tells me that’s unlikely to happen any more.
We had room mothers, and very infrequent, special occasion treats in the classroom. But it wasn’t Texas and it was only in elementary school.
When I was in elementary school the only days that food was brought into the classroom was if a kid was celebrating a birthday and the parents brought a cake and/or pizza for the entire class, or it was a holiday/end of the year deal where the teacher would collect $2 or $3 from each student for a pizza party.
When I was growing up, parents would sometimes bring in birthday cupcakes or cookies for the class. That was it — teachers never handed out food as rewards.
Don’t blame teachers. We don’t bring these things into the classrooms in Texas. There are laws prohibiting this. It’s parents who bring loads of cupcakes and cookies for birthdays and other occasions. I haven’t given one treat to any kid in my classroom this year that they could eat. I do, however, give them healthy snacks during the morning that are NOT provided by their parents. So, that whole parent manifesto is total nonsense. “Parent rights” … yeah, right. Then be a parent. Feed your kid healthy things – not the hot Cheetos and Coke I see your kid (and their 3-year-old sister) consume everyday in their lunches.
When I started reading this article, I thought the manifesto was a satire to attack opponents of either sex education or discussion of homosexuality in schools. The concept of teachers giving out food in class, outside of lunch/break periods, is so completely alien to my memories of school twenty-odd years ago. More to the point, this is Texas… where the hell would teachers find the money in their paychecks to provide snacks, anyway?