I heard a story on the NY times website about the impact that schools have in children's obesity. There were two women talking about what we can do to help children turn the epidemic around. The argument they said was that the school day should be significantly longer so that children can eat all three of their meals at school. They thought that for poor families that were struggling with money it would be a good way for the kids to be able to eat healthier and the parents not have to worry about after school care. They think that the government needs to be more involved in the children's education and their health. They talked about how they think that the teachers union also needs to make a push for this because it could never happen with the strict rules that are in the contracts right now.
I am not really a fair person to give my opinion on this topic. Since I am in school right now I would definitely not want a longer day. However, I do think maybe in the long run it would help. Not with the health aspect but many other things. I can't say that I personally agree with the longer school day helping with obesity. I feel like even if the school controls the meals they can not control how much kids exercises or what they eat on the weekends. I also feel that kids will be angry that they have to have that significantly longer school day so they will be less willing to try ti let it help the problem.
HERE IS A LINK TO MY STORY
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ReplyDeleteI think longer school days would not work, kids would not want to be in school as long and skip or be agitated. Most parents would want their kids to be home with them, so the longer school days wouldn't benefit many people.
ReplyDeleteI think it depends on the area. If the majority of families have low income then the schools should have longer days to provide food for the children. This does however make the teachers work longer and I don't know if they're willing to do that.
ReplyDeleteI don't think that longer school days should be used as a solution for hungry, lower class kids because it would also affect the rest of the school, including the teachers. Instead of this, I think that there should be more after-school programs where poor kids can get another meal, do their homework and engage in extracurricular activities.
ReplyDeleteI don't neccessarily think schools should be responsible for helping the poor kids because some people may be busy and may not have the time to be in school all day. Bu then again it sort of is a good idea because then poor kids would not go home hungry and have nothing to eat at their home.
ReplyDeleteI don't agree with this, first off its the schools job to educate that's it and we can stray away from that being the central goal. Also, i feel that it would not help obesity because the kids might not eat healthy food and a longer school day means less time for after school sports and activities that include exercise. So kids would sitting in school and not exercising and becoming obese.
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ReplyDeleteI don't think that they should make the school days longer. In many towns that are poor and parents that may not be able to properly feed their child, it would just be worse because if the school days are longer, then the teachers need to get payed even more and the taxes will probably have to be raised even higher. Also the school lunches are not usually as healthy as thought so it will make children more obese.
ReplyDeleteThey should reduce the prices of lunch and schools should be the same because kids won't agree/like the longer hours!
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