Cold Lunches, Chocolate Milk & Drivers Licenses….

I don’t claim to be a twitter expert but I tweet and rather enjoy this form of social media. I think what I love best about twitter is I can get all of the articles, news updates, blogs, etc which I find to be the most interesting. I love being able to filter my news if you will… I tend to read about parenting and education. Big surprise right? So In the past few weeks I have read about schools banning cold lunches because they aren’t healthy enough, schools banning chocolate milk to curb the childhood obesity crisis and of course my personal favorite the bill in the MN legislature linking driver’s license privileges to high school graduation.

No driver’s license for dropouts. Let’s think about this for a minute….Is that enough to keep kids in school? Is that the extrinsic motivation they need? Will that make school better for kids? Will it actually work?

This is ‘Menne’ thoughts so you have to know I have many thoughts on this issue. No, I don’t feel it’s enough to keep kids in school. No, extrinsic motivation isn’t enough for teens. Of course it won’t make schools any better for kids and finally no I don’t think it will work and here is why.
Consider the kids who regardless of the driver’s license incentive would drop out. If a high school diploma isn’t important to them neither is attendance so driving legally probably isn’t at the top of their list either. And while we are talking about it these kids will still need to find some kind of income and if they can’t deliver pizza or drive to a job they will be forced to find an alternative source. This alternative may be dangerous and/or illegal. Either way, will put an additional strain on society.

I’ll stop down off my soap box for a minute to get back to the chocolate milk and cold lunch debate. As I was getting my children out the door and off to school this morning they decided they were discussing the lunch menu and what they planned to eat. I told them how lucky they were that they had so many choices and explained the bans which are being placed on various items in schools. My 6 year old looked at me with a strange face and a very matter-of-fact manner said, “Don’t the kids in those schools have grown ups to make sure they are eating healthy and not eating too many sweets?” Yes folks, even a child gets it. Whether it is what’s in the school cafeteria, what kids bring in their sack lunches or gaining a driver’s license the decisions should be made at home. It seems there are much large issues schools and politicians should be focusing on.