"Silent Lunches"?!? What the Frick Frack?!?

[JuniorMintz]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070125/...s/silent_lunch

"A Roman Catholic elementary school adopted new lunchroom rules this week requiring students to remain silent while eating. The move comes after three recent choking incidents in the cafeteria.

No one was hurt, but the principal of St. Rose of Lima School explained in a letter to parents that if the lunchroom is loud, staff members cannot hear a child choking."

Holy Sweet Baby Moses! What madness is this?!?

[Banrion]

At my elementary school we had a sound activated traffic light. If everything was OK it was green. If things started to get too loud it would turn yellow. Then we had 30 seconds to get it back to green, or the teachers would start holding people in for recess. If it got really bad and went red the whole class had to stay in for recess with their heads down on the desks.

[Cia]

Guess that I'd start learning sign language and I don't mean the one and two fingered kind.

[Myra]

When I was in elementary school, half the lunch period we could talk, but if it got too loud, one of the teachers blew a whistle to quiet us down. The second half we had to be silent and eat. It was to make sure we actually ate our lunch, not yapped the whole time.

I can understand the rule, but I think if the kids are quiet enough, it wouldn't be an issue. Just sounds like someone's being paranoid.

[XCashier]

At my elementary school we had a sound activated traffic light. If everything was OK it was green. If things started to get too loud it would turn yellow. Then we had 30 seconds to get it back to green, or the teachers would start holding people in for recess. If it got really bad and went red the whole class had to stay in for recess with their heads down on the desks.

I like that idea. I think the school in the OP ought to look into that. While yelling and loud talking should be limited to the playground, I don't see why the kids can't converse in normal tones during lunchtime.

[AFpheonix]

Will they be goose-stepping out to the playground, too? Honestly.

[lordlundar]

One of the schools where I live banned a particular recess activity. What activity you ask?

Tag.

Yup you heard right, tag. Apparently the school thinks that it leads to violent behavior by anyone that plays it.

You know it's bad when the school board superintendent thinks it's a stupid idea.

[NightAngel]

I guess it depends on how hard you do the tagging.

One of the schools I went to when I was a kid banned playing Red Rover because of an injury. This girl tried to charge through the line where me and another girl were holding hands. She was determined, but so were we- and when she finally broke the line she had so much momentum she flew face first into the sidewalk and was well bloodied for her efforts.

But she won.

[Ree]

Reminds me of the headline in the paper the other morning.
Because, in 2 separate incidents, kids have chosen to go tobogganing near trees, and their parents never thought, "Gee, that could be dangerous," and the toboggan slid out of control, hitting the tree, and the children were killed, the government is now considering a law requiring a helmet for tobogganing. (That's "sledding" for you non-Canadians. )

This little email I got the other day says it all:

TO ALL THE KIDS WHO SURVIVED the1930's 40's, 50's, 60's and 70’s!!

My Mom used to cut chicken, chop eggs and spread mayo on the same cutting board with the same knife and no bleach, but we didn't seem to get food poisoning.

My Mom used to defrost hamburger on the counter AND I used to eat it raw sometimes, too. Our school sandwiches were wrapped in wax paper in a brown paper bag, not in icepack coolers, but I can't remember getting e.coli

Almost all of us would have rather gone swimming in the lake instead of a pristine pool (talk about boring), no beach closures then...

...We all took gym, not PE.. and risked permanent injury with a pair of high top Ked's (only worn in gym)
instead of having cross-training athletic shoes with air cushion soles and built in light reflectors. I can't recall any injuries but they must have happened because they tell us how much safer we are now..

...Oh yeah... and where was the Benadryl and sterilization kit when I got that bee sting? I could have been killed!

We played 'king of the hill' on piles of gravel left on vacant construction sites, and when we got hurt, Mom pulled out the 48-cent bottle of Mercurochrome (kids liked it better because it didn't sting like iodine did) and then we got our butt spanked.

Now it's a trip to the emergency room, followed by a 10-day dose of a $49 bottle of antibiotics, and then Mom calls the attorney to sue the contractor for leaving a horribly vicious pile of gravel where it was such a threat.

We didn't act up at the neighbor's house either because if we did, we got our butt spanked there and then we got butt spanked again when we got home.

I recall Donny Reynolds from next door coming over and doing his tricks on the front stoop, just before he fell off. Little did his Mom know that she could have owned our house. Instead, she picked him up and swatted him for being such a goof. It was a neighborhood run amuck....

...How did we ever survive?

We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets, not to mention, the risks we took hitchhiking.

As children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags.

Riding in the back of a pick up on a warm day was always a special treat.

We drank water from the garden hose and NOT from a bottle.

We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and NO ONE actually died from this.

We ate cupcakes, white bread and real butter and drank soda pop with sugar in it, but we weren't overweight because WE WERE ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING!

We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on.
No one was able to reach us all day. And we were O.K.

We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then ride down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. After running into the bushes a few times, we learned to solve the problem.

We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no lawsuits from these accidents.

We ate worms and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in us forever.

We were given BB guns for our 10th birthdays, made up games with sticks and tennis balls and although we were told it would happen, we did not put out very many eyes...

...This generation has produced some of the best risk-takers, problem solvers and inventors ever!

The past 50 years have been an explosion of innovation and new ideas.

We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned HOW TO DEAL WITH IT ALL!

And YOU are one of them! CONGRATULATIONS!

You might want to share this with others who have had the luck to grow up as kids, before the lawyers and the government regulated our lives for our own good....

Kind of makes you want to run through the house with scissors, doesn't it?"

[ArenaBoy]

Ree, I love that. Quite possibly one of the best things I've read about growing up.

Silent lunches though, that's just insane. Elementary school is going to have noisy kids, what do they expect? Yes, we quieted down when asked but that's because our parents *gasp* parented!

Lordlundar said: One of the schools where I live banned a particular recess activity. What activity you ask?

Tag.

Yup you heard right, tag. Apparently the school thinks that it leads to violent behavior by anyone that plays it.

You know it's bad when the school board superintendent thinks it's a stupid idea.

They did it at my elementary school there too. My little sister is attending it right now and they also banned soccer I believe. Heck, in elementary school we didn't have childsafe structures, we had jungle gyms made out of wood that required us to use our imagination. And when we got hurt we got back up and kept playing. /Old man voice.

[Posture Moll]

Huh?!

I may be mistaken, but isn't it a sign that someone is when they are unable to speak or cough, due to severe obstruction?

Idiots. It's pretty easy to spot someone that can't breathe. The first clue should be their hands at their throat, the second them turning blue and falling to the floor.

Heaven forbid we let children be children anymore.

[Posture Moll]

One of the schools where I live banned a particular recess activity. What activity you ask?

Tag.

Yup you heard right, tag. Apparently the school thinks that it leads to violent behavior by anyone that plays it.

By the time I was in grade 6, kids couldn't even run on school grounds or play hopscotch. Because, you know, we could slip and hurt ourselves.

[rvdammit]

It's not that these activities are any more or less dangerous than they used to be. It's that nothing is allowed to be an accidnet any more, someone must be at fault and if someone is at fault you can sue them and never need to work again.

[Posture Moll]

Indeed, it's a sad, crazy world we live in.

[Worker-Intellectual]

back in the day we didn't have these stupid rules... no talking during lunch? No tag? No soccer? I remember kids fighting over the soccer ball! WTF?

I feel old now. And I'm only 19...