Detention for eating an apple?

by Nicole Weston, Posted Jan 19th 2007 @ 6:59AM

School administrators want to show their students that he line between right and wrong is hard and fast. They want to make sure that the students know where the boundaries lie and that they will face the consequences for crossing them. Different administrators do this with varying degrees of success and it is the ones who are firm but fair that end up with fewest disciplinary problems and the most respect from their students. The emphasis here should be on the "fair" part of the equation because it is easy to take this too far. A few months ago, we heard about a student who was punished because his father packed too much "junk food" in his lunch. This week, a student was given detention at the Wessex Community School in Cheddar, Somerset, England for "eating [an] apple outside a designated area, which [the headmaster] said was a breach of health and safety regulations." After refusing to attend after school detention on the grounds that the punishment did not fit the crime, the student was threatened with expulsion. All for eating an apple.

The school stands by the headmaster's zero-tolerance approach to rule breaking and has punished students for "not bringing a muffin to a cookery class" and sucking a mint (like an Altoid) while on the playground.

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Filed Under: Cooking With Kids, Food Oddities, Ingredients
Tags: apple, apples, britain, british isles, detention, england, fruit, oddities, school, student, uk

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Reader comments (Page 1 of 1)

1-19-2007 @1:09PM bdw said... This is just a symptom of the decline of Britain. They are 'subjects,' we are 'citizens,' and this is the reason the founding fathers of the USA revolted. In the name of public safety, the British have made firearms almost impossible to obtain, the result is that all the criminals carry knives, and their violent crime rates are higher than most countries that are not actively at war. British crime rates average higher than all but a very few American inner cities. Who can respect a rule that punishes you for eating an apple in the 'wrong' place? "If the law wishes to be respected, it must be respectable."

On the other hand, apples are very good for your health. I try to eat three every day.
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1-19-2007 @9:50AM DanGarion said... Good. I'm glad someone is enforcing rules and not trying to be all PC and let people get away with things. If this was in the USA, Gloria Allred and the ACLU would be on this case in a minute, since they tend to be media whores...
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1-19-2007 @10:16AM Foodie Bride said... As long as they're focusing on what *really* counts...
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1-19-2007 @10:22AM Dee said... That sounds ridiculous. I agree that our youth should be disciplined and guided with their best interest in mind, but I also believe that the offense should be reasonable; otherwise it will only cause the child or teen to become rebellious against authority rather than learn a 'valuable lesson'.
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1-19-2007 @11:08AM Laryssa said... No wonder we're so emotionally tied to food. You know, one of the reasons I couldn't wait to go college was to get away from 11:15AM lunch periods in high school. I was never hungry for lunch that early in the morning, but I had to eat then if I didn't want to starve for the rest of the day. I'm so glad those days are over.
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1-19-2007 @3:56PM Joey S. said... The kid isn't being punished for eating an apple. He's being punished for not following the rules, a rule that probably exists for a good reason. I do agree that the punishment seems little harsh, but to say it's "all for eating an apple" is very misleading.
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