"school" news and stories

If you're hungry and willing to fork over the cash, there are plenty of companies that will be willing to deliver you a meal. MSNBC recently noted a few companies that are now bringing their goods right to your front door (or, in some cases, your kid's school).

• For $100, California-based RAWvolution will send you a box filled with two soups, four entrees, four side dishes and two desserts, all - you guessed it - raw and organic.
• For parents who are way too busy to throw an apple and a pb&j in a paper bag for their kid, they can schedule to have Freshlunches deliver Junior a healthy, organic lunch (about $4-$7 per day), just like mom would make. Except...she didn't. Some company did. Oh, well - guess it's better than Lunchables, right?
• Three Potato Four will send you a week's worth of food (or so they say), which includes four organic vegetarian entrees, two side dishes, soup, salad, dessert, and bread. Heck, they even throw in some flowers for ambiance!
  

Now, these options are all well and good, but if you want healthy food delivered to your family, why not join a CSA (Community-Supported Agriculture) program, and support your local farms while going easy on transportation emissions in the process? And if you need some company to make your kid's lunch every day, maybe you should re-assess your super-busy schedule, no?

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Remember that commercial for Staples, the one where the parents are taking their kids shopping for school supplies and they're smiling and dancing to "The Most Wonderful Time of The Year?"

It's that time of year.

I have a good friend who has a young boy, and she's really happy he's back in school. This has nothing to do with a parent not loving their kids, it's just that when a child (baby, tween, or teen) is home, I'm sure it can just completely rule your life and not give you any breathing room (I'm not a parent, but I can imagine). I picture balloons falling from the ceiling and the liquor cabinet unlocked the moment the kids are on the bus.

So, parents, let's drink and celebrate!

Over the course of the last year, schools have come under fire for putting unhealthy options in on-campus vending machines, prompting some states to ban junk food and others to try and work out healthy snack plans with the food companies. As a result, many schools have been left without snack and soda vending machines. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but you can bet that at least some of the kids are disappointed.

To try and take up some of the slack that the departure of unhealthier fare left, the Dole fruit company has taken its own initiative to start a program "that will put vending machines selling healthy food products into schools." Dole's machines will stock fruit, fruit bowls, salads, sandwich wraps and milk. The salads and sandwiches will be prepared fresh at a nearby (or possibly on-campus, if available) cafeteria.

The machines will be launched in 15 schools in four states - Mesa, Arizona; Denver, Colorado; Shawnee Mission, Kansas; Corpus Christie, Texas and Conroe, Texas - in February, but the company has high hopes and is already working on plans for expansion.

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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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Have you ever seen someone using a fork, knife or another eating utensil in a way that seems incredibly awkward? Because the ability to use a knife and fork is a mark of a well-socialized individual and is a skill that is typically picked up from observing others, it is hard not to wonder they picked up such unusual habits. In Japan, some schools are wondering the same thing and want to make sure that such sloppy, untraditional habits of chopstick use are stopped before they spread any further. The Hisatagakuen Sasebo Girls' High School will be testing students on their skill with chopsticks as part of their entrance examinations. The 10-minute test will require that students "transfer beads, marbles, dice and beans from one plate to another."

Administrators say that the purpose of this test is to show respect for "the Japanese spirit" but, in light of the decline of chopstick use among Japanese children, it also seems like a rather unusual way to make sure everyone has good table manners.

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