Lunch box wars are pointless. Focus on education instead

Parents and teachers should place their energy into ensuring children get the most out of their education, rather than focusing on lunch boxes, writes Louise Roberts.

Humble hedgehog slice became a flashpoint this week for everything that is wrong about our education system.

A staggering new report on classroom behaviour showed that 25 per cent of kids are “ghosts” — unplugged, silently disengaged and avoiding school work under the noses of teachers.

But critics practically broke the internet in their fury over an Adelaide mum who got a note in her three-year-old’s lunch box shaming her for including a sugary treat. The missive, complete with sad face, read: “Your child has ‘chocolate slice’ from the Red Food Category today. Please choose healthier options for Kindy”.

Shame, shame, shame. (Pic: Facebook)

The stories have been erupting on social media, whipping up indignation as far away as Norway.

There were parents humiliated for sending in sugar-free zucchini brownies or packing unapproved popcorn in a child’s Star Wars box so he starved all day. Meanwhile, humming along nicely with invisible outrage is the decline in our national educational performance. Food cops are wrong because, clearly, it is my child — my food choices.

But is this really the most taxing issue facing our young, developing minds?

In Monday’s Daily Telegraph it was reported that up to 40 per cent of kids are unproductive in the classroom, including 15 per cent who are bored, unruly and damaging the way other students learn.

While people are losing their minds about condensed milk and cocoa, this latest report indicates these kids fall behind their hardworking peers by at least two years.

Two years, the difference between, say, Year 1 and Year 3 — a phenomenal time frame in how a child develops.

And a bit of contraband baking is what teachers and parents are worrying about? The Grattan Institute’s Dr Peter Goss told The Daily Telegraph: “Some kids are ghosts, they just waft through and the teacher barely knows.

“The more we looked into it, the more we learnt that the hidden problem is the silent disengagement.”

Nor are disengaged kids the only problem. In December, the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) proved our maths, science and results have sunk globally compared with other countries.

Perhaps parents and teachers should place their energy into ensuring children get the most out of their education, rather than focusing on lunch boxes? (Pic: iStock)

Our 15-year-old high school students are up to two school years behind their peers when compared with the best-performing countries.

And in November, the 2015 Trends In International Mathematics And Science Study (TIMSS) spelt out that even Kazakhstan is beating us at Year 4 and Year 8 maths and science. Cyprus and Slovenia are also steaming ahead. Germany, the US and Portugal also wipe the floor with our 14-year-olds in the study of geo­metry and multicellular organisms. We fell from 12th to 17th in both Year 8 maths and science. At the time, Sue Thomson from the Australian Council for Education Research said our “slipping backwards” was a “wake up call”.

“A substantial amount of our students are below the Australian proficient standard,” she added. Well done to us. We may as well have just gotten a participation ribbon.

But what do our disintegrating academic rankings matter when we can vent about teachers on a sugar crackdown? Here’s the thing: It is not OK for schools to be policing food choices. We are the parents so leave it to us to decide what we feed them. In any environment.

A piece of chocolate slice made with love at home and free of machine-injected artificial colours and flavours is always going to usurp a plastic-wrapped collection of processed ingredients passed off as “natural”.

Want to check my lunch box? Get a warrant. (Pic: istock)

I am not a nanny state advocate because common sense has to assume control at some point. That’s why we should focus on what’s in their brains, rather than their lunch boxes. As social commentator Melinda Tankard Reist, whose friend was pulled up by this particular lunch box lieutenant, noted on Facebook: “Kids see rape, torture and sadism porn at school and public libraries and I’ve spent four days fielding media calls on chocolate slice in kindy lunch box.”

Dr Goss said of this week’s report Engaging Students: Creating Classrooms That Improve Learning, “Too many of our teachers are thrown in the deep end and it’s thought they’ll work it out or leave the profession, and that’s crazy.”

That our children are becoming limited in their ability to meet real-life challenges and compete in an increasingly complex world because of deficits in how our schools are imparting skills is the real worry. And it is this — not who is carrying a concealed Chupa Chup in their backpack — that our teachers and parents should be focused on.

@whatlouthinks