You and I (like I guess most people) take the view that schools are there to educate children. And by this we mean things like teach them to read, read write and add up, give them a grasp of geography and history, and generally provide them with the tools to get on in the world. It seems that this now extends to 'healthy-eating' and the suppression of enterprise:
A 15 year old schoolboy has been threatened with suspension making £14,000 selling sweets to pals in the playground.
Budding businessman Tommie Rose, has made a fortune by selling chocolate, crisps and fizzy drinks to pupils at Buile Hill High School, Salford. He buys them in bulk and sells them at competitive prices, even employing two mates to help run his business, paying them £5.50 a day. He says the money will go towards his University tuition fees.
Nobody is hurt by Tommie's initiative - the school decided it wouldn't sell sweets, fizzy drinks or crisps and he stepped into the gap left by this decision. Tommie's fellow pupils get a service, he makes some money and everyone's happy. Except for Tommie's po-faced headteacher:
"We admire this pupil’s entrepreneurship but school is not the place to set-up a black market of fizzy drinks, sweets and chocolates. We have extremely high standards and with our healthy eating policy we don’t allow isotonic drinks, fizzy drinks and large amounts of sweets for the good of our children. Our high standards are set out to pupils and their parents at the start of the school year."
Firstly it's not a 'black market' and secondly when did schools take it upon themselves to acts as dietary policemen? This phrase "for the good of our children" is so typical of the self-serving indulgence of the nannying fussbucket. It's fine if the school wants to stop selling such good itself (although it's clearly missing a trick) but utterly wrong of them to then police the provision made by individual initiative to fill the demand for those products.
....
No comments:
Post a Comment