What about after school?
By Ed Morgan
Williamsburg
Regarding the May 2 front-page article “Bill aims to get D.C. kids to shape up”:
The D.C. Council’s plan to improve school nutrition and intensify physical exercise on campus is commendable. There’s no reason schools cannot introduce a new culture of health during school hours. However, the D.C. Council’s proposal doesn’t recognize the vital importance of one major factor: family support.
If the home front doesn’t stand firm and uphold the schools’ (and medical community’s) health principles, the kids are almost guaranteed to lapse back into unhealthy patterns after school hours. That will radically diminish, or eliminate, whatever success the school system has.
Can the council’s plan be bolstered by an effort to help families, teachers and school administrators work together? The kids deserve it.
By
washingtonpost.com editors
| May 5, 2010; 10:05 PM ET
Categories:
D.C., HotTopic, schools
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Posted by: FormerMCPSStudent | May 6, 2010 12:52 PM | Report abuse
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While some of the kids have homes where a discussion about healthy eating is possible, a huge number don't. Why not take the discussion out of the home for 2 meals a day, 5 days a week and just feed kids breakfast and lunch? Breaking bad family habits takes a generation. By providing for these kids in a way that their parents aren't, we're saying to the next generation that they matter.