Answers To Government Survey, Part 2: Student Well-Being

Here is my answer to Question 2 of the Ontario government survey on the future of education in the province. (For an explanation of the survey and the public consultation process of which it is a part, see here.)


Question 2: What does student well-being mean to you, and what is the role of the school in supporting it? (1000 word-limit)

Student well-being is an important topic, given that we know that most students do not feel "well" while at school. School felt like prison to me, and several decades later it feels the same way—actually worse—to my own kids. Why? Well, for one thing, schools are anti-democratic. Still. One rarely feels good in an environment in which one has no real voice or power. So why not give kids some actual power over how their own schools are run? Do they want late start days? How many? How do they feel about the physical environment of the school? I know my own kids have yet to encounter a school lunchroom in which they feel comfortable eating. No care is taken to make sure kids feel good about the spaces they are forced to inhabit every day. It's not as if it would be impossible to take this aspect of school life into consideration. For instance, in Finland many schools have student lounges with comfortable sofas where kids can relax and socialize before and after school, as well as between classes. Some of these lounges actually have wood-burning fireplaces! Sound outrageous? Well there's your answer as to why many kids feel ill at ease in school. (Also, as an experiment, go check out the girls' or boys' bathroom in an average elementary, middle or secondary school. Would you want to use it? No, you wouldn't. Kids don't either.)

So one part of supporting student well-being is moving towards a more democratic model of schooling. (Cf. the Sudbury School model.) The other part—equally important, if not more so—is reducing the homework load. The amount of homework assigned to kids has more than quadrupled since I was a kid. (Okay, I made that statistic up, but I have researched this topic, and I know that homework has greatly increased over the last several decades.) And one has to ask, why? Are kids smarter or more academically prepared for life after school as a result of all this homework? Not necessarily. In fact, most of the evidence points to homework having very little appreciable effect on "achievement," however that is defined. Research also suggests that homework is a huge source of stress and strife in families. So why does it continue to be assigned in unreasonable amounts? When did we decide that it's okay for kids to put in more work hours (when one includes the "second shift" of homework) than the adults in their lives? It's actually unconscionable that we continue to immiserate the vast majority of kids in this way, throughout their entire childhood. We got rid of child labour, but we continue to believe that kids working on "fun" projects until midnight when they're ten years old is okay? It doesn't make sense.

So: the second simple way to enhance student well-being? Abolish or greatly reduce homework. Concentrate on work that takes place in the classroom. That is where improvements can and should be made.

(See also, Answers to Government Survey, Part 1: Student Success.)

Ontario's School Food and Beverage Policy—Update

In a previous post, I took a look at the new School Food and Beverage Policy slated to take effect in Ontario schools in September 2011. Although I came to the conclusion that the policy is well-intended and a good first step in the process of improving the nutritional quality of school food, one particular aspect puzzled me: the new guidelines allow entrees (examples given are frozen pizza, sandwiches, hot dogs) with sodium levels of (up to) 960 mg to be counted among the healthier "sell most" category of foods, which must comprise 80% of foods sold in schools. I found it hard to believe that government dietitians would consider food with such a high level of sodium to be "healthy," given that the "tolerable upper intake level" or UL for sodium for children ranges from 1500 mg to 2300 mg. Confused—and suspicious that permissible sodium levels for "healthier" entrees might have something to do with schools' dubious practice of fundraising through "Pizza Lunches"—I decided to send an email to ministry officials asking for clarification. A few days ago, I received a response from a representative of the Healthy Schools and Student Well-Being Unit at the Ministry of Education. With respect to the issue of allowable sodium levels in "healthy" entrees, she wrote:

The sodium criteria in the standards are based on the allowable sodium content for Disease Risk Reduction Claims with respect to saturated and trans fats outlined in the Canadian Food Inspection Agency’s Guide to Food Labelling and Advertising (2004). A Disease Risk Reduction Claims, one of the categories of health claims, is a statement that links the food or a part of a food to reducing the risk of developing a diet-related disease (e.g., cancer, hypertension) in the context of the total diet.

I responded to this (non-)explanation as follows:

This is a rather confusing answer to a straightforward question: should a child's entree containing 960 mg of sodium (per serving) be considered "healthy"? The new School Food and Beverage Policy says yes.

I'll let you know if and when I receive a reply to my second letter. I suspect, though, that the real explanation for the weak sodium standards is to be found in another part of the email I received from the ministry official. Describing the provenance of the new school food policy, the Healthy Schools representative wrote:

The School Food and Beverage Policy was developed by the Ministry of Education, in collaboration with the Ministries of Health Promotion and Sport, Children and Youth Services and Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs and with the input from representatives of the education, health and the food industry sectors. [emphasis mine]

(See also, Ontario's new School Food and Beverage Policy.)

Ontario's new School Food and Beverage Policy

As I made clear in a previous post, I am no fan of the ubiquitous "Pizza Lunch" fundraiser in Ontario's public schools. My principal objection is that kids eat far too much commercial pizza as it is. When I was a kid, no one served pizza at birthday parties; many kids (me included) didn't even like it, mainly because industrial pizza, which is the kind served most often at schools and parties, is simply boring, blah food: salt dressed up in dough, stringy cheese substance and tomato sauce. Nowadays, kids' palates have been trained from a young age to like humdrum salty foods. (My children initially disliked pizza, but after the umpteenth birthday party, their palates succumbed to peer pressure, and now they like it.)

Given my feelings about Junk Lunch, as I dubbed it in my previous post, how could I not be pleased with the newly announced provincial School Food and Beverage Policy? This is how the policy works (from the ministry's press release):

The nutrition standards make it easy for schools to determine which foods they can and cannot sell. Candy, energy drinks and fried foods are among the items that will no longer be sold in schools. In addition, 80 per cent of the new school menu must include products with the highest levels of essential nutrients and lowest amounts of fat, sugar and sodium. This includes fresh fruit, vegetables and whole grain breads. As well, 20 per cent of the new menu may include products that have slightly higher amounts of fat, sugar, and sodium. These items include bagels and cheese.

So far so good. It's difficult to disagree with a policy whose goal is the improvement of the nutritional quality of food sold in schools. But will the new standards prove to be the death knell for the hated (by me) Pizza Lunch?

Probably not. For one thing, the policy allows for 10 "special event" days during which less healthy foods can be sold on school premises. I can't prove it, but I would bet that this exemption was granted in recognition of schools' deeply ingrained habit of fund raising via Pizza Lunches. My daughters' school, for instance, holds Pizza Lunches every other week which, given the school calendar and holiday schedule, amounts to around twenty Pizza Lunches per year. So, under the new rules, ten of these "special events" would be permitted. That would be ten too many in my view.

But the special events exemption is not the only aspect of the new policy that concerns me. When one looks closely at the actual standards being applied in the "healthier foods" (80%) category, it becomes clear that the bar for "healthy" has not been set particularly high. Consider the standard for sodium, for example. The new policy (as laid out in the ministry's "quick reference" guide) states that in order for "entrees" such as "frozen pizza, sandwiches, pasta or hot dogs" to qualify as part of the 80% category, they must contain less than or equal to 960 mg sodium per serving. That's a lot of sodium for a child's lunch entree (i.e., not including sides or beverage). After all, the total recommended sodium intake is 1,200 mg per day for children ages 4-8, and 1,500 mg for children 9 and up. (See here.)

Even more troubling is the fact that the new sodium limit is relatively easy for pizza lunch suppliers to comply with—or rather to claim that they are in compliance with. Pizza Pizza has already circulated press releases stating that their pizza complies with the new Ontario rules governing food sold in schools in terms of trans fat, sodium, protein content, etc. When it comes to sodium, however, this claim is misleading. According to the nutritional information on their website, a slice of Pizza Pizza plain cheese pizza contains 580-590 mg of sodium; thus, two slices contain 1160 mg sodium, an amount that clearly exceeds the new provincial standards. The question is, how many children who enroll in pizza lunch programs eat just one slice of pizza? Our school offers children (for different prices) a choice of one, two, or three slices of pizza. From what I gather, some of the youngest children—in Grades 1 or 2—opt for the one-slice option, but the vast majority of students participating in the program choose the two- or three-slice options. (And need I add that the "snack" offered with the pizza is a commercial cookie or chips, which piles on even more sodium?)

My point here is not really to quibble about how and why pizza—or the fundraisers that revolve around this particular junk food—does or does not fit into the new 80% (healthier) or 20% (less healthy) categories. There is a larger point to be made: instead of trying to tinker with existing practices to render them compliant with new (not very exacting) ministry standards, schools should consider using the opportunity of new standards to inaugurate completely different programs. Scrap the Pizza Lunch! End the questionable practice of partnering with fast food companies for fund raising. Instead of Pizza Lunches, why not hold Gourmet Lunches, in which schools expose children to healthy foods from a variety of cultures? The possibilities are endless, but they require that we—school boards, administrators, parents—kick the habit: that is, that we break, once and for all, our unhealthy addiction to fast, easy and cheap food for kids.

Junk Lunch

I've had this post sitting in my drafts file since last spring. I hadn't worked on it much, but I'd thought about it often, and I had a lot to say. I was planning to make some pointed observations about school lunches. I also hoped to raise a few seldom-asked questions about the importance schools place—or do not place—on children's health and nutrition. More specifically, I wanted to write about: why lunch periods in elementary schools have been reduced in length from an hour and a half, when I was a kid, to one hour or less today; how and why kids are rushed out of unappealing lunch rooms (overseen by authoritarian "Lunch Ladies") after 10-15 minutes; why the one lunch program that is a given in almost all Toronto District School Board schools—the Pizza Lunch fundraiser—is a junk lunch. But then I was alerted to this report from CBS on school lunches in France, and I realized that not only does it tie into my previous post on the French Paradox, but that it speaks for itself, and for me. There's nothing more to say. (Thanks to Corey Mintz for the link.)