I think I shall call it Mini-Rant
Nov. 22nd, 2002 02:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
snakebitcatOK, first the context, since I originally posted this on another forum:
A friend mentioned that the parents of a kid who was particularly allergic to peanuts got the administrators of their child's school to ban all peanut products from being brought to school. Unless I misunderstood, that included kids bringing things with peanuts included in them. So here's what I wrote in reply:
Pardon my French, but that's one of the stupidest goddamn things I've ever heard of. That's like saying because your child got burned by a stove that stoves need to be banned. Whiskey, Tango, Foxtrot, over?
People need to learn that there's a dividing line between protecting your children from hazards, and forcing those who don't have your child's vulnerabilities to give up that which causes them no harm. You don't want you child eating peanuts? Fine, make sure they understand that it will hurt them. But all you do by getting the powers that be to outlaw peanuts from the school is plant the mark of Cain on the child's forehead.
The other kids in school are not, as a general rule, going to think of this along the lines of "They're keeping that kid from dying," but rather are far more likely to think "It's that damn kid's fault that we can't get anything with peanuts in it." Way to go, parents.
The older I get, the more convinced I am that Twain and Mencken were optimists about the human species.
A friend mentioned that the parents of a kid who was particularly allergic to peanuts got the administrators of their child's school to ban all peanut products from being brought to school. Unless I misunderstood, that included kids bringing things with peanuts included in them. So here's what I wrote in reply:
Pardon my French, but that's one of the stupidest goddamn things I've ever heard of. That's like saying because your child got burned by a stove that stoves need to be banned. Whiskey, Tango, Foxtrot, over?
People need to learn that there's a dividing line between protecting your children from hazards, and forcing those who don't have your child's vulnerabilities to give up that which causes them no harm. You don't want you child eating peanuts? Fine, make sure they understand that it will hurt them. But all you do by getting the powers that be to outlaw peanuts from the school is plant the mark of Cain on the child's forehead.
The other kids in school are not, as a general rule, going to think of this along the lines of "They're keeping that kid from dying," but rather are far more likely to think "It's that damn kid's fault that we can't get anything with peanuts in it." Way to go, parents.
The older I get, the more convinced I am that Twain and Mencken were optimists about the human species.
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I'm of two minds on this...
Date: 2002-11-22 01:30 pm (UTC)The other posters are right... some children's allergy is so severe that breathing the dust or getting peanut oil on their skin is enough to put them on a respirator, if they make it to the hospital in time. The severity of the potential outcome makes me think that it's only prudent to eliminate any potential exposure.
On the other hand, we start dancing around this "good of the one outweighs the good of the many" concept and one has to wonder how far it will go. Do we end up with situations where if you've got a kid in school you can only smoke in a hazmat suit under a commercial labaratory ventilator because if your kid has smoke in his clothes and goes to school, another kid might have an asthma attack? Okay, I know I'm getting outside the realm of reality here, but hopefully I illustrated my point.
And what do you do if the kid with the peanut allergy pisses off one of those anti-social kids that's hiding out in every school? It's widely known why they can't have peanuts at school... what's to prevent some twisted mal-adapted kid to impregnate a handkerchief or something with peanut dust and "accidentally" get it in contact with the kid with the allergy? Tell me there aren't any twisted kids in our schools that would do something like that because someone pissed them off. I'll go through the news archives and list off the kids that have gone to school with guns to kill someone that pissed them off. It can happen.
Basically, I'm all for keeping kids from dying, but where does the line get drawn? How far does it go?
And I could drive the anti-eugenics crowd nuts by postulating that it's natural selection. ::GRIN:: (it's a joke, people)