The woman pictured above, Republican Beverly Gard of Indiana, says all students in Indiana public schools should be weighed each year, and the results entered into the state's database. She has proposed legislation requiring the age, sex, height, weight, and ethnicity of each and every public school student in the state be recorded. The data would be used to determine which parts of Indiana have the most fat kids.
Beyond that, there's not much real substance to her proposed law. No indication from Her Highness how the data would be used, protected, shared, manipulated, or accounted for.
She just wants to know where the fat kids are.
Ms. Gard has been in the Indiana State Senate since 1988. Her bio says she enjoys grandparenting and bird watching.
Perhaps Ms. Gard could strike up a friendship with Wisconsin's Julaine Appling, whom she resembles, and the two of them could form a JOA to function as a watchdog on our children's weight and morality.
There are a lot of leftover RINOs still floating around in gummints. This, too, shall pass.
ReplyDeleteAs to Appling/Gard: I'd rather have fat kids than immoral ones.
YMMV.
This reminded me of the new Wisconsin law requiring minions of the local constabulary to collect demographic information at every traffic stop. There was that police chief in a small northeast Wisconsin town who was prepared to do civil disobedience; there's apparently no substantive penalty for breaking the law...but the town supervisors have told him to follow the law.
ReplyDeleteThis proposed Indiana law puzzles me, though. Age, sex, height, and weight are already recorded regularly, at least in Wisconsin schools. We get the stats sent home to us along with our daughter's performance record on the fitness tests.
The only thing that isn't recorded on this summary is ethnicity.
There hasn't really been any suggestion that we should do anything in particular about our daughter's weight...though I looked askance at the stories about Mrs. Obama's focus on childhood obesity. I've been watching for the nannies ever since.
The Town Crank
Neenah
Went to a school district spelling bee a few weeks ago. Remarkably few fat kids on the stage. Maybe it's true what they say, that aside from sleep, diet and exercise are the two biggest determinants of academic success for kids. Matching up body fat and test scores might support this idea and some restructuring of school lunch programs might mean smarter and higher-achieving kids.
ReplyDeleteWhat the hell would we want to go down that road for? Pass the Cheetos!
The data is not really fat levels but body mass indexes. Research will help solve the complicated problem of childhood obesity
ReplyDelete