Readers of TCL and BigLiberty should be familiar with arguments against extensive “health-oriented” programs whose main purpose is to get people, especially children, to lose weight. While we have argued in the past against the efficacy of these programs (even when they’re between a doctor and patient and not state-imposed), myth-busting always and ever plays second fiddle to the fundamental question of whether or not a program is fashioned to take away our liberties to parent ourselves and our children.
Yesterday Michael Graham noted on his blog that Newburyport, MA, is taking up the torch of Nanny State Healthism. Healthisms : Health, if some readers aren’t familiar, is like Truisms : Truth. Healthisms are those things about health which “everyone knows are true” that are, if you dig a few more layers down, not at all true and sometimes have a preponderance of rigorous evidence against them. We’re not here to argue whether or not diet and exercise programs can ultimately make someone thinner, and whether even if that’s true, diet and exercise programs are suitable for growing children.
We’re here to talk about why it’s a slippery slope from being “for” programs like this which indocrinate children in particular kinds of behaviors rooted in shoddy science, and effectively take very basic parenting choices away from parents.
In this case, the schools are operating on the assumption that they know better what should go in your child’s mouth than yourself. This doesn’t take into account your own dietary beliefs, your child’s dietary tastes and/or requirements, doctor’s dietary orders, the psychological consequences of splitting food into “good” and “bad” categories (which itself is considered disordered eating by any nutritionist worth his salt), the possible stigmatization of fat children who would be considered by thinner children to be “to blame” for the ban, the focus by school officials on fatter children as the worst offenders and conducting searches in their bags or lockers like one would a hooligan for drugs, or the danger in allowing school board members the power to make scientific decisions about nutrition given they likely have little to no expert knowledge of nutrition.
So it isn’t difficult to see how this sort of thing can get pretty hairy, pretty quickly. A shoddy, strong-armed policy based on shoddy science usually does! It also usually results in a progressively greater ratcheting-down of liberties and rights. When fatter children are being singled out for locker searches solely based on their relative weight, is this still an upstanding policy with health as its goal, or is it simply mindless, Nanny State reduction of basic freedoms, creating a deviant class “to blame” for not conforming to their policies?
When it comes down to it, all the possible bad consequences are reduced to the fact that the State (school, etc) overstepped its bounds. Parents are parents for a reason, and treating every parent who gives their kids any sugar like a secret child-abuser is dead wrong, both scientifically, and legally. I’m of the mind that Newburyport’s candy-ban is illegal: they could not, if pressed, show that candy or soda causes direct harm to the student or distracts other students.
Newburyport parents, it’s my humble opinion that you’re well within your rights to bring this matter to court. Start standing up for your rights now, else precedence will overturn any protestations in the future.
bigliberty
