My 12-year-old daughter has been invited to participate in a school event that my husband and I are not crazy about. I wanted to see how other parents would feel about their child doing something like this.
First, the positive. The event serves as a fundraiser for a local food pantry, and they collect tons of donated food and resources.
A team of sixth, seventh, and eighth graders go up against students from another local middle school. They are given academic quiz game questions and other challenges. The student who gets the correct answer first gets the opportunity to throw a pie in the face of the other student. In later rounds, they let the kids go all out with other messy items. In the past, students have had jumbo-sized cans of baked beans, Spaghetti-O’s and chocolate syrup dumped over their heads, and have been squirted with whole bottles of mustard and ketchup. Most of the food used is past expiration and would have been thrown away. By the end, the kids start slipping on the sloppy tarp, and it devolves into an all-out food fight. As you can imagine, everyone ends up covered from head to foot and they hose them down at the end.
The school views this as a way to reward good students and let them break loose and fulfill the fantasy of being in a food fight. My husband and I agree that our daughter is old enough to make this decision. She told us that she is feeling a little nervous, but she thinks it will be fun and wants to participate. (She is a straight-A student who does ballet, violin, and sports). To me, the event seems kind of demeaning, and honestly it will be hard for me to watch my daughter in this kind of situation. Am I overreacting? I would be interested in hearing how other parents would feel.
First, the positive. The event serves as a fundraiser for a local food pantry, and they collect tons of donated food and resources.
A team of sixth, seventh, and eighth graders go up against students from another local middle school. They are given academic quiz game questions and other challenges. The student who gets the correct answer first gets the opportunity to throw a pie in the face of the other student. In later rounds, they let the kids go all out with other messy items. In the past, students have had jumbo-sized cans of baked beans, Spaghetti-O’s and chocolate syrup dumped over their heads, and have been squirted with whole bottles of mustard and ketchup. Most of the food used is past expiration and would have been thrown away. By the end, the kids start slipping on the sloppy tarp, and it devolves into an all-out food fight. As you can imagine, everyone ends up covered from head to foot and they hose them down at the end.
The school views this as a way to reward good students and let them break loose and fulfill the fantasy of being in a food fight. My husband and I agree that our daughter is old enough to make this decision. She told us that she is feeling a little nervous, but she thinks it will be fun and wants to participate. (She is a straight-A student who does ballet, violin, and sports). To me, the event seems kind of demeaning, and honestly it will be hard for me to watch my daughter in this kind of situation. Am I overreacting? I would be interested in hearing how other parents would feel.
