Peanut Allergies and Banning PB in Schools

[Enoch]

[The Comrade]

having a degree in how people tend to think in aggregate is not the same as raising an individual child.

this isn't debatable. i'm sorry. someone with a degree in engineering is useless until he's built something. someone with a degree in medicine is useless until he has treated someone.

general knowledge and first hand experience are wildly different. to suggest otherwise in THIS particular case is just attempting to deflect from your lack of actual experience.

[NAB]

[Enoch]

I love people who rely on the "you're not a parent, so you don't count" arguments. The fallacy in that line of thinking just becomes some bizarre mixture of circumstantial ad homs, strawman arguments, "Moving the Goalpost," and just a touch of the "No True Scotsman" fallacy. You want to discount me because I'm not a parent? Fine, be my guest. But, keep the "your lack of experience in this subject invalidates your opinion" claim in mind next time you want to talk about anything you've not personally done.

You want to talk about what politicians should or shouldn't do? Sorry, unless you've been a politician your opinion is invalid.
You want to comment on the appropriateness of a business decision? Oops. Unless you've owned your own business your stance is immaterial.
You want to discuss the treatment of a certain minority group? Unless you are a member of that group, stuff it.

Do you not see how idiotic the "you're not a parent, so you don't count" line of thinking is? All you do is continually move the goalposts on what it takes to be qualified to discuss children. In the end, you've succeeded in doing nothing but discounting the source, not the stance.

You want to behave that way? Go for it. At least it gives me a better picture of what to expect from you in the future.

[The Dharma Bum]

[The Comrade]

[exploited]

Good opinions derive from facts, so what are the facts? Nut allergies are one of the most common food allergies, and yet, just 1% of the population suffer from nut allergies. Only 150 people die from it, per year, in the United States. If you have a nut allergy, smelling or being around nuts doesn't harm you.

So what can be done about it? One route is to ban them entirely, but I'm not so sure that is a good idea. Peanut butter isn't a bad thing for the vast majority of kids. It is packed with protein, it is cheap, it is easy to make. For children who come from poor families, this is more important than it seems. Packing a healthy, nutritious lunch for your kids is hard enough when you are poor. Why take away a reasonably nutritious staple, when it's potential danger is on the extreme side of minimal?

Another route is to just ignore the problem, and let nature take it's course. Kids with dumb and neglectful parents can be left to go into anaphylactic shock and die, everyone else gets a delicious peanut butter and banana sandwich. I don't like this idea either, because schools should reasonably accommodate as many allergies, disabilities, special needs as they can.

The best possible route is to establish an allergy-awareness system for teachers and lunch monitors. A school of 500 kids would have, statistically, five allergic kids. Keeping an eye on five kids as they eat their lunch doesn't seem all that daunting. Hell, even if you just had the teachers remind the kid, that would go a long ways.

EDIT: You can have a pretty good opinion about kids without having them, but you won't ever be an expert in my eyes until you've raised your own. It is like a pilot who has never flown teaching others how to fly. You might be able to get them off the ground, but it's not landing a fighter jet on a carrier in the middle of the night.

[Enoch]

And you are making the claim that teaching children doesn't work. So, I suppose we are at an impasse then. I'm advocating for responsibility of the parents in looking after their own children, however that happens, without foisting responsibility on to others and interfering in other parents' rights to raise children how they deem necessary.

It seems to me that all you are doing is attacking the source and claiming that kids are too stupid to be taught. Perhaps we should eliminate elementary school then, since kids are "functional retards" who can't learn?

[fstarcstar]

[The Comrade]