"All [the children's] ferocity was turned outwards, against the enemies of the State, against foreigners, traitors, saboteurs, thought-criminals. It was almost normal for people to be frightened of their own children. And with good reason, for hardly a week passed by in which The Times did not carry a paragraph describing how some eavesdropping little sneak - 'child hero' was the phrase generally used - had overheard some compromsing remark and denounced its parents to the Thought Police."*
So what, you may be thinking.
Until The Lad came home from school today with a sheet labelled "Food Diary"** in which he had to record what he had eaten for "Breakfast, Snack, Dinner, Snack, Tea and Snack" today. Given that only the daftest parents would enter "Burger, leftover chips, burger and chips, crisps, chips, crisps" or be so brave as to cross out "Dinner, Tea, Snack" and replace them with "Lunch, Dinner, Dessert", what is this really suppose to achieve?
Except to enable The State to single out the daftest parent for a visit from the Thought Police, or "Social Services" or "Health Visitors" or whatever they are called nowadays?
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Update 20.07: The Lad confirmed this evening that the survey had something to do with the whole "five a day fruit and vegetable" concept, apparently some kids got stars on their chart. Right then, next time we shall include a few more apples and oranges under "snack". Bastards.
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* From '1984' by George Orwell.
** c. 2001 Language Centre Publications Ltd.
A grim document
15 hours ago
5 comments:
Scary :|
I think I remember doing that myself actualy, though I have a feeling it was for French, not health-Nazism.
He's 6 years old, he hasn't started French.
The most frightening thing about this is that you appear to be too intimidated to cross out "Dinner, Tea, Snack" and replace them with "Lunch, Dinner, Dessert". Not that I blame you, you understand. If today my children were 6-year olds at a LEA-run school I'd also be wary about giving any excuse to our rulers to bully me or mine.
Winston Smith's solution (actually, if I remember correctly, it was Julia's) was to obey all the little rules to the letter but ignore the big ones: eg sport the Anti-Sex League belt but have illicit love affairs; enthusiastically join in the 2-minute hate but read Goldstein. I can foresee this as a part of the behaviour pattern to be adopted while living in Airstrip One in 2015 and trying to retain one's sanity.
I've made witty jokes in the face of authority before and always met a frosty response, so I wasn't prepared to gamble on them having any sense of humour.
It is perfectly reasonable to ring up the teacher and ask 'what is the purpose of this questionnaire and who is requesting the data'?
Whilst I yield to no one on the subject of the nationalization of child hood and the state's outrageous attempts to claim ownership of other peoples' children under the guise of 'protection', experience suggests you might be worrying unnecessarily here.
What I've found in the past is that some lazy bones of a teacher has photocopied some public-issue documentation and is hoping to do a class exercise on graphs, maybe even pie charts.
If this is the case, then there's no real need to give 'em a hard time. Just fill in what ever will be easy to count e.g. Chicken,chips ice cream, and let the child note how poor data collection can undermine the value of a whole exercise.
If, on the other hand, there is some bluster and a refusal to say what it is for and who wants it, then you've got some blog material and can investigate whether this is the local authority indulging in spying when courtesy requires they ask the parents direct.
It might even be a private firm doing market-research or marketing in one of its more subtle guises. The placing of 'snacks' on the list tends to normalize the idea of consumption of the products.
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