Junk Food as Positive Reinforcement

[Temerit]

What do you think of this?



In America at least, with our screwed up view toward food, many elementary school teachers and even junior high and high school teachers award kids for doing good work with candy. On valentines day, all of the kids give each other calorie packed sweets. Children learn to associate success and hard work with eating.



My personal opinon is that this is disgusting, especially with the childhood obesity rate in America. If it doesn't cause immediate problems, it could later cause habitual problems that follow into adulthood.

 

[Corleone]

It's candy, it's not the end of the world. My teachers used to give us candy if we could answer a test question right, and that really motivated me to study hard for the test review and if I knew it for the review, I'd know it for the test. Come on, a few pieces of candy is not going to make a child obese or have obesity problems when they get older. If their teacher gave them loads of candy everyday and did this for a while, then yeah, that's a big problem, but teachers never did that when I was in elementary school. What I'm trying to say is that I was rewarded candy as a child, and I'm not obese, and it never caused me to have an obesity problem. By adulthood, if you still have links to eating candy from elementary school, then maybe you need to grow up, because you should begin to mature by middle school, and having candy here and there is nice to have with proper exercise and other nutritional sources.

 

[Nebulous's iconNebulous]

I work at a school and they have an approved snack list. Teachers aren't allowed to give out candy anymore. They can give out fruit snacks or something like that though.



Although its not really a big deal. Giving a child a piece of candy or a toy or whatever shows them that if they work hard then they will be rewarded. It motivates them to want to succeed.