Food and compulsion and why has National lost its brain
I have been pretty saddened by the response of some principals and National Party Spokesperson Katherine Rich to the proposal that originated from the Greens that schools will be forced, yes forced, to provide only healthy food in their school tuckshops.Â
Is school voluntary? Don’t we make parents send their kids to school? And if we as a society make parents send their kids to these institutions don’t we as a society have a responsiblity to make sure that the food on offer from the tuckshop is good for them?
Does the National Party think its ok to use the state to force parents to send their children to an institution that then feeds them food that is bad for their health? Or are they now in favour of making school voluntary because it is too nanny state-ish to force parents to send their kids to school?
And if kids leave school grounds to buy junk food, or their parents send them to school with junk food, then it’s not ideal but at least let’s make sure that the school itself provides good food. There are plenty of opportunities outside school and in the rest of their lives to get hooked on junk food, let’s not start them on it at school.
June 14th, 2007 at 4:00 pm
Does this mean that you would support school being voluntary? Just wondering because after my experience as a student teacher in secondary schools, where I was expected to be a gaoler rather than a teacher, I would certainly be sympathetic to such a view.
Yes, children can still buy unhealthy products outside school, but the difference is that it is not implicitly endorsed as acceptable by an educational establishment.
June 14th, 2007 at 4:02 pm
Very well said Frog.
With grandchildren now in the Primary Schools I applaud this tuck shop rule to offer healthy food.
Sure, some children, probably mainly teenagers will exercise their right to eat what they can buy away from school.
Healthy eating is a good message. And by the by, the schools and colleges that I have had some experience with do not allow the children to roam off to the dairy inside school hours. Joy
June 14th, 2007 at 4:16 pm
I think most of the arguments against this bill are nonsense. Kids will buy cigarettes on the way to school too, and some of their parents allow them to, but that doesn’t mean we should start selling smokes.
Some students will leave school against the rules to buy junk, but most will adapt. Some students still smoke on school grounds too. (Shall we declare that’s perfectly fine, we give up trying to stop them?)
I have been trying to clean up the canteen at the school where I teach, and it has been extraordinarily difficult to change the set ways. Legislation is the only thing that will make our canteen staff change.
Some of the biggest hurdles in changing is the cost to the canteen, the tiny size of our food prep area and the expense to get rid of a sponsored fridge. We have applied far and wide for funding to get extra staff for prep, to buy a second hand drinks fridge to get rid of the branded one; what we really need to do this job well is a fully staffed kitchen area. No one has been able to provide us with the necessary funding or support, so nothing has been able to change.
It takes more people to make sandwiches and fruit salads than it does to shove a pie in a warmer. That is one area where the legislation may fall over. If you cannot replace the food with better options then schools will face problems of shortage of supply.
We like the idea of the traffic light system. If some foods are not banned outright, then I think we should traffic light them, red for occasional, green for every day… but following this system through logically, we then need to only stock a fraction of the amount. First in, first served, sorry, we only had 10 cookies today and they’re all gone, how about an apple? If we stocked the food proportionally to their position in the food pyramid then we can be part of the education, and prevent wholesale rebellion.
I’m also concerned that the ‘heart-tick’ may not be as healthy as it claims, with ‘heart-tick’ pies being essentially lower-fat/salt pies, but still with plenty of fat and without veges.
What is ‘healthy’ to one person is junk to another. We need clear guidelines, and all schools need access to nutritionists to help guide the transition.
June 14th, 2007 at 5:15 pm
I think people are getting very weary of this kind of state intervention. The smacking bill had consequences.
Why not let parents and school boards decide? Heaven forbid anyone take some personal responsibility for their own children…
June 14th, 2007 at 5:43 pm
Kiore, I’m in favour of compulsory education. If that’s by home schooling that’s ok so long as it’s good - two of my nieces were home schooled and they blossomed but it was bloody hard work for my sister-in-law. For most of us compulsory education means school.
PEL, how do people take personal responsibility for their own children when the state demands that they go to school? They are out of our control and in the hands of the state. Surely the state has a duty of care and that duty of care includes feeding them healthy food.
June 14th, 2007 at 5:46 pm
Kazel, appreciate your post. We have got the $12m Nutrition Fund but it won’t be enough. We should invest in the diet of our kids at school by helping schools out, so we don’t end up spending big time on the health of grown up kids with diabestes and obesity.
June 14th, 2007 at 5:51 pm
Russel,
What kind of parent subrogates responsibilty for their child to the State or indeed anyone else?
I do agree that schools should provide food however. Theres certainly the money for it. I would suggest they get the children helping with preparation as well so they can learn what good food is all about.
June 14th, 2007 at 7:32 pm
In this case, it is good to see some ’state intervention’, seeing there is a complete lack of any sort of responsibility of what is being served on kids’ plates in schools. I would have thought school menus are prepared by a dietician instead of the principal.
You would think there would’ve been an uproar over the selling of sausage rolls etc(to me this is twice a year party food, not once a day lunch!) long ago, instead of the opposite, seeing the poblem of kids suffering from diabetes and obesity is only getting worse. And you’d think principals would be only too happy to be told to only sell healthy food.
Oh, that’s right, it must be the dollars they make from selling the crap.
Linda Axford
June 14th, 2007 at 8:11 pm
This bill is ridiculous, it is both an example political correctness gone mad and the Greens desperation to be involved in the upbringing of our kids.
My kid (and all of his friends) is not obese, my kid goes to school with a healthy lunch, why should he and his pals be denied the chance of fish and chips for lunch once a week or perhaps a pie because the Greens are to politically correct to target the real cause of the problem.
Have a crack that the people who feed their kids rubbish, have a crack that those parents who are to lazy to get out of bed and make lunch for their kids, and most of all be brave enough to state the obvious, this is by and large a Maori and Pacific island problem.
June 14th, 2007 at 8:18 pm
Russell
The state has no right what so ever to tell me what I can or cannot feed my Kids.
The state has a duty of care to ensure my kids safety during the time he attends school, he is there to be indoctrinated with the left wing garbage that passes for education these days…..that is it.
Frankly I find it worrying that you as a possible member of Parliament would think that you have any sort of duty or the right to interfere with my family, keep persisting with this line and the voters will give you a very nasty surprise come the election.
June 14th, 2007 at 9:06 pm
As Kazel says, some kids bring cigarettes to school. Some also try to smuggle in marijuana, or pornography, or any one of a number of other things. I even had a friend (now sadly deceased) who smuggled home brewing equipment into the school, and tried to make beer in his locker. And that last point just goes to show that its not always about the most logical way to get things - sometimes its just the challenge of getting around the school rules. But most schoolkids will only have a limited amount of time and energy for smuggling things in - if they go to the trouble of smuggling junk food in, they probably won’t have the time or motivation to smuggle in cigarettes or pornography as well.
It would probably be an improvement if kids could express their rebellious tendencies merely by smuggling sausage rolls into the school grounds, and therefore not feel the need to bother with the other stuff. Except for clandestine brewing operations in school lockers, of course - everyone should try that at least once.
June 15th, 2007 at 1:48 am
Russell said “We should invest in the diet of our kids at school by helping schools out, so we don’t end up spending big time on the health of grown up kids with diabestes and obesity.”
Tackling just one of the 12 leading causes of obesity is unlikely to save much money from future health budgets.
A 2006 paper authored by 20 obesity experts from the US, Canada and Italy (International Journal of Obesity, DOI: 10.1038/sj.ijo.0803326) concluded that any evidence that junk food and lazy lifestyles are the main cause of the epidemic - or that halting them would reverse it - is “largely circumstantial”.
The study found ten other changes in western lifestyles that are either as strongly or more strongly correlated to the rise in obesity.
Reduction in sleep hours and quality
Increases in climate controlled homes, workplaces and transport
Reductions in tobacco consumption
Increasing proportion of mothers who are underweight at conception or during pregnancy*
Increasing proportion of mothers who have heriditary obesity*
The population bubble and falling dominance of caucasions in western countries (older people and non-caucasions have higher BMIs)
Increased use of neuroleptic antipsychotic medication, antihypertensives, protease inhibitors, antihistamines and insulin.
Greater exposure to chemical pollutants that disrupt endocrins and hormones, especially oestrogen
Increasing age of mothers
The cumulative effect of obese women marrying obese men and producing large families with a 60% probability that the children will inherit the obesity gene. Normal and below average BMI women are statistically more likely to partner with normal or below average BMI men and produce only one or two children.
Some of these are demographic factors, and they suggest that the “ideal” BMI may have been based on an underweight post-WWII generation. The health benefits of better heating and less smoking outweigh the health costs of their influence in the obesity epidemic.
Clearly the liberation of women is a significant factor but, again, not one that should be reversed merely to reduce obesity.
What is really needed is to educate people that our modern lifestyles do not justify eating as much as our parents did, or feeding our children as much as we were fed as children. In past decades we were eating for an active lifestyle and to keep warm, therefore it didn’t make us fat. That is not the case today.
There is ample evidence that healthy diets low in fats and sugars are important for preventing diabetes. But eating 500 calories of pies simply wont make you any fatter than eating 500 calories of carrots.
Focussing the entire obesity debate on just one-twelfth of the problem will do more harm than good, except if the objective is to win mother’s votes at the next election. And Labour’s focus groups have probably identified precisely that reason.
June 15th, 2007 at 1:52 am
* underweight babies of underweight mothers rapidly put on weight till they end up overweight at a few months of age and they carry this overweight into adulthood. These two increasing proportions means the proportion of children not inclined towards obesity by parental factors is declining.
June 15th, 2007 at 5:58 am
mmmmm,
See an opportunity here for an enterprising, go getting child to bring pies and chips to school and sell them to his/her class mates.
A good piece of legislation that will encourage private enterprise. Love it.
You can ban it from the tuck shop, can you ban it from the play ground?
Try banning it from the playground and every kids lunch will need inspected before being consumed. More work for teachers? Will you let the child, whose lunch has been confiscated starve for the day?
If schools fund a replacement lunch programme to feed the kids whose lunches have been confiscated, then pretty soon nobody will be sending their kids to school with a packed lunch.
Maybe providing school lunches for all is the only answer.
June 15th, 2007 at 8:50 am
some greens may be interested in this news/link..
http://whoar.co.nz/2007/jeanette-fitzsimons-on-95bfm/
phil(whoar.co.nz)
June 15th, 2007 at 8:55 am
Russel: “how do people take personal responsibility for their own children when the state demands that they go to school”?
Eh? Because the state demands a child goes to school, parents cannot take personal responsibility?
Make them lunch.
Novel idea, might just work…
For those kids who swap lunch, or get it from other sources, changing the tuckshop menu is hardly going to stop them.
Secondly, no food is junk. In moderation.
June 15th, 2007 at 8:57 am
PS: Not sure why you guys put up with forum spamming in the form of link drops
frogmaster writes: Thanks for your concern, you are right that we do not put up with spamming and link drops and we do delete instances of such practices. However we did not think that this one (or the previous couple that Phil has posted in the last few days) were an example of spamming, we thought they were useful links to encourage debate and discussion.
June 15th, 2007 at 9:02 am
Why exactly is a meat pie an unhealthy meal? My boys enjoy one once a week as a change to a cut lunch. They are fit and healthy, and slim. They are now denied reasonable choice because of the politics of “lowest common denominator”.
When you prevent one fat kid from buying a pie, it’s discrimination. If you ban them from every-one, it’s suddenly a noble cause, for noble reasons. How stupid is that?
June 15th, 2007 at 9:43 am
ZenTiger said: Why exactly is a meat pie an unhealthy meal? My boys enjoy one once a week as a change to a cut lunch. They are fit and healthy, and slim.
A meat pie is not un unhealthy meal if you have one a week. But if you have one on the way to school, one for lunch with hot chips and a cream doughnut, and one on the way home from school, it becomes seriously unhealthy.
Getting junk food out of school tuck shops won’t eliminate consumption of it by kids, for all the various reasons cited above, including Gerrit’s young entrepreneurs who will bring it to sell to other kids. But it will reduce the consumption of junk food by most kids, which can only be good for them.
June 15th, 2007 at 9:55 am
p.e.l..
linking to a (significant) interview jeanette has just given..(5 mins earlier) is hardly link-spamming..
here’s a real example of link-spamming for you p.e.l…
(just so you can see/tell the difference..eh..?)
cos’ as a matter of fact..i think that most of the twenty or so stories i have linked to this morning (and every morning) would be of interest to many of/with green sensibilities..
but hey..!..you can lead/point a green to green news/information..
but you can’t make them partake..!
eh..?..)
(see p.e.l…!..that’s an example of ‘robust’ link-spamming..!..
that’s what to watch out for..!..)
phil(whoar.co.nz)
June 15th, 2007 at 10:13 am
and as for zen tiger..and his futile/facile defences of those little packages of poison in pastry..
that’s just another of that (silly) ‘individualism/i stand alone! ‘ nonsenses he and many other righties adhere/cling to..
it’s all just ’stuff n’fluff and nonsense..!’..really..
and we have seen the peak of his ilk/philosophies..
the changed/ing lives/circumstances that will be forced upon us..mean a more ‘communal’ way of life will be ..again..unavoidable for most…
(with the first/obvious example of that being individuals being forced out of the ‘kingdoms’ of their cars..
and into the enforced mingling of public transport..)
and yes..!..’packages of poison in pastry’ are just another thread in those same green/environmental arguments..
and..hey zen..!..
you ain’t seen nothing yet..!..eh..?
phil(whoar.co.nz)
June 15th, 2007 at 10:19 am
btw..p.el…i’ll tell you (here) when my radio station is online..eh..?
i’m just tweaking the format/playlist..
so seven to ten days is my expectation..
(woo-hoo..!..eh..?..
i get to ’speak to the country/world’..!
(heh-heh..!..)
and that will be followed by sound and pictures..
phil(whoar.co.nz)
June 15th, 2007 at 10:47 am
BB: “The state has no right what so ever to tell me what I can or cannot feed my Kids.”
quite right old bean, it doesn’t, that would be nanny state gone mad - but this Bill does not do that. You can still send your kid to school with whatever food you want and you can still cook them whatever you want after school. Me’thinks you are over-reacting … again.
PEL: “For those kids who swap lunch” - you’re out of touch mate, school’s BAN the swoping of lunch nowadays because of the supposed danger of allergies.
Gerrit: don’t be daft, there is no way people are going to police the contents of lunchboxes. Educate them on healthy eating yes, make sure tuckshops have healthy options yes, tax unhealthy products yes, but anything else would be nanny state gone mad.
June 15th, 2007 at 11:05 am
Phil, your posts give my mouse scroll wheel a good workout. That’s all.
>>school’s BAN the swoping of lunch
Uh-huh. They also BAN smoking, alcohol, fighting, courses in liberal economics and disobedience….
June 15th, 2007 at 11:14 am
Your country needs YOU! eh, phil… yep lets see how popular enforced mingling of public transport is when the next influenza pandemic strikes… but hey, there is one gem of anti-individualism that actually would solve all our transport woes.. bulldoze the suburbs and force everybody to live in city apartments… or maybe you would prefer something actually extreme, like we all should live in one big communal dormitory in one of our abondoned car assembly plants?
June 15th, 2007 at 11:36 am
Fat kids generally become fat adults, and fat adults are much more likely to suffer from a range of diseases many of which the taxpayer will have to pick up the bill for. Even if for a moment we forget about the welfare of those kids lumbered with awkward extra kilos, think of the long term cost to our health system of kidney dialysis.
No, the state shouldn’t go into our homes and rip cream buns off us. Yes, the state should role model good eating habits for kids at the school tuckshop. No, one pie a week won’t kill them, but all the stats show that kids are not burning off those extra pies, they’re getting bigger and bigger and that will kill some of them. Surely the state should make schools places that are safe for kids bodies? Too much junk food is hurting kids, and schools should not be a party to this abuse.
Molly
June 15th, 2007 at 1:24 pm
I don’t think we’ll get far so long as schools are taught that “junk food” is something that adults love, but a kind of forbidden fruit only O.K. for grownups, who are immune from its effects. My experience from serving on school gala-day committees, is that teachers teach health and moral precepts all year round, but on gala day throw them out the window.
Raising money by germinal gambling (sending children door to door with raffle tickets), selling sausages and candy-floss instead of dental floss, fizzy drinks but no cups of tea, encouraging violence (throwing wet sponges at teachers’ faces, car and piano-smashing), anything for a quick buck. No wonder they get confused.
June 15th, 2007 at 1:34 pm
As I posted earlie:-
“Junk food� isn’t in my dictionary, because it was printed in 1971. So I’ve attempted my own definition:
1. It has a strong, delicious flavour
2. Young people love it
3. Mum doesn’t make it, it is manufactured by a big firm
4. So women don’t have to spend hours preparing it
5. It is “ready to eat� straight out of the packet
6. The label doesn’t say it is a health food
7. Potatoes are junk food unless eaten raw, but bottled water isn’t, even though it is 100% water.
8. Sugar is, but not sweet fruits or honey.
9. It is easy to consume, has a long shelf life, needs no refrigeration
10. The main peddlers are KFC, McDonalds, Pizza Hut; NOT Pizza Express or Nando’s or Subway.
11. Codliver oil, full of fat, artificial additives and preservatives, is not junk because children hate it.
12.Instant coffee is, but ground coffee isn’t
13. It has a long shelf-life.
The mortality rate among children who subsist entirely on home-grown and home-prepared “basic� foods is more than 20 times higher than it is among those who also eat junk food.
It looks like a bit of research is needed in the definition field!
In short, I strongly suggest the meaningless term “junk food� be abandoned, and guidelines be regulated according to degree of refining, fat content, degree of saturation of the fat, sugar content, salt content, percentage of the foodstuff which has any nutrition value, presence of flavour enhancers, dyes, preservatives, etc, fortification with potentially harmful additives (e.g. iron to breakfast cereals, beveridges, yeast spreads and bread), and so on. Instead of simply a division between “what children choose to eat� and “what parents want them to eat�.
June 15th, 2007 at 2:00 pm
>>Surely the state should make schools places that are safe for kids bodies?
Should we wrap them up in cotton wool in case the little dovery-woveys bang their knessy-weesy against a fence?
How about just targeting the fatties? Send them on a compulsory run.
June 15th, 2007 at 4:30 pm
Still not convinced meat pies are particularly unhealthy. And Phil’s arguments are usually so articulate and persuasive. Nanny State versus individual rights and responsibilities. Hmmm Phil, you make it all sound so tempting.
..But if you have [a pie] on the way to school, one for lunch with hot chips and a cream doughnut, and one on the way home from school,…
right Toad - and if you eat it with arsenic, that’s got to be bad for you too.
So by schools not selling meat pies, it breaks the vicious cycle of pie for breakfast, lunch, after school, dinner time and no doubt the midnight snack. The old “pie flow on effect theory”. All this from the party that thinks marijuana use doesn’t lead to harder drugs.
Has white bread been banned from tuck shops yet? I presume any “healthy” sandwiches that replace meat pies are on rye or wholegrain?
Are the Greens soon to mount a campaign demanding snow peas and sprouts have to be delivered fresh on the day, to ensure maximum nutrition value? And I trust sugar is a banned substance on school grounds. Possession might be the one reason to bring back corporal punishment…
June 15th, 2007 at 4:58 pm
could just increase the level of physical activity the schools are required to make the students do.
i went to Palmerston North Boys High School until a year ago (neadless to say english wasint my best subject), the tuckshop there provided both healty and unhealthy choices for meals, granted that it is a high scool, but the first things to fly out the service windows were, in order, Dagwoods (large sandwich things, very tasty), Wraps (gone in the first few minutes of lunch), pies, Filled Rolls and Sandwiches (also very tasty) followed by cake and nachos. i think at one point we also had the north islands highest coke consumption. boys high is a very physicaly active(and military like) school, we had very few overweight kids and maybe three (that i can remmeber seeing) out of the 1600 students that would be considered obease.
school is ment to teach children skills for the real world, so teach physical fitness and teach eating correctly and give them the ability to practice and develop those skills, make tuckshops sell healthy food that has some taste and you will be on a roll.
banning does not work, we still had many many students who did drugs, many during school hours, we had drug dogs through the school all the time but that never stopped anyone.
an example with normal food would be Palmerston North Girls High School which decided to ban coke because of the effect it had on girls, latter expanded to fanta and other high sugar, caffine and energy drinks, i remmember that one girl made a fourtune by selling coke out of her locker.
if the demand is there someone will find a way exploit that, be it coke or drugs.
i dont like scare tactics but prehaps remove government subsidy for new cases of self induced ailements such as obeasity caused illnesses. make the kids aware of the true cost of that pie they have for breakfast each morning.
I dont often agree with PEL but at times what he says has merit, same goes for phil u when i can understand what he is writing
Sapient
June 15th, 2007 at 10:31 pm
molly67,
The stats show that kids are getting fatter but they don’t show that this is substantially caused by eating more pies or other junk food. Obesity researchers have found a dozen contributing factors that show statisticly significant correlations with rising obesity levels.
Part of the problem is using average caucasion BMI from several decades ago as the “normal”. If the “normal” BMI is adjusted to take into account the ageing of western populations (and first-time mothers in particular) and the increasing proportion of non-caucasion children then obesity actually hasn’t reached W.H.O. defined epidemic proportions yet, and possibly may never do so.
The link between obesity and diabetes is not strong enough to justify regarding them as though they are siamese twins as many journalists and politicians have been doing. The evidence of a causative link between fatty and/or junk food and diabetes is many times stronger than for the link with obesity so there is a very real risk that the junk food based attack on obesity could divert resources and attention away from addressing ALL of the known diabetes risk factors.
A child who eats too many 500 calory salads will get just as obese as a child who eats too many 500 calory pies, but the pie eater is many time more likely to experience “obesity-related” health problems even though both children will be equally obese if the type of food is the only lifestyle difference. It is the type fats and sugars and amount of preservatives and other chemicals in junk food that appear to be responsible for the health problems. Therefore increasing obesity isn’t automatically followed by increasing health costs, especially in this country where diets have traditionally been extremely high in dairy products and animal fats so that we may have experienced the high health costs even before the obesity epidemic was recognised.
You recognised that obesity is the result of too many calories and not enough physical activity. If this was genuinely a health initiative by Labour it would have been accompanied by a “road safety initiative” banning kerbside parking or stopping within 200 metres of any school in the quarter hour before school starts and the quarter hour after school finishes thereby compelling unfit and/or obese parents to walk (and talk) with their kids.
June 15th, 2007 at 10:40 pm
P.S. The penalty for breaking the “improved road safety around schools” law would be the same as for boy racer behaviour, 28 days impoundment of the car, so naughty parents wouldn’t be able to drive their spuds to school for a whole month.
BB (and maybe PEL) will be shocked and mortified at this nanny-state intrusion into the rights of parents but it solves more problems than “discouraging” chips and pies.
June 15th, 2007 at 10:59 pm
Russell, Are these healthy food guidelines also being implemeted in prisons, hospitals, armed forces and other “compulsory” government “tuck shops”?
June 16th, 2007 at 9:30 am
How about Parliament? There are a few fatties in there…
June 16th, 2007 at 9:36 am
Greens opposed to shackling of prisoners:
http://www.greens.org.nz/searchdocs/PR10930.html
Key Words: inhumane; Tony Ellis.
jh
June 16th, 2007 at 9:49 am
It sound likethe school food is about as good as the quality of the education in those schools. By all means, bump up quality school food - but lets fix up the education first - after all kids don’t go to schools to eat, they go to learn.
If the Greens are more concerned with the quality of school food than the quality of school education then they have their priorities screwed. If they are more = - or equally - concerned about school education, they need better media staff.
June 16th, 2007 at 12:01 pm
I wonder how much of this is motivated by a personal negative reaction, by some, to corporates like Coke?
If we’re trying to decrease obesity, shouldn’t we start by defining the problem, then (cough) weigh up the merits of various solutions which address that problem?
I’m not sure how limiting what food school tuckshops can sell will make anything other than a marginal difference. The real problem appears to lie with some parents.
How can we target these parents? Would food vouchers for beneficiaries have more of an effect? Would an education campaign have more effect? Would a change of curriculum help i.e. more courses on food and nutrition?
As a poster mentioned above, should we be directing resources into this area, when we’ve got the far greater problem of kids leaving school without being able to read and write?
June 16th, 2007 at 1:29 pm
test
June 17th, 2007 at 12:10 pm
Ruusel - how would you feel about banning the sale of certain foods to under 16s? Make McDonals R16 for example?
Surely that is the logical extension of the no junk food in schools policy. It may not be a bad extension to make..?
June 17th, 2007 at 1:56 pm
I still think a meat pie is not such a big deal (as opposed to cream buns and carbonated sugar drinks which are very unhealthy), but after listening to the arguments on both sides, I’ve changed my position.
I am in now in agreement that the school has every right to choose the menu of food items it wishes to promote. I now agree that is not exactly the same as banning from school grounds such food items.
Some-one once said “no blogger ever changes their opinion etc. Just thought I’d mention this as it might encourage people to continue posting comments. There are more readers than commenters, so you never know…
And seriously, why stop with settling for just what the tuck shop sells?
The school I sent my children to banned a whole series of foods. This was not done by the heavy boot of the government, but by us parents getting together and collectively agreeing on the standards of home made lunches, to ensure all children were “in the same boat” and lunches were of similar nutritional value. By all parents cooperating and sharing the same goals, children were not faced with half the kids allowed to eat coke, biscuits, cake and a cream donut for lunch and the other half stuck on celery and sprouts. We took the same approach with TV. My kids only get a couple of hours on a Friday and occasionally a little on the weekend. But all other kids in the school were on similar rations. The results were happy and healthy kids, and no major disparity causing jealousies.
Conceptually, it pisses the hell out of me that a government department is making rule after rule. But I’ll respect the argument that they can and should set a healthy standard for schools.
However, the approach I’ve outlined above - effectively a total ban created through the meeting and cooperation of the parents, and enforced and managed at a more direct level, challenges the “nanny state” alternative.
Instead of expanding the health department to have analysts create new rules and regulations, what about a department that helped each school work from templates that involved parents and teachers working to an environment that was going to help our children? Instead of thinking up new rules “Meat pies bad, but bean tofu pie allowed if pastry 20% low fat butter” they see what the effective schools are doing and help share the processes, the charters, the techniques, the decisions made that are producing the outcomes they feel they need to legislate for?
And here’s an idea. Instead of finding another public holiday to make a “NZ day” or whatever, how about declaring a “national holiday” once a year that is used by schools and parents to get together to go over the years charter for the school kids - and have a big one day discussion around all things to do with their child’s education. It might cover, or springboard access to parenting skills and collective commitment to adhere to diet, exercise, story reading, sports, etc. No shops open, half day shifts for the critical industries, with parents of school age children given priority for time off on this national day. A public holiday that actually means action, not sitting back and wishing for things to be better.
When I think about it, I’m into banning big time when it comes to setting limits for my children. And as far as I can tell, they are happy, healthy and well adjusted. It’s the State trying to usurp my role because they feel it necessary to penalise my good work to get at other parents that makes the difference.
June 17th, 2007 at 7:01 pm
# ZenTiger Says:
June 17th, 2007 at 1:56 pm
> The school I sent my children to banned a whole series of foods. This was not done by the heavy boot of the government, but by us parents getting together and collectively agreeing on the standards of home made lunches, to ensure all children were “in the same boat� and lunches were of similar nutritional value.
That sort of discussion would be a great consciousness-raising exercise, if you could get enough of the parents involved. The discussion would probably do at least as much good as the actual banning.
June 18th, 2007 at 9:21 am
Interesting all these comments that see the new regulations as an assault on freedom for parents and children to make their own choices. Can I therefore enlist your support for making education optional? After all, the children and parents should be able to make their own choices. And the only other place we incarcerate people for 10 years of their life against their will is in prison. I ask myself what crime children have committed to deserve such a long sentence!
June 18th, 2007 at 1:49 pm
the thing with optional education is many children dont enjoy schooling apart from for socialization with friends, if they have any. this would lead to children deciding not to attend school because they dont like it, this would result in a less educated populas latter on in life and chances are also a greater level of unemployment and unskilled labour.
The thing with compulsary education is that it insures the children have a basis on which to make the decision as to if they should continue education after those 10 years. if the education was not compulsary it would leave the decision in the hands of children who do not yet have the foresight required to make such a piviotal decision and parents who may themselves not have much in the way of education and who decide that basic literacy and numeracy isint needed, i dont think that the children should have to endure the ill-consequences in their later life of decisions which were made in their youth by uninformed parents or themselves before they had any real idea of what the decision would do, further more i do not think that society should have to deal with extra tax so that these people can be supported.
but then again i think home-schooling should be something that takes place in addition to real school, not instead of proper schooling, unless they are home-schooled by someone with accual teaching qualifications.
Sapient
June 18th, 2007 at 6:30 pm
Under a voucher system all schools would be private. They’d supply whatever food parents demanded.
End of story. No politicians dictating what people should or should not eat.
June 18th, 2007 at 8:01 pm
the good old voucher system, i do love it, its an idea ive toyed with many a time, but given the disaster of previous privitizations would NZ support privitization of such an essential service as education surely is? it seems to work well where its been tryed but the transition may be rough.
Sapient
June 19th, 2007 at 1:17 am
I don’t see any problem privatising education if it is done the same way that our roads are privatised. The physical assets remain vested in the Crown and/or local authorities but the “school works” are delivered by reputable SOE/LATE/private company following competitive terndering for best service at best price. This has worked perfectly well for State Highways for the last 83 years. The railways kept all their “road works” in-house and look at what happened to them.
June 19th, 2007 at 1:23 am
The railways kept all their “road works� in-house and look at what happened to them.
ahhh… they got privatized?
… then the private company ran it into the ground and went bankrupt?
Yup, sound like a good model for education alright.
June 19th, 2007 at 1:57 am
Actually railways investment was widely abused to influence marginal electorates and to support favoured industries, particularly by the Seddon and Holyoake governments, with the result that the railways were run into the ground and became a huge liability instead of the asset that they should have been. Hence the government virtually paid Transrail to take the liability off their hands.
From the mid 1970s to the mid 1990s the state treated highways as a cash cow and ran them into the ground. The only difference was that when the LTSA got tough with speed limits on the railways it created a financial incentive for Toll to fix the engineering problems whereas when the LTSA identified the same problem with highways it created a financial incentive for the state to spend even less on highway safety.
Apart from the fact that the price paid by road users has been appallingly badly regulated by Parliament, the PPP system used for highways since 1924 has produced demonstrably better results than the government department system used for the railways for all but the last 15 years.
June 19th, 2007 at 4:44 am
Back on topic Kev : the idea of for-profit outfits tendering to run schools makes my skin crawl.
My kids are not roads. I don’t want the most cost-effective crowd control and indoctrination techniques applied to them. I want them to be educated in my community. There are plenty of things that can be improved in education, but privatizing is not going to help any of them.
I want schools to be properly managed, without waste. This is difficult, but not impossible, to achieve in the public sector. I have no ideological quibbles about privatizing those elements that have no particular need to be under public control, but education is about as far from that as you can get.
June 19th, 2007 at 5:02 pm
Those arguing for compulsory education seem to rely on the same premise as those who support regulating food; that parents and children cannot take responsibility for their own education and so the state has to step in. But I am not convinced this is the case. If education was optional, then schools would have to get their acts together to attract students. There would be a greater range of schools, including trade schools, apprenticeships and home schooling co-operatives, and teacher training would perhaps stop being the joke it has become.
Children and parents would be able to select their type of school, and most would probably enjoy being there. When I was at school, I would have enjoyed going if there was decent teaching and consistent discipline. If it was optional I would have chosen my school, but I would not have stopped going.
June 19th, 2007 at 8:44 pm
Yeah but you know as well as I do, Kiore, in fact probably better, that this would lead to severe social stratification. If parents are not particularly well-socialised themselves, then their propensity for providing a decent educational environment for their children is severely limited. In an ideal world, everyone has their place in a community, and that community will see that every child is taken care of, whether or not their biological parents take care of them decently. As far as I can see, we don’t actually live in that particular world…
Some parents will take advantage of new liberties to make sure their kids get the best of everything. Others will not. The socio-economic status of the parents is the determinant. A libertarian would no doubt argue that if kids get sent to a lousy school, or get no education at all, then it’s their own fault for choosing their parents unwisely…
You also seem to be proposing that the choice should belong to the kids, not their parents, which is sort of interesting…
June 20th, 2007 at 2:54 am
alistair, We already have a significant amount of privatized pre-school and tertiary education. Most school support services have already been privatized, such as cleaning and maintenance, etc. And maybe that’s as far as it should be allowed to go.
Or maybe the NCEA debacle wouldn’t have happened if it had been contracted to out to private experts the way the Auckland harbour bridge was. At least if NCEA had been another INCIS the government could have fired the guilty party.
I understand what you mean when you say “I don’t want the most cost-effective crowd control and indoctrination techniques applied to them.” but have you considered that the current system may be doing exactly the same thing in the least cost-effective way. I’m not sure that having the school curriculim and teaching meothodologies set by socioligists and/or politicians is any wiser than letting business people do it, bearing in mind that most business people aren’t motivated solely by profit, especially in small and medium sized businesses. Think of Edison and his desire to provide people with the benefits of electricity in the home. The profit was just the icing on the cake, and the means to fund more research and inventions.
June 20th, 2007 at 3:17 am
You’re wrong about that Kev, pre-school is not “privatized”, because it was never publicly provided in NZ. Various solutions, some community based, some commercially oriented, have grown up to fill an emerging need which government has failed to respond to. Failure to fund and organise pre-school care is a classic example of negative social engineering (hey did I just invent that term?) — out of social conservatism (women should be at home, not in the work force) and right-wing ideology (the market will take care of it, the fittest will survive) governments have done nothing, or next to nothing, leaving families to sink or swim with their child care / socialisation needs.
As I said above, I have no problem with cleaning and maintenance being farmed out. However, you are stunningly naive if you believe that schools would be run by kindly inventive small business people. They would of course be dominated by 2 or 3 big international service companies, of the likes of Clearstream or Vivendi, look them up, they love that sort of stuff. They would drive hard bargains on wages, and be ruthless in their standardization and cost-cutting. It’s the way they operate, and the way they make money. They would drive your benevolent small-business crowd out of business.
And incidentally, the profits (that’s your tax dollars) would go to overseas shareholders too.
June 20th, 2007 at 4:16 am
alistair, It is only a failure if it hasn’t resulted in good outcomes. But I don’t know enough about pre-school to make that judgement. However the governments recent funding initiative seems to have either been badly thought out or deliberately designed to undermine existing providers, judging by articles in our community newspaper.
Certainly, if the entire health or education system was privatised we would get an oligopoly situation which is no better than a state monopoly. That is the situation that would have occured if Transit had been broken up parts leased to a few major companies, which hasn’t happened, or at least it hadn’t happened before the current government encouraged Transit to sign 10 year maintenance contracts instead of having annual contestability.
I was actually referring back to sapiens comment about vouchers. That would allow private schools to compete on a level playing field with state schools but it wouldn’t (or shouldn’t) mean selling or leasing schools or school districts to private companies.
The perfect free market requires perfect competition. And as we all know that just doesn’t happen because there also needs to be perfect ethics and perfect information before you can have perfect competition. Monopolists aren’t ethical and they know all about controlling information. The advantage that Transit and it’s predecessors had was that it was free from both the monopoly of politicians and, for whatever reason, the work tended to get spread around many local contractors rather than any one contractor becoming dominant, however that may have changed with the way that this goverment has unleashed a flood of road works onto the market an only the biggest companies can expand fast enough to do the work.
It is a horrorfying thought that parents would choose to send their children to a cheap and nasty school rather than spend a bit more on a qualtiy education. Depends on whether we’re talking about vouchers or the complete abondonment of state funding, or the government contracting-out to private deliverers. Or maybe what worked with highways up till now was because of the business ethics of the past and not actually anything to do with the whether the organisations were public or private.
Although state control is the simplest economic system that doesn’t automatically make it the best. The alternatives to state control are almost infinite which makes debating them interesting but ultimately inconclusive.
June 20th, 2007 at 2:31 pm
Tertiary education is optional in New Zealand, and the same argument could apply, namely that it will lead to social stratification. The way we deal with this in the tertiary sector is to (at least in theory) ensure access to education for all, to encourage everyone to be in either employment or further study, and to encourage education as an option. The standard of teaching is generally higher in tertiary education, and the courses to teach the teachers are not a complete waste of time; I have actually learned something from them.
I cannot see why the same model cannot be used in secondary education, and why we cannot have more partnerships between secondary and tertiary institutes. This should lead to more children choosing either education or employment (including apprenticeships), and even if children or their parents do not place much emphasis on education, as the children mature, they will have the choice to go back to school at such a time as they can appreciate it better.
I see nothing wrong with taking into account the childrens’ choice as well. They are not insentient economic units to be manipulated by adults as they please, and if we had to take their needs and desires into account then we would have a better education system.
I also don’t put qualified teachers on a pedestal as the only beings who can be entrusted with teaching children. Most parents have to teach children as part of their parental duties, and most make a reasonable go of it. So there is no reason why parents cannot group together and arrange to teach each others’ children in a home school group.
Getting back to food, I consider children should be able to choose what they eat, but the state should be allowed to choose what it serves in its premises, especially as it has a duty of care to its inmates (sorry, students). In the same way, I am entitled to place any restrictions I like on the food I serve or allow on my property.
June 21st, 2007 at 2:34 am
Sadly, this report from The Press seems to confirm everybody’s worst fears about implementing these healthry food guidelines.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/thepress/4100934a19718.html
June 21st, 2007 at 9:52 am
The stupidity and ignorance of some parents never ceases to amaze me.
I shouldn’t be suprised after watching a similar situation happen after Jamie Oliver started such initiatives in British schools.
Maybe eugenics isn’t such a bad idea after all. If it prevents irresponsible people like these from becoming parents and destroying the health of their kids.
June 21st, 2007 at 11:15 am
Another interesting point I picked up from the article Kevyn posted is that canteens in schools are run by private enterprise, so of course they need to make a profit. But why can’t schools run their own canteens, then they would only need to break even. I’m sure parents and students could help, and it could even be a valuable educational resource for those studying home economics or business.
June 21st, 2007 at 3:47 pm
kiore1. My thoughts exactly. My intial assumption regarding certain schools opposition to the ban on junk foods was that it wasn’t to oppose the States’ interference in the “rights” of the kids to eat what they like, rather that it was financially motivated. Whether the profits went to the school or an outside contracter, no difference.
As aside I no longer believe that it should be up to the State to provide healthcare for its citizen’s, because a peverse result is that people have no incentive to look after they’re own health as they’ll be looked after at more health-conscious people’s expense who have to pay the same or more in tax. That doesn’t mean that I support the profit-motivated private health companies providing our healthcare, but I think it should be totally delinked from government funding and that people who make wise health choices should be rewarded, not punished.
Our health service (including ACC) should be set up as independant non-profit trusts that would be paid for by individual’s compulsary signup to an insurance scheme, administrated by the insurance divisions of those trusts and who would be incentivised for producing results in healthcare outcomes rather than for making the most profits or having the least costs.
The trusts should be regularly audited by an independant body (government?) and the results made public so that people can make their decisions upon who to join on the ability of the organization rather than the costs of care.
This would motivate the organization and its staff to improve their performance as they would be able to share more of the “profits” that would result from the improved health outcomes rather than in the traditional private health system where whoever owns the company reaps the majority of the profits. The number of providers should be limited to prevent the bloated private beauracracy that exists in the United States, which caused the health costs to accelerate rather than decrease.
Some time of course would be required to phase in the reform, which would allow time for people to be made aware that their poor decisions would have an impact on the provision of healthcare and would all them to adjust their lifestyles. Healthcare provider’s should not of course be able to target people with congenital conditions in order to skew their “health outcomes”.
June 22nd, 2007 at 1:27 am
kiore1,
“canteens in schools are run by private enterprise, so of course they need to make a profit.” Don’t forget, they also need to pay their workers, and pay tax on those wages and profits.
And they could never get away with overcharging for junk food to subsidise healthy food, which a not-for-profit canteen might possibly be able to get away with if it isn’t covered by fair trade or commerce legislation. Not very sensible that the only way to do this cross-subsidy thing completely legally is if the govt imposes an “fat” tax and then subsidises healthy canteen food. A bit like the recent increase in RUCs on buses to make sure they are paying their fair share of the subsidies paid to bus services.
Perhaps a little industrial espionage would be in order. Plenty of high school kids work at the golden arches. They could find out how a kitchen has to be organised to mass produce a standardised product at least labour cost. There should be a production line technique that would work with salads and sandwiches to get the costs down closer to mass produced junk food. After all its not just cheap ingredients that make junk food cheap, its also mass produced in ways that wouldn’t be out of place in a plastics factory.
June 22nd, 2007 at 2:06 am
SleepyTreehugger,
While I am in general agreement that the health sector should not be privatised we do need to ensure that anti-private sector sentiments don’t prevent mediacl experts from being able to “put thier money where there mouth is” and provide solutions that the medical establishment won’t take seriously simply because they are unconventional.
A case in point is the mobile surgical unit established by a group of medical professionals in Canterbury about ten years ago. The idea was to take a day surgery operating theatre to country patients instead the patients having to travel to the nearest big hospital. Despite this system having big savings in social costs and financial costs to these communities the service has had to fight tooth and nail to get funding from the DHBs simply because it is a private initiative and, I suspect, because certain salaried medical proffessionals see their livelyhoods being threatened. I would have thought the social equity alone would have been enough to get the support of Labour and the environmental benefits of reduced car travel should have been en extra incentive for Greens support. If this mobile operating theatre does 4mpg it would need to operate on fewer than 5 patients in each country town to be carbon neutral.
Perhaps Russell can correct me if I’m wrong about the Greens lack of support for this initiative.
June 22nd, 2007 at 4:25 pm
I agree that school tuckshops should be compelled to get rid of junk food if they aren’t going to do it willingly. Mainly as a model for good eating - I do not claim that this will have an effect on obesity.
However I am surprised to see that the only argument we are having is about civil liberties, and that the accuracy of the health guidelines are not being questioned in the media (although here ZenTiger has questioned whether pies are junk food).
Even less deserving of being classified as “junk food” is full-fat milk.
Full-fat milk currently contains 3.3% milk fat. Milk fat is an important source of Vitamins A, D and K. It also provides conjugated linoleic acid, which helps fight cancer. It is good for you! (try typing “full-fat milk” in google and have a look at some of the studies).
I would like to see the media pick this up. However, the government has been very quiet on full-fat milk since their announcement late last year (which was where I found out about it). Whenever they talk about their policy they always mention fizzy drinks and sugar as the targets - not poor old milk…
June 22nd, 2007 at 4:36 pm
P.S. make the google search “full fat milk study”… it is linked to reduced risk of infertility, reduced risk of asthma, and lower weight to name a few.
June 23rd, 2007 at 11:06 pm
About 25 years ago, I was employed as a school caretaker; my duties included raking out each day the incinerator - which refused to work through being choked with Granny Smith and Red Delicious apples. From which usually a single bite had been taken.
Some children will accept as true things learnt at school in preference to what their parents say. My belief that all discussion or discouragement of so-called ‘junk food’ is a waste of time; the schools need to devote a few lessons to lectures on nutrition. If their sports teacher pushes the idea that there are no ‘bad foods’ per se, but that manufacturers do awful things to foods, and mix them with undesirable dyes, flavour enhancers, preservatives, devitalise them, etc… And suggest a well-thought-out list of better class foods, which most children like and which will increase sports performance, the battle will be won. Nothing wrong with promoting the idea that poor eating is old-fashioned, but trying to force change or limiting freedom is not a good idea. The truth is, on the whole, it isn’t what kids eat that is bad for them, so much as what they can’t eat when full up with less than ideal food. We want to cure obesity not by depriving them of anything, but by giving them what they aren’t getting.
June 23rd, 2007 at 11:41 pm
Perhaps children wouldn’t be so keen on drinking coke if they were shown the hazmat signs that must be displayed on tankers carrying cokecola concentrate, or perhaps they could be entertained by watching the fire service do a dangerous chemical spill drill with one of these tankers. I’m sure coke would see the public relations benefits of being associated with such a fine group of dedicated and respected role models that they would gladly donate a tanker.
June 24th, 2007 at 1:46 am
the voucher system has its ups and downs, in general im against privitisation, but in the cae of schools im not so sure, if a voucher system was implimented state schools would have to catch up to private schools in quality or they would loose funding because of fewer students, there would probaly be a shift towards better quality private education, the voucher system effectivly acting like a self ballancing free market (you know, those things im usualy so opposed to), but in this case i think it will probaly work, i know it dod elsewhere, i think it was sweden?
when i still attended PNBHS i remmeber a talk with the school counseler and my frustration at the way school was taught, he used to teach, i had him once, wonderful teacher. he told me that the reason he had left teaching to become the counseller was because he had become so disspirited with they was they were made to teach. the school system teaches us what to think, not how to think, this is something that needs to be changed, prehaps by philosophy classes? or just different meathods.
as for school food, i think what needs to be done is to make the ‘bad’ food more expensives and subsidise the ‘good’ food, acting as an incentive to purchase the ‘good’ food. education about food and healty living habits is neaded quite heavily, but so is the oppourtunity to practice makeing the chioces involved in those healthy living habits. so in short, allow ‘bad’ food, just moderate the price and increase the level of education and awareness, i dont normaly aprove of scare tactics but in this case i think the truth of bad habits may be used as such.
Sapient
June 24th, 2007 at 2:59 am
Perhaps they could make philosophy compulsery at year 12 instead of english? you learn how to think as well as how to speak and write well in philosophy classes, sadly I couldn’t take them at my high school but am enjoying them greatly at university.
June 24th, 2007 at 6:59 am
it’s been a long time for me,do the public high schools have money management as a compulsory subject? our primary schools should have it taught in their preschools with say? icon based methods as our lil ones know the Mcdonalds sign well before they can read, it would benefit our kids far into their future rather than leaving it as a choice for them to take at high school.
How about just killing the prepackaged food i.e chips and chocolate bars. that would greatly improve the move towards fresh fruit in the tuckshop, at the age when your just a pimply kid you generaly don’t care what you throw down your gullet when your hungry. Has anyone read ” Rich dad
Poor dad”? beautiful book they should devote an entire period to reading that once a week for our high school students, the majority won’t have the problems our young are having now with being laden down with debt before they can fully comprehend the full impact of what a credit card means?, in this “NO DEPOSIT AGE” are the finance companies and credit corps trying to program the next generations of users by programming their parents while they have just left school? A wicked thing the credit card too many have been enslaved to it’s lure.
you think that our ministers have been compromised? by the financial sector and been replaced by credit-clones heh heh! or are they making inroads into our high schools? beware! this model of finance only benefits one side not all. Our country should be run by mastercard,american express lol it already is heh hehheh!
June 24th, 2007 at 7:08 am
I grew up in the milkman days where you either had silver top or blue, silver was our favourite as you scooped it out over your porridge, these days parents give the kids chocolate milk to pour over their chocolate rices then a packet of chips to eat on the way to school
June 26th, 2007 at 5:47 pm
davey, i agree that philosophy should be taught in schools (did i propose that in my post? i remmeber i wanted to but im too lazy to read it).
im taking some papers in philosophy at the moment, it is extremly interesting, but it would depend on the student i supose.
our school system as a whole needs to be uprooted and totaly changed, it has failed to adapt with the society.
the schools here in palmerston north have started to reduce the hours of schooling, i think st peters and freyburg have 3 hours on wednesday (not quite sure about the exact time) and other days are shorter too, if anything the days need to be longer and subjects need to be relivant.
i remmeber that socal studies was compulasary, so was health, prehaps we should make basic economics or accounting compulsary and some sort of philosophy. although i think it would be more effective to build the philosophy into the subjects themselves. and get rid of these little subjects which you can get credits for which are not at all relivant, i remember listining to mates who went to freyburg and awatapu telling me what subjects they do and they were absolute crap, with insane amounts of credits available. another mate was telling me that at st peters he could get 80 credits in one year in computing (you need 120 to pass in total), and apparently all that it covered was basic word processing. and here was i doing physics, chemistry, calculas, etc and only having 24 credits avalible for each.
that turned into a bit of a rant
but anyway the whole thing needs to be changed.
Sapient
June 26th, 2007 at 6:00 pm
Sapient - I agree, but I don’t know how to motivate my kids to do what they need to do. The demand isn’t apparent, the need isn’t apparent to them. Curiousity appears to be a totally irrelevant issue. Maybe my son has some. He is the one who asks questions… my daughter never asks… she DEMANDS
respectfully
BJ
June 26th, 2007 at 11:32 pm
BJ, i would have no idea how eaither, thats why im doing a psychology degree
i can just never understand how people can go by without thirstign for knowledge, i mean to say i love knowledge, i love learning, i hated school though. can someone give me an answer as to why so many people are happy with knowing so little? i know theres the ‘thats just how they are’ but i cant stop at that. almost everyone i work with doesint care about politics unless its got to do with tax or something, none care about history, science or such. my brother said to me the other day that theirs no point in learning about history and politics and science because it doesint effect you, this seems to be the attitude of so many, but they have everything to do with us, im about to go into even more of a rant so ill stop now.
i guess it all comes down to the why question.
im not addicted to drugs or any substance, i am however it seems addicted to the why question and mind games, and i wouldint have it any other way, prehaps that may help me understand the mind of addicts
and im in danger of ranting again, fun.
but anyway i think that curiosity should be cultivated in school, the thirst for learning enhanced.
demands, hmm, atleast its curiosity of a sort.
Sapient