An open campus lunch is a simple concept that probably most of us experienced in the past. While some schools implement this policy, many of them do not. It has become a hot topic in debates with both sides pushing one opinion or another about it. Let us take a look at its pros and cons to come up with a well-informed opinion about this policy.
List of Pros of Open Campus Lunch
1. It places trust in students to manage their own time.
An open campus lunch requires schools to place their trust in schoolchildren on managing their time accordingly, teaching them an essential skill for college and working in the future. And when schools trust their students, these children will feel empowered to make the right choices for their future. As responsibility is often observed to lack in students, this policy can provide them with that need.
2. It offers students the opportunity to interact and learn responsibility.
This school policy has been proven to teach students on interacting with the world and becoming more responsible in a way that is closer to how adults do it. It requires them to communicate with other people when they go to the restaurant, which can help them with their learning.
3. It provides healthier and more nutritious food options.
While dining establishments found within a walking distance might not be serving the healthiest food, they can offer a lot more choices to students, which is great for those who want different food for every meal. Also some food caterers for schools could be poorly doing their job with how they prepare their dishes, which means that their food is not always palatable or having the necessary nutrients.
List of Cons of Open Campus Lunch
1. It risks children to getting hurt.
Schools are responsible for ensuring the safety and well-being of their students, and having an open campus lunch would make it more difficult to regulate things, where they allow children to leave. This would literally put schoolchildren at risk. This is why a lot of parents, who do not have the luxury to supervise their children during the day, try to oppose the implementation of an open campus lunch to better ensure the safety of their children.
2. It gives children an opportunity to do bad things.
What do you think some children would do when let out unsupervised? Most probably, you would assume the very worst while hoping for the best. It is believed that this policy may pose a certain danger to the children and the community. Some people think that children will use this chance to drink alcohol, smoke and take drugs.
3. It gives an opening to ditch school.
Aside from trying to spend more time off campus than they would if an open campus lunch is implemented, it is also possible that children will ditch school half a day. This can result to them stopping their studies, decreasing enrollment rates.
Schools consider their policies, including open campus lunch, carefully as potential sources of problems with student performance. Those who implement it want to reduce stress from providing meals for students themselves, but they require students to police themselves and be back to school in time. Based on the list of pros and cons above, do you think such a policy is good or not?
Crystal Lombardo is a contributing editor for Vision Launch. Crystal is a seasoned writer and researcher with over 10 years of experience. She has been an editor of three popular blogs that each have had over 500,000 monthly readers.
