There's been an interesting couple of articles in the paper about lunches at schools. One Char-Meck elementary school tried to institute a "dining time" for the first 15 minutes of their lunchtime. Kids were supposed to eat silently during that time and then could talk to each other after that.
What a bomb. And it should have been. It was a ridiculous notion. Every school has been cutting cutting cutting socialization opportunities for the kids in favor of more academic time. Elementary kids still get a recess every day and gym time once a week. But other than that, there is no opportunity for socialization other than lunch. I don't know about other Middle schools, but ours does not give a recess or a "social break" either. And gym is an elective that you may get only half of each year. Really, you can't count on any gym class much for socialization anyway, since they are usually trying to learn some skill. But back to my point: if you have a Middle school that allows for no social break, and had silent lunch, you'd definitely end up with a bunch of under-socialized kids. And the new kids would never get to know any of their peers.
I don't know the answer to the wild, loud lunches. It probably would help if they didn't try to feed so many kids at a time. But then you don't really want to be feeding lunch for 3 hours every day, either. Maybe if they had several dining areas so they could break up the crowd a bit...I don't know. But not allowing people to talk during lunch is just stupid. I'm glad that's one rule our school has not tried.
7:07:52 AM 
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