On the other hand, if you had to eat lunch with a bunch of typically boisterous kids every day, wouldn't you seize upon an excuse to make them shut up? I suspect this has more to do with the lunch monitor's digestion than it does with hearing the gasp of chokers.

This is apparently common -- they did this at my son's (Episcopalian) elementary school. Ridiculous, I thought.

Being bad at assessing relative risks is probably the underlying driver. I'm waiting for something like this at my son's school, although the principal has quite a bit of common sense, so I might have a very long wait...I hope.

I would suspect that one's lunch companions would be the early warning of a choking student.

Seems very unlikely that a jury is going to hold a school liable b/c they didn't enforce silence on the students during lunch ... tho lord knows, there may be a case out there ...

This is just plain dumb.

But then I find a lot of the zero tolerance policies and bans of tag and dodgeball pretty dumb as well.

You left out the other half of the equation: risk-cost.

What is the cost of having the kids be quiet during lunch? Pretty trivial, huh? So it is an appropriate response even if it only ameliorates a low risk problem.

Do we know the whole story behind this?

I suspect that the risk they're trying to avoid is not of a child choking but of a parent suing.

What is the cost of having the kids be quiet during lunch? Pretty trivial, huh? So it is an appropriate response even if it only ameliorates a low risk problem.

A fine illustration of the limits of economic thought. How do we quantify the unhappiness of the kids? We can't. So it doesn't exist, basically.

A fine illustration of the limits of economic thought. How do we quantify the unhappiness of the kids? We can’t. So it doesn’t exist, basically.

You can't really quantify it.

But people need to talk-we are by nature social creatures.

Likely the cost would show up somewhere else in the educational proccess-and probably involve quite a bit of disruption during the educational time.

Maybe what they should do instead is teach kids not to talk with food in their mouths-of course this is somewhere in the manners handbook that a lot of parents seemed to have lost somewhere along the way.

A fine illustration of the limits of economic thought. How do we quantify the unhappiness of the kids? We can’t. So it doesn’t exist, basically.

Ouch Anderson, I'm crushed. I agree with you and I'm an economist. These kinds of costs aren't easily quantifiable, but they still exist and should at least be considered. Also, there is the socialization aspect. I know it is important for dogs, so my thinking is that it is even more important for humans (another social animal).

Dave,

Yeah, it is probably to avoid being sued, but again that underscores the problem of making relative risk assesments. After all, should we expect 100% safety while our children are at school? An answer of yes comes with astronomical costs, IMO (see my response to Anderson).

just me,

Maybe what they should do instead is teach kids not to talk with food in their mouths-of course this is somewhere in the manners handbook that a lot of parents seemed to have lost somewhere along the way.

Now that I can agree with. I'm always on my son about this, as well as chewing with his mouth open and using his utensils in the proper way...heck using them at all on some occasions.

A fine illustration of the limits of economic thought. How do we quantify the unhappiness of the kids? We can’t. So it doesn’t exist, basically.

These kids are in Catholic School. Obviously their happiness was never important to their parents in the first place.

These kids are in Catholic School. Obviously their happiness was never important to their parents in the first place.

Since I actually attended catholic school for a couple of years as a kid...touche.

These kids are in Catholic School. Obviously their happiness was never important to their parents in the first place.

Short-term happiness, yes, possibly.

Longer-term? The Catholic schools seem to to a pretty good job of educating, judging from the graduates I've known.

Putting long-term happiness before short-term happiness is what parenting is all about, IMO.