So much for good, clean fun. Officials at an Idaho middle school claim they had to remove soap from the boys bathrooms because of vandalism.
Apparently, it's better for the boys to enact germ warfare by not washing their hands than it is to have a little soap wars in the bathroom.
Parents have been protesting the removal, pointing to its incredibly poor timing in light of the swine flu pandemic and health officials EVERYWHERE reminding people to wash their hands to reduce the spread of the disease (not to mention a fair number of other contagious diseases).
The state's education department notes that all school lavatories are required to have soap provided for the kids. Sounds like a pretty common sense requirement to me (see above). So why would a school yank the soap?
I remember some of the bathroom pranks pulled in my school days (by classmates, natch!). Milk poured down the heating vents. Smoking in the stalls. TPing pretty much everything. The school responded with measures that kept us on our toes, including a lock on the door so only a staff member could let a kid in (and they'd do a thorough once-over before you left to make sure you hadn't gotten up to any mischief while you were supposed to be doing your business). Even in an understaffed, underfunded school like mine, they made it work.
But they didn't take the soap. Because soap is point zero when it comes to preventing disease - especially with kids, who are not exactly the most hygenic creatures on earth. Why else would we spend hours teaching them to sing the alphabet song while they scrub a dub dub as toddlers?
So why, oh why, would anyone ever imagine taking soap away from kids is a good idea?
Image:1stInHandwashing
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