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School lunch breaks in France can be two hours (2012)
- psyonity 3y agoWhen I was in school lunchbreak was 10 minutes, in the classroom of the last finished subject, from 12:15 to 12:25.
- Aissen 3y ago[flagged]
- dagw 3y agoHow is spending 10 minutes to eat a sandwich and drink some milk while sitting at your desk child abuse?
- Aissen 3y agoBecause it's simply not enough time for a proper meal, even more for children. Eating pre-digested, transformed food it might be doable to finish in this time, but you might as well give them Soylent. Seating at one's desk is even worse, it removes the social part of these moments.
- dagw 3y agoIn some places the 'proper meal' of the day isn't eaten at lunch time, but rather in the afternoon. Lunch is a quick sandwich and some fruit to get you through the rest of the day and then you have your proper meal at 4-5 after you get home. The social part at school came after lunch when you go out to play. When I was at school lunch was story time, and we would sit and listen to the teacher read us a book while we ate.
- watwut 3y agoSo, they have only quick snacks through whole day since morning until they get home at 4-5? That does not sound healthy to me.
- dagw 3y agoquick snacks through whole day No, a decent breakfast, then sandwiches for lunch, maybe a small snack around 2, then a warm dinner at 4-5. edit: in general I would say that focusing what and how much you eat is far more important than focusing on when you eat if you care about health outcomes. Eating a quick healthy snack once every other hour is a lot better than junk food twice a day.
- watwut 3y agoIf you care about health outcomes, teenage boys should eat 3000 calories or more. Teenage girls should eat 2500 calories or more. Packing it into meals like described is basically impossible without junk food in the mix, if they do not have real lunch. There is decent breakfast, then nothing but snacks and sandwiches until dinner at 4-5 and I guess maybe second dinner after.
- jspash 3y agoJust curious, where did you go to school that would allow this?
- vmfunction 3y agoAnd in Spain people take siesta. And it makes sense, our body needs rest to digest food. That's why we get food coma. Every one not just children should do this.
- Al-Khwarizmi 3y agoIn the south of Spain, and still a minority. I'm from the north and I know no one here who takes siesta.
- mcv 3y agoHas it always been limited to the south? Or is the practice dying out because business has become more international and people in other countries find it inconvenient for Spain to be offline for two hours in the middle of the day?
- Al-Khwarizmi 3y agoMy grandparents (born around the 30s) never described it as a common thing here in the north. I can't vouch for previous periods, but siesta mostly makes sense for outdoors jobs in hot climates (where it's actually a great idea), so I would assume it was never common in the north as the climate is much cooler. In the south, it's also becoming less common with the change from rural to urban living and from outdoors to office jobs.
- hibikir 3y agoYou might have a long lunch break, where people go home, eat and come back, making the end of the work day pretty late. But siesta is easy to understand as a southern thing when one notices summer temperatures, and imagines physical labor outside, or a world with no AC. Trying to get anything done at 1:30 PM in, say, Jaen sounds unpleasant. Santander, Oviedo or Coruña are not going to face the same problem.
- whatisyour 3y agoSpanish siesta's are still just 2-3 hours long. In traditional Indian cultures, people would often work between 6am and 11am and then from 5pm to 9pm, because middle of the day was too hot to do any kind of physical work. So, I'm definitely going for weather as the reason for the tradition and not any timezone shift. And that also means that office work and air conditioning should reduce this practice over time.
- WarOnPrivacy 3y agoWe US adults seem really clueless about kids' need for unstructured time. I clearly remember feeling better after (therefore learning better) after my 2-3 play times. Lunch/play was 75 min, recess was 15 and there was playground time while the buses rolled in. My grade school kids (mid90s-early10s) had maybe 20min of play after eating and no recess. After school time was was more of the same - because they had >5x (actual) the homework that I did. It's a high resource approach to learning; in hindsight, I find no benefit in it. It may be one of the reasons they're disinterested in having their own kids.
- willcipriano 3y agoBig pharma dosent sell recess but they will sure sell you something to "fix" your ten year old boys "problem" of not wanting to sit with his hands folded attentively listening to someone for eight hours straight every day.
- JackMorgan 3y agoI'm currently taking class for the EMT, and it is _brutal_ to sit through lectures for just 4 hours. That's even with a 10 minute break every hour. For a subject I'm intensely interested in. Lectures are scientifically proven by educators to be the worst method of learning, yet our schools do it anyway. I'd honestly assume conspiracy if all the teachers I know didn't just shrug and say "who cares, it's what everyone expects, and it's easy, so..."
- WarOnPrivacy 3y ago> Big pharma dosent sell recess but they will sure sell you something to "fix" your ten year old I had 10x the play time that my kids had; stims would have hugely helped me. FF to today and it's Little Pharma that saves my bacon. Big LEO, on the other hand, is working overtime to ruin that. You can measure a DEA success by how many thousands of lives are degraded and ruined thru their pointless overreach.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Barrin92 3y ago>Now that we’re back in Vancouver, my daughter’s lunch period is one hour long, including 10 minutes to eat. Yep, 10 minutes absolutely ridiculous. Are kids supposed to just wolf their food down? As an adult I have more time to eat than this. France has retained a food and dining culture that is luckily still quite distinct from the work-dominated hectic culture in most other places and I'd say it's one reason why obesity rates and other health markers are much better in the country.
- lupire 3y agoWhat are the other 50minutes of lunch?
- loloquwowndueo 3y agoRecess?
- ykonstant 3y ago>France has retained a food and dining culture that is luckily still quite distinct from the work-dominated hectic culture in most other places and I'd say it's one reason why obesity rates and other health markers are much better in the country. Most of the south of Europe is the same. Business interests and temporarily-embarrassed-CEOs are somewhat successfully pushing to abolish this culture in favor of the prison-lunch culture. I hope they ultimately fail, but...
- fnord77 3y agoare their schooling outcomes better? no?
- ykonstant 3y agoPerhaps "schooling outcomes" is not the single metric one should use when it comes to children. Or adults. Human beings in general. Also, French schooling? Yeah, it's better than most systems with remarkable results to go with it.
- boringuser2 3y agoWhat metrics would you prefer? Feelings? Regarding France, my understanding is that their scores are some of the lowest in Europe and below the OCED average on the PISA exam (comparatively, the United States is above the OCED average), though there might be demographic considerations.
- ykonstant 3y ago>What metrics would you prefer? Feelings? If that is the only alternative you can imagine (or rather, pretend to be able to imagine to form a bad faith response), there is no point in continuing this conversation. > that their scores are some of the lowest in Europe and below the OCED average on the PISA exam Exactly! And yet they consistently produce some of the best engineers and scientists in the world, and have a stellar pure and applied mathematics tradition. So tell me, does this say something about the French schooling system, or about metrics like the OCED average? Nevermind, don't tell me; your first paragraph above already demonstrated what kind of response to expect.
- dagw 3y agothey consistently produce some of the best engineers and scientists in the world All countries are capable to turning out a handful of amazing engineers and scientists each year from their top percentile students, almost no matter how terrible their school system is overall, so that in itself is pretty uninteresting. Is there any evidence that they are turning out significantly more of them that the rest of the OECD? The other, more interesting, metric is how are their 50th percentile students doing, or their 25th or their 10th percentile students. Sure PISA might to be a great metric, but just focusing how well the very brightest students in the country do is a far worse metric.
- isodev 3y agoHere in Belgium it's a minimum of 50 minutes by law but schools usually make it longer at their discretion and resources. Wednesday afternoon there is no class of course, kids are free to use the study halls or go home.
- seszett 3y agoDepending on the province though, kids might have little more than a lunchbox with bread slices with butter and ham, which doesn't seem very enjoyable to me (I'm French, with kids in Belgium).
- Aeolun 3y agoThat’s up to the parents? Or children, if they make their own bread. You can get a whole lot more creative with bread than sliced ham.
- seszett 3y agoThat's not up to the parents, I can't given them a box with some kind of rougail, or a galette-saucisse or even just green peas with carrots. They don't have a microwave. It has to be cold and eaten with the hands, and "not too special", anything other than sliced bread with some kind of meat or spread inside is explicitly frowned upon.
- isodev 3y agoI think it is region or school system specific? Here in Go! Flanders kids get served warm food by the school and they’re also welcome to bring their own lunch if they want to.
- seszett 3y agoFrom what we found, no public school (Go! or gemeente) in Antwerp does that, brooddoos in all of them. All schools in West Flanders do provide lunch though, and at least some in East Flanders too (obviously we only looked up the areas that matter to us and we didn't conduct an exhaustive study though). So we just concluded that it depends on the province. At the very least it does not depend on the school system or the region since it varies within Flanders and within the Go! system.
- loloquwowndueo 3y ago1:30 combined lunch and recess. Why?
- boomboomsubban 3y agoWhile ten minutes seems like too little, my elementary school lunch was 20-30 minutes and all my memories of it were that I had an abundance of time. They had to force us to stay at lunch longer as the teachers needed more time to eat before going outside to oversee recess.
- internetter 3y agoI assume this includes recess
- boomboomsubban 3y agoRecess followed lunch, and if you finished lunch early you could go out early. I want to say they mandated fifteen minutes at lunch, with fifty minutes combined between the two, but my memories of decades ago aren't that good.
- WarOnPrivacy 3y agoMy distant decades mirror yours and I just recalled we also had playground time before class. At least 10 min. Maybe while waiting for buses to roll in. That generation of adults seemed to understand that kids need low/no-adult play time.
- lupire 3y ago10 minutes for a child size lunch isn't a short time for the average child. But some kids are fussier eaters. The meals are portion controlled, so kids aren't loading up to avoid going back for seconds.
- Grazester 3y ago90's Caribbean Island. Primary school Day starts at 8:30am. Break at 10:00am for 30 minutes. Lunch at 12:00pm for 60 minutes. Day ends at 3:00pm. Secondary school Days starts at 7:45am. Break at 10:20am for 20 minutes. Lunch at 12:15pm for 30 minutes. Day ends at 1:45pm.
- Aeolun 3y agoTIL Primary school schedule in the Netherlands is the same as a 90’ caribbean island.
- georgesimon 3y agoMight not be a coincidence.
- skrebbel 3y agoMakes me want to move to a 90’s carribean island.
- lupire 3y agoFrench school day is 8hours. US taxpayers don't want to pay for a full day of school. 8hr school hurts the private daycare economy and supports two-parent careers.
- underlipton 3y agoIn other words, it's yet another way to shift the "job creators"'s burden onto their workers. One of the silent ways they make you pay to work for them.
- slothtrop 3y agoThere's a bit of circular reasoning here. Do taxpayers comparatively want to pay even more for private daycare? Rural America has even less flexibility for work hours so it's usually a given. Two-parent careers are here to stay, also.
- StefanBatory 3y agoIn Polish schools we had 10 minute breaks, and for dinner we had one 15 minute break.
- krzyk 3y agoIn my kids school 1 to 3rd grades (7 to 9 year olds approx) get 15 mins to eat a single course meal for lunch. My kid eats slowly, so never finishes. Older kids can eat during breaks, the longest is 20 mins (that includes walking out of classroom and getting to cafeteria). This is Poland.
- jermaustin1 3y agoWhen I was in high school (graduated almost 20 years ago now), our lunch period had 30 minutes for lunch, and that included the time it took to cross campus to eat (from one side of campus to the other took 10 minutes to walk if you could cut through the fields, but if it were raining and the campus flooded, you were stuck on the sidewalks and it would take 15-20 minutes to cross campus). If you were "lucky" you got either first or third lunch, because that butted up against the 10 minute inter-period "travel" time, giving you 40 minutes for you lunch/play. But each lunch had around 1000 students competing for the lunch line, and there were many days where the lunch line did not complete before the lunch bell rang, and lunch was over. And if you did not make it to your class on time
- rightbyte 3y agoThat is one way to save on county food expenses?
- jermaustin1 3y agoOur lunches were not free. We paid $2.50 for lunch, and that came with an apple, choice of entre (microwaved hamburger on wheat bun, microwaved pizza, or microwaved chicken nuggets). Our lunches probably cost around $0.50 in food, and our cafeteria workers were paid minimum wage, so in the 8 hours, the 5 cafeteria workers all together made $210. Assuming 30% of kids took their lunches (I doubt it was this many), and assuming $2 in food profit per child. That was around $4k/day in profit. It all went to our football stadium. I'm from Texas.
- legitster 3y agoThat sounds particularly crappy even for a US school lunch. But I don't think the numbers are right. Even back then 50 cents a lunch for food is not a real number. Also, reduced and free lunches generally accounted for ~40% of students, and getting reimbursed for that from the federal program required pretty tight bookkeeping.
- 3y ago
- contrarian1234 3y agoI think it's not just about the long break, but also this mean you end the school day at a more reasonable time. I think school would end at 3PM.. when all normal people are still at work. I remember my school had some afterschool playground area where we're run around and kill time till our parents could arrive. Having the same break during the day would have probably been nicer mentally (and I'm guessing the teachers would move lesson planning and grading to that extra hour after lunch)
- stevekemp 3y agoHere in Finland the school finishes in the early afternoon, but we kinda trust the children to play outdoors, or walk back home when they've had enough. Our child, seven, only really received a mobile phone this year because he's walking to school and back by himself as is common here. But he'll phone to say "I'm going home [alone]", "I'm going to play with friend X", or "I'm bringing friend X home with me". (The children start school at 7, before then there is pre-school, and before that daycare. Around 7 the kids start making their own way to school and back - sometimes walking, sometimes cycling, and sometimes taking a bus/tram.)
- jajko 3y agoYou couldn't go home on your own? I was doing that since first grade. Selecting accommodation location to match that was quite important, schools would take local kids as priority. Remote folks took a bus on their own. Learning to cross busy roads from very young age. I think we go somehow more retarded as society and got properly scared with pedophiles and kidnappings (maybe compensating subconsciously for lack of time dedicated to kids). The worst thing is, this helicopter parenting seriously harms kids development and resiliency.
- contrarian1234 3y agoIt was the early 2000s in San Francisco. I started going back home on my own in middle school and the other parents where slightly horrified. Some of it is paranoia, some of it is that public spaces feel less .. friendly? ... with more and more mentally ill people in public. It's mostly safe, but it feels not great.. I grew up in the Castro and I definitely had a few incidents of old men following me on public transit - but nothing too serious or where I actually was afraid for my safety. I think that's just something you can shrug off and a normal part of life - but in the modern climate that's "stranger danger" and the pedophiles are gunna kidnap you
- legitster 3y agoThe issue specific to the US is time and class sizes. For time, US teachers will only spend 6~7 hours of their day with kiddos. So using up to two hours of that for lunch eats into a huge chunk of the short day (some of which is already more recess!). And for class size, our schools are huge! Our gradeschool cafeteria sits hundreds of kids, but it's already not big enough for even a third of the school population. We just don't even have enough room or staff for long lunches. But more addressed at the blogger: I think it's okay that different cultures have different rhythms. Our grade school let kids take the whole break if they wanted to to eat, but an entire room full of kids cooped up inside after a meal instead of getting outside to play would be a disaster.
- consp 3y ago> And for class size, our schools are huge! That's not a sole US thing. We have schools of hundreds to in the thousand here as well. Then again they build new buildings if the school grows too big (usually, not always). Usually the kids used go home for lunch and it was an hour (easily done if you live withing 15min walking from the school). These days you also have schools with shorter lunches and shorter schooldays probably due to more parents both working (kids stay at school then). Lunches are staggered in that case, to not have everyone inside/outside all at once.
- em500 3y ago> For time, US teachers will only spend 6~7 hours of their day with kiddos. So using up to two hours of that for lunch eats into a huge chunk of the short day (some of which is already more recess!). By what norm is this a short day? Here in the Netherlands, standard elementary school hours are 8:30-15:00, minus about 1 to 1.5 hours of lunch+breaks, with Wednesday only 8:30-12:30. So on average barely 5hr/day. Anecdotally, schools days in other European countries (DE, FR, UK) are not much longer.
- pepa65 3y agoAnd elementary students in the Netherlands would usually go home for the lunch break, as most schools are walking distance from home. (At least, when I was that age...)
- underlipton 3y agoGraduated high school about 15 years ago in Maryland. IIRC, lunch and recess were decently generous in elementary school, but of course there was no such luck in middle and high school. Lunch was just another period, so about 45 minutes. I was lucky to get decent periods most years, but with so many kids, someone had to eat at 10:00AM in order to make sure there were enough lunch periods to service the entire school. I would have liked time after lunch to use as a rest or study period; I distinctly remember getting crap from my post-lunch math teacher for falling asleep constantly in her class (in retrospect, I must have been mildly sleep-deprived, going through a growth spurt, AND crashing from my carb-heavy packed lunch), despite essentially acing all her tests. I think, in general, Americans are loathe to build in "cushion" for human needs. I'm sure everyone has heard, "If you're on time, you're late."
- jobigoud 3y agoAt my previous workplace in France before going full remote I also had a 2-hour lunch break between 12H and 14H. It was great I would bike to a food place, grab some to go, and head to the nearby park and be by myself listening to an audio book or whatever. I think these hours are common in many places: 9H-12H, 14H-18H. 35H/week.
- thaumasiotes 3y agoI had an internship at CreateSpace after it was purchased by Amazon, paid hourly with time cards! My normal lunch procedure was to clock out, order a pizza from a nearby pizza place, drive out to pick it up, bring it back to my cubicle, clock in, and eat it at my desk. This also works well with sandwiches.† I later learned that I was legally required to take at least 30 minutes of lunch break, and I was horrified. Thankfully there was no enforcement. My mind boggles at the idea that workers need legal "protections" requiring them to spend less time at their home. Do your work from 9h to 16h, and enjoy a bigger part of your life. † It was also pretty common for everyone to go out together to a big group lunch. In such cases, the time taken for lunch is whatever it ends up being. But I was free to spend as little time as I wanted on my own individual lunch, if there wasn't a group lunch.
- arketyp 3y agoWhy the downvotes? This is a real point of view. I eventually got so fed up hearing about Game of Thrones and trite opinions about Trump's stupidity that I developed a habit of completely skipping lunch, telling my colleagues I was into keto. They respected it, God bless them.
- Shawnj2 3y agoI think it might be a culture thing but at where I work no one actually uses the break room to eat lunch, everyone eats at their desk. With that said a lot of people do so by skipping the lunch break time
- Atotalnoob 3y agoI just skip lunch and leave {lunchtime} early.
- throwawaaarrgh 3y agoI don't know what I'd do if I had kids in the US. The education system here is so toxic. It's like a factory designed to churn out little automatons. Like everyone's purpose in life is to become a cog in a business wheel. "We're preparing you for a life of work." Art, play, love, nature? Waste of time. Personal finances, cooking, repairs, wayfinding? Useless. We need you to learn advanced maths by hand, for that job you'll have at McDonald's where you need to handle advanced algebra. We need you to learn this highly curated view of history that excludes most of the important events in world history. Philosophy? You'll have to go to an expensive college for that. Psychology? Why should you have an insight into relationships, the human mind, emotional intelligence? It's not like that would come in handy at some point. If I ran a school, the curriculum would consist mostly of teaching people to curate their inner and outer life towards their own goals and interests. The purpose and benefit of intelligence as a tool to use too improve their own life, and the lives of others. The benefits of benefiting society and our loved ones. The benefits of love. The things nobody should learn by accident.
- ClumsyPilot 3y agoLunch breaks should be short. School is a place where children gain knowledge and learn to function in society, and in a job. That’s how they get their first taste of a vast bureaucracy that assets arbitrary limitation that serve no discernible purpose and deals out petty punishments
- zharknado 3y agoMy wife has gone deep on the issue of adequate lunch time in our community, working with the school, local, and state officials and PTA to try to improve this. If you’re interested in learning more she’s compiled a lot of (U.S. centric) research resources here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-LfGAhkmiy_sZWGCMDyus59XQXBT29IYIZSEFRfrJJE/edit https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-LfGAhkmiy_sZWGCMDyus59X... Highlights for me: -lots of inertia, but it’s mainly logistical rather than ideological -change can garner bipartisan support -we spend quite a lot of money to get fresh fruit & veg in front of school kids and then don’t give them enough time to eat it
- bossyTeacher 3y agoI love this topic. For most of the people here, raised in Anglo-Saxon culture, the idea of having a long lunch break is probably shocking as the expected notion is that the lunch break should only cover the time needed to eat. In many countries like France or Spain, the notion of lunch also entails the other aspect of eating: digestion as the act of getting fed doesn't stop once the food ends in your stomach. It still needs to be digested. For school kids, it's also an additional time to exercise their muscles by moving around after spending hours sitting down (which we all know now it's unhealthy).
- tangmonk 3y agoChina definitely takes siesta.
- amadeuspagel 3y agoIn germany, they just go home most days, school ends before lunch.
- jihadjihad 3y agoI spent part of my childhood in France/Switzerland, and one thing I'll never forget is a scene of street construction in a French town. It's about 11:30am, and three guys all get done with the excavator and jackhammers. One guy goes and grabs something long from the bed of a truck, another heads to the cab and reaches for a brightly colored bundle, and the third guy grabs some chairs from the other side. Right in the middle of the cordoned-off construction zone, the first guy sets up a folding table, the second guy neatly places a tablecloth on top along with a baguette and bottle of wine and some cheese etc., and the third guy brings up the chairs. These guys sat down for a nice meal for 90 minutes, at least, before getting back to work. I think my American parents thought, "Wow, how in the hell does anything ever get built in this country?" while my thought was mostly, "that seems really nice, they look so relaxed!"
- koolba 3y ago> … It's about 11:30am, and three guys all get done with the excavator and jackhammers … > … and bottle of wine … So operating heavy equipment after consuming alcohol?
- TremendousJudge 3y agoThis was normal everywhere not so long ago
- jihadjihad 3y agoI had always heard, but never corroborated, that the typical 750ml volume of a bottle of wine was chosen because it was an appropriate amount for two people to consume at lunch. Is it true? I have no idea! But those guys would have emphatically agreed, I think.
- Solvency 3y agoWhoever told you that was an alcoholic.
- 3y ago
- helboi4 3y agoI find that I only really feel fully rested after lunch if I get 2-2.5 hours. So, I wish this was normal. When I was doing a coding bootcamp I was doing the most hard mental work of my life. I coded/was in class about 12 hours a day. I took 2.5 hour lunch breaks. It was the only possible way for me to operate on that level. I think if it was acceptable for me to work 8:30-12 and then 3-6:30 i would probably get way more work done.
- physicalscience 3y agoWhen I read these things I sometimes get this sense that there is this feeling of "superiority" with respect to leisure and family time from Europeans. I can't help but constantly think about how a lot of European countries got to this point because of the mass subjugation of other humans (think Africa and the Caribbean). For example, the current crisis in Haiti makes me think of the Haitian Independence Debt[0]. Sometimes I feel like a lot of the West is like a trust fund baby, where we live off the hard and dirty work of our parents, and turn a blind eye to the mass destruction of the earth and the countless millions of peoples lives who, even to this day, we take advantage of. So I'm very glad the French can get 2 hours in the middle of the day to hang out and eat home cooked meals, while the earth slowly starts to boil around them, and while millions of people still suffer to this day because of actions their country has taken in the recent past. I'm not saying that I don't believe humans should have more family time, more leisure time, and a better quality of life; but I do feel like we haven't done anything yet as a greater society to earn that right yet, as almost everything our foundation is built on seems incredibly unsustainable, and still needs a lot of work and thought put into it to get us there. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haiti_Independence_Debt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haiti_Independence_Debt
- willyt 3y agoBritain did bad stuff around the world and our GDP productivity / hr figures are dog shit compared to France. So if you want that productivity directed towards saving the world, it would still make sense to look to France or Germany for inspiration on how to harness it more effectively.
- njarboe 3y agoI would suggest reading some more ancient history to get a larger view of the great accomplishments of the west and you might feel a little different. Some of them are: Abolition of slavery world wide (almost everywhere) Women liberation The rule of law and not men Great advances in medicine reducing suffering (anesthesia and surgery, vaccines) Birth mortality going from 50% of children dying in 1800 to about 1% today Maternal mortality going from 5 per 1000 to .1 per 1000 The average person being able to own their own private coach (car) and eat like the kings of old Universal education Space exploration Of course there are many things to improve. Let's get at it.
- JeanMarcS 3y agoFrench here. I think 2 hours are too long for lunch break. It happens that it suits me well, because I can go to school get my kids, have lunch with them and spend time with them, and then bring them back to school (the joy of working at home !). But for kids having their 2 parents working, it's a very long period of time that can be "waste" every day. Of course socialization is important and, well, that's one of the only thing you can do during those breaks. Of course some school have clubs or activities that can be done in those hours, but not enough to please everyone. And this come with a price: hours spent in school ! In my teens' school, nearly every day starts at 8h. And some big days can end near 18h (6PM) and have 8 hours of class ! Which is, in my opinion, far too much. We spent 2 years in Ireland, where school ended around 14 and 15 (2-3PM), kids had more time to play, do their homework, or do some sport. Here, my daughter is doing boxing, and it's between 19h and 20h (7-8PM), on a day she started school at 8H, finished at 16h30 (4:30PM), do her homeworks, get the bus to go to the boxing club, and then eat at 20h30 when she comes back. (Very) Long day ! (edit: typos)
- kergonath 3y ago> But for kids having their 2 parents working, it's a very long period of time that can be "waste" every day. For children, it’s time they have to spend (mostly) outside and with other children (or participating in some club or another). It’s just as important for their development as time with their parents, which they would statistically spend looking at a phone or a tv anyway.
- biasedestimate 3y agoI live in Denmark. Here, lunch breaks are 30 minutes, but instead people leave work and go home at 4pm.
- pazimzadeh 3y agoI grew in France. During the first hour we ate, and after that we played soccer. Or vice versa. We also didn't have school on Wednesdays, although Saturdays were half days.
- p4bl0 3y agoI grew up in the 90s in Marseille, in the very south of France. At school we had 2 hours lunch break and it was great to have so much time to play outside and all, but now that I think of it: it was in Marseille, it was virtually always sunny and warm, I really don't know how it was for kids in other part of France where it rains and/or it's cold quite often. What I remember from that time too is that at the commercial center of my neighborhood the lunch break was four hours, from 12h to 16h. In summer it was because it was too hot to really do anything during these hours anyway, but it was also the case in the winter and that has always puzzled me, even as a child.
- cpncrunch 3y agoPlease fix typo in title. Doesnt make sense now.
- miah_ 3y agoI think this needs a title correction. "can be two hours" instead of "ban be two hours"
- ThePowerOfFuet 3y ago>Now that we’re back in Vancouver Maybe not such a great move.
- iLoveOncall 3y agoIf you think this is good, keep in mind that in France children as young as 10 (basically after finishing junior school) can start at 8 and finish at 6 or even 7 (rarely), after which they will easily have an hour of homework to do every day. The French school schedule is absolutely not an example to follow.
- kergonath 3y ago> If you think this is good, keep in mind that in France children as young as 10 (basically after finishing junior school) can start at 8 and finish at 6 or even 7 (rarely), after which they will easily have an hour of homework to do every day. That is exaggerated. They can, but rarely do. In collège here they work from 8:15 to 16:35, and every other day they start late or finish early. Back in my time it was 8 to 17 most days and 8 to 12 on Wednesdays. Finishing at 18 was uncommon in lycée, and finishing at 19 only happened very occasionally at the university (and then we had lots of free time during the days). > The French school schedule is absolutely not an example to follow. The German schedule is good as well, but I am happy to have had 1 year less before going to the university. Lighter schedules are brutal for working parents who need to stay at home or pay through the nose for additional childcare.
- nothercastle 3y agoOur schools in the usa excessive required instructional hours yet somehow the kids learn more in a one hour a week extra curricular math class than they do during normal “instruction”. More instructional time is clearly not the solution
- andrepd 3y agoEducation in the vast majority of places is very bad. It's just a very hard problem and doesn't get the attention it deserves.
- nothercastle 3y agoIt requires a lot of labor so it’s very expensive
- jollyllama 3y agoAnd everyone from high school juniors up - teachers, staff, students - smokes.
- andrepd 3y agoSome of the fondest memories of my childhood are in those 2 hour lunch breaks we had in school. It seemed like an eternity. Southern Europe.
- 082349872349872 3y agoI find it super droll that (168 comments in), no person has mentioned how it would be impossible to profit from their midday meal without even the time to properly taste it. As they said in the era of our ancestors: « de gustibus non est disputandum ».
- devilbunny 3y agoMay as well learn to eat quickly. In hospitals, a 30-minute lunch break is standard. That's not 30 minutes to eat; it's 30 minutes to leave your post, get food if you didn't bring it, eat it, and be back at your post. The food is not worth tasting anyway, usually.
- carabiner 3y agoThis is why we'll never see SpaceX rival out of Arianespace/ESA. France and most of Europe has a leisure culture. Good for them.
- it_citizen 3y agoNow do the same argument with Boeing vs Airbus :)
- wly_cdgr 3y agoThey should run chess blitz tournaments during the lunch breaks