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While I do feel sorry for children who are at risk of getting seriously ill or worse from a simple over site, I can not understand how anyone could ban peanut products from school. The idea of sending a child to school is not only to give them a scholarly education but also to teach them to get along in the real world.

Schools are already taking every precaution to keep children with allergies, not just from peanut products but all allergies, safe. If allergens were banned from schools, a feat which is unrealistic if not absolutely impossible, how are these children going to learn to get along in a world filled with allergens?

Eventually these children will graduate from school and go out into the real world; a world where people will not change there habits because one person might get sick or die. We can not ban peanut products from every public place, not only will people who love peanuts not stand for it, it would have a very disastrous effect on the economy. There are simply too many products that contain peanut byproducts; some, that unless you are allergic to peanuts, you would never even think of as containing peanuts.

I understand the concern of parents who have a child with allergies, and I sympathize, and yes these children do deserve to expect the same treatment at school as everyone else; and, with the exception of the schools not banning peanut products, they are treated like everyone else.

I went to school with children from every category, from simple allergies to simple disabilities (I was in second grade with a boy who was born without arms and had two prosthetics, he never complained about being disabled and the rest of us never gave it a second thought). Any time one of my classmates suffered from allergies, they simply informed the class that they were allergic to whatever and asked us to please be considerate and keep said allergen away from them.

I grew up being taught that going to school was a privilege, yes it was required by the state that every child over a certain age attend school, but if a child caused to much of a disruption they could be, and would be, sent to what was then called reform school. State law made it mandatory for children to receive an education, but not necessarily at a public school. I would hate to think that we would remove a child from the public school system for something they have no control over such as an allergy, but I have come across some pretty strange laws, if enough people feel their status quo is being put in jeopardy they will do just about anything to save it.

Unfortunately, people who do not have allergies do not understand the problems faced by people who do have allergies. Not understanding the problem limits what they are willing to do to prevent the problem. Many people would look at banning peanut products from school not as a benefit to the children who are allergic to peanuts, but as a punishment to the children who aren't allergic to peanuts. How do we tell a mother whose child will not eat lunch if it does not consist of a pb and j sandwich that peanuts are banned from school? This debate, like everything else, has two sides and both are right which makes a solution impossible.

Learn more about this author, Dorothy Jo Bourbeau.
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