If only we could persuade teachers to eat with the children.

I know, I know, teachers deserve a lunch break away from the children they have been teaching all morning but just hear me out. What if we considered the lunch part of the break part of the school day?

• Children would have no motivation to just stuff their lunch down in a bid to get extra play since they would be eating in lesson time
• If all the adults in school ate with the kids they could model good table manners and maybe even teach young children to use knife and fork correctly
• if adults were eating the same food then that would act as an effective monitoring of the school food
• parents would feel reassured that there children were actually eating.

I know that this presupposes that schools have decent dining rooms that teachers could fit into and also that teachers would want to eat school food. But if you think about this could be a great way to civilise lunch times. Is n't this what happens in private schools? Mind you, the school food standards don't apply to them so maybe I shouldn't go down that particular route!