By Roy Kwon

Staff Writer

  The licking of lips, crinkling of cellophane, crunching of plastic, and that off putting smell whose origins can not be discerned. This is exactly the opposite of what a classroom environment should be associated with. Students should not be allowed to eat food in classrooms because it is a distraction to the other students and disengages the proper attention that teachers deserve.

  The classroom should be a place where students come to for the purpose of gaining educational knowledge by listening to the lectures prepared by their teachers. It should not be tainted with the wafts of food coming from several directions and ears ringing due to the sound of a fork scraping the bottom of a bowl. Also, no teacher would want to pick up scraps of food after an exhausting day of teaching.

  According to River Hill Current News, “Eating in class could also cause a mess that no teacher or custodian wants to have to clean up.”

  Many teachers in our campus are fine with students munching on food or taking a drink, whereas there are some that have strict rules set on the presence of food and beverages in the classroom. Of the two types of teachers listed above, the latter should be the set example for all classrooms, because even a single crumb may be deadly. According to the National Peanut Board, life-threatening peanut allergies are typically the number one reason schools forbid food in the classroom.

  As teachers, their job is to teach and their goal is for all students to be listening attentively while they do so. When food is involved the teachers lose all attention that they should be receiving. Instead of a student staring intently at the whiteboard taking observant notes, they could be, and most likely are staring intently at a roll of hawaiian bread, analyzing each and every curve of the loaf. Food serves as a distraction that can cause students to lose their train of thought, reaping disastrous effects in times of importance.

  Senior Robin Oh stated, “I was almost done with my test. The answer was on the tip of my tongue, but my partner ate a dorito chip and I lost it. I probably failed that test.”

  Instances like Oh’s are all caused by a single problem that needs to be fixed. If eating food in class no longer allowed, the classroom would be a more productive, distraction-free environment for students to learn and concentrate.