Keir Starmer announces plan for supervised toothbrushing in schools
Keir Starmer announces plan for supervised toothbrushing in schools
Labour leader hits out at perceived criticism as he attacks Tory record on child health
cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/6562239
Keir Starmer has said he is “up for the fight” of defending the “nanny state” as he announced plans to improve child health under a Labour government, including supervised toothbrushing in schools.
The Labour leader said that children were “probably the biggest casualty” of the Tories’ sticking-plaster approach to politics over the past 14 years, adding that, if the government were a parent, they could be charged with neglect.
“I know that we need to take on this question of the nanny state,” he told reporters. “The moment you do anything on child health, people say ‘you’re going down the road of the nanny state.’ We want to have that fight.”
Ahead of a visit to a children’s hospital, Starmer criticised the Tories’ record on child health. “They’re probably the biggest casualty of sticking-plaster politics in the last 14 years,” he said. “Frankly, if parents had treated children as badly as the UK government has, they would probably be charged with neglect. It’s that bad.”
This is absolutely essential. So many adults that I know brush their teeth wrong.
- No, don't brush your teeth too hard. Your teeth aren't supposed to be whitey-white-white. Brushing teeth too hard will cause enamel loss. That's stuff that u can't get back once lost completely.
- No, don't wash your mouth with water after brushing for at least 10 minutes. In a nutshell, fluoride keeps you from getting cavities. But it needs to be present in your saliva for your teeth to use it for remineralisation. Of course, don't use too much toothpaste or you might poison yourself.
No, don’t wash your mouth with water after brushing for at least 10 minutes.
Uhh...
Enrolls myself into UK elementary school.
I completely agree with you. Kids go to school to learn and this is a great example of low cost, high reward. It will pay for itself 1000x over. It's a good move and is the type of thing that should be encouraged from politicians actual meaningful improvement of society.
I gave up on the world when I realised how many people can't tie their shoe laces.
I couldn't possibly imagine that there are more than 1 adult in 100 that couldn't tie shoe laces and that's at a push. I would have guessed a much lower level than that.
But now that I know people can't tie their shoe laces I notice it all the time. The worst is that people don't even know it. They swear right to your face they know how to tie shoe laces and they don't. Then I try telling them and they don't see the issue. So I was like fuck this, the amount of stupid and ignorance in the world is actually off the charts. If we can't do basic things right what hope do we have?
A shoelace knot is a reef knot that has an extra bow. Doubled is optional and really you're mad for not doing it. But that's not really the issue, the amount of people that do a granny knot is somewhere between 40% and 20% by my exceptionally rough estimate.
You can tell when people fuck it up because the "ears" on the knot go perpendicular rather than parallel to the laces.
Heres the most basic form of a shoelace knot.
There's more than one way to tie shoelaces https://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/knots.htm
Wow, you really wrote a giant paragraph to say that something that works just fine for the vast majority of people, but is slightly sub-optimal, is grounds for dismissing someone as a lost cause.
Yes, tying your shoes correctly does make the knot slight neater, and slightly less prone to coming undone, but it's not that bad. It most likely doesn't impact people as you think.
Spending your whole life trying to optimize every little detail, especially something as minuscule as tying your shoes, can be a very wasted life.
Brushing for ten minutes? Didn't your other point say not too hard? Brushing too much can have a similar effect, especially in a manual-brushing situation where there's no automated device that reacts to varying pressure.
the number one reason for young children being admitted to hospital is to extract rotten teeth
that's sad. A kid's smile is a huge part of their identity. Rotten teeth are fairly simple to prevent for many children. I support giving children a free toothbrush, maybe some toothpaste, teaching them healthy brushing habits. It's hard to comprehend someone claiming teaching dental hygiene is nanny state.
Yeah I was about to say this sounds like bullshit, but if parental supervision and guidance on toothbrushing has become so bad, this might be a good idea, aye.
Their diets have become trash, literally.
Teaching kids how to brush is not the same as daily supervised brushing.
I hope your bathrooms are cleaner then they were when I was in public school. You couldn’t pay me to brush my teeth in one of those germ infested cesspits.
Nanny state? I would pay extra for this.
Bring it on. Help me teach my kids to brush their teeth. Let's Seasame Street this thing.
This was a thing or is still in Swiss, once every 4~weeks with the Stuff that makes a Layer. Makes sense to encourage this to Kids, can lead to Bad Infections later in Life.
We had to do this in Colorado public schools in the late 80s.
30 years later I’ve got a mouth full of false teeth.
Not sure it worked out like they wanted it to.
It's not going to work for everyone- personally I wasn't healthy enough to maintain my own teeth and am trying to save up for dentures at 38 but my teeth have been falling out since I was 26.
If it stops more children from needing dentures as adults it is a resounding success though.
Genetics play a factor. My wife gets cavities like they're going out of style and she's very diligent about brushing and flossing. I'm ... less diligent and I've never had a cavity and still have all my wisdom teeth.
It's a total crapshoot, all anyone can do is try their best to take care of what they've got.
My wife - who is only just thirty - had her remaining teeth removed in the last year or so. She’s an outlier because critical meds in childhood caused serious problems, but…
Like anything else, it’s much easier - and by the by less expensive - to treat early. She absolutely stands by her choice, and after watching her in constant pain over a number of years, I don’t blame her.
All the education in the world wouldn’t have helped her personally, given the cause, but it will damned sure help many others who just don’t understand the gravity of it at a young age.
I’m American, grew up solidly middle class and with dental care. Current me would have benefited from this sort of nudge, even if only because I would have figured out sooner just how damned important it is.
I once went to Costa Rica on a business trip, and every one of my colleagues there would head to the bathroom after lunch and brush their teeth. That's what you get when you teach dental hygiene.
Last I checked, this was common in West Virginia primary schools.
As they say "You can lead a horse to water but you can't force it to drink." The biggest factor is the behavior at home and the parents.
Taking bets on how long before he flops on this.