S(n)ubway
Posted by Godefroi on May 27, 2008
I may have mentioned this before. I am a home-schooling father. Since I also have a regular job, the bulk of that responsibility is handled (admirably, I must add) by my wife. The reasons we chose to home-school are myriad, and I won’t take the time to enumerate them now, but one of them was the high “success” rate of home-schooled children. That is, they tend to be more ready for real-world challenges by the time they reach the age of majority. They also tend to score significantly higher on achievement tests, despite the fact that they’re not usually fed a curriculum geared toward test scores.
Basically, we intended to give our kids a better foundation than they would get in the PC-overrun public school system.
Now…we also have endeavored to provide them with healthful food. That said, it is probably obvious that fast food is a rarity in our family, so as far as our eating choices go this won’t have much of an effect. BUT, since there are several other home-schooling families in our faith community, I bet that the days of ordering the 6-footer for get-togethers at the church are over. Why? It’s because some brainiac at Subway has decided that home-schooled children are not eligible to participate in an essay-writing contest.
At the “Fresh Fit for Kids” promotion site, the official rules include this gem:
Contest is open only to legal US residents, over the age of 18 with children in either elementary, private or parochial schools that serve grades PreK-6. No home schools will be accepted.
According to the Home School Legal Defense Association (anyone wonder why this organization is even necessary?) in 2002-3, there were 1.7 to 2.1 MILLION home-schooled children. That’s anywhere from 2.5 to 4.5 million now. But apparently the leadership of Subway feels that these kids don’t count. MY kids don’t count.
So Subway is now off the menu for our family, and probably 20 other families in my immediate neighborhood.
4.5 million kids is probably at least 1 million families. If the trend in my neighborhood is any indication, Subway just lost 20 million families, upwards of 40 million people, as customers.
Great marketing plan.
Nod: American Thinker
onemom said
Just amazing isn’t it? If Subway had discriminated against any other group, the media and the ACLU would be staging a rampage, but because it’s “just” homeschoolers, there’s nary a peep from any of them.
Godefroi said
Amazing, yes. Change home schools to Jewish schools or madrassa or School for the disabled and the outcry would be widespread and venomous.
I don’t have an issue so much that their intent was to assist public schools. The specific exlusionary language in the rules, however, was just too much.
Thanks for stopping by.