The school Joseph attended last year for PK (a Catholic school) had mostly silent lunch. There was a big traffic light in the lunchroom, and as long as the light was red, they had to be quiet, which for most of lunch, I think. Maybe the last five minutes it would go green and they could talk.
At his present school, they also have to be quiet – but only sometimes. Since the lunchroom is in the church basement, they have silent lunch…when there’s a funeral upstairs.
Understandable.
(And in defense of the policy in general, especially for little ones – getting younger children to focus and EAT THEIR LUNCHES is a challenge. The silence, in my experience, is usually not so much for the noise control for its own sake, but to provide an environment in which there are fewer distractions and the little ones can focus on the task at hand.)
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