When you were a pupil in school, did you feel shame or discomfort during PE when that dreadful day on which you were due to be measured appeared on the schedule? Whether over or underweight (believe it or not, some people are too slim, which is particularly awkward for boys who aren’t as built as their jock colleagues), it’s a matter many would prefer to do in private.
And that is exactly what this initiative launched by the Centre for Eating Disorders (BEA) tried to express to the Croatian education system.
As Srednja.hr wrote, the initiative started earlier this week and quickly became viral, as it was shared by almost every Croatian media outlet, social network influencers, and fitness enthusiasts. From the public to the institutions, as the Education Ministry heard the voice of the public and took it into account.
With great pride and joy, we’d like to notify you that the Ministry sent out this memo and instructions to Croatian schools to secure the individual measurement of children’s height and weight for all elementary and high schools,” Srednja.hr said, quoting BEA’s Instagram post.
Still, how fast things will actually change for the better in practice is yet to be seen.
”We at the BEA Centre allow people to become visible, to have their voices heard and to identify their problems. Although we’ve been working continuously since 2012, we still lack the adequate space to carry out all of our activities on a day-to-day basis and provide support to people suffering from eating disorders and their families,” explained the BEA website.
The website also adds that 40,000 people in Croatia are affected by eating disorders. One of the Croatian media outlets that wrote about the initiative is Telegram.
In their first article about BEA’s initiative, Telegram presented to the Croatian public arguments that individual weight measurement would be beneficial as pupils are in an age where they are just building up their self-awareness and confidence. Having ”public” weigh-ins results in an enormous amont of stress as it encourages stigmatisation and peer pressure isn’t a good way of supporting that delicate development.
However, as Telegram wrote in a follow-up article, social media also saw the other side of the coin, where some of the commentators opposed the initiative with pretty derogative terms.
”It’s a a lot of stress??? And being a fat pig is some sweet secret? Nobody knows until the number on scale shows,” reads one of the many comments written ignorantly and in poor taste, as Telegram pointed out.
Nonetheless, with the memo sent out and accepted, things will look less stressful when it comes to weight for the newest Croatian generations.
With this initiative making a change, the hope arises for other challenges and issues in Croatian schools to be resolved. For example, as TCN reported earlier in September, the start of this year saw the problem of too many pupils having straight A scores due to various pressures placed on teachers to evaluate their performance unrealistically.
Read about Croatian politics and history since 1990 on our TC guide.
For more about education in Croatia, follow TCN’s dedicated page.
