“School is not childcare”

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Of course school is childcare. Suggesting otherwise is ridiculous.

No. School serves as childcare for a lot of families (including mine, back when my kids needed supervision), but that is a lucky accident. It happens to be the case that for most kids, education works better when kids are in school away from home, being educated by professionals, without the parents around. That frees parents to do whatever they want with their time during school hours.

But there are times when school can't safely open, because of power outages or snowstorms or pandemics. And in those cases, the school system is not obligated to figure out your childcare for you.

If your kid attends, say, therapy once a week, and the therapist says you should leave for the duration so you usually run errands or get a pedicure, that doesn't mean the therapist has to find you a sitter on weeks when there's no therapy. Having someone else supervise your kid for that hour is a thing that happens because of therapy, not the purpose of therapy.

The true purpose of school - to EDUCATE children - was lost a long time ago. These days, it's all about free childcare and trying to fix all of society's problems. Hardly any education going on anymore, especially at the lower grades. At least not the type of education that most parents want their kids getting.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
The true purpose of school - to EDUCATE children - was lost a long time ago. These days, it's all about free childcare and trying to fix all of society's problems. Hardly any education going on anymore, especially at the lower grades. At least not the type of education that most parents want their kids getting.

seriously you think it should confinue moving away from education?? Might as well just have distance learning in the classrooms then.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How do you explain this nicely to your working sister who wants school to reopen full-time to take care of her 2 children?

I’ve been watching them and willing to continue but I just asked her to let me homeschool them like I do my own children so I’m not juggling their school online schedules. She refuses to even look into it and now her husband wrote me a strongly worded email about how homeschooling is good enough for my kids but not theirs. Okay, what do you think you are doing? We are all homeschooling now.

I just asked that she LOOK into it. So then I said that I may not be able to then watch them full-time and she now is demanding that our parents do, which they agreed. So her plan is to send them to school when it is open and then expose our parents when they are not. This makes no sense.

And no it is not a money issue. My sister maybe makes $40k at a nonprofit and my BIl easily makes half a mil in construction. Making us all her free sitters seems ridiculous.

You are way outside your lane. Tell your sister you can watch her kids if she wants you to homeschool them with yours but otherwise it is too difficult and you cannot.

What she and your parents choose to do if they do not take you up on your very generous offer is up to them.

This. You give her the choice you can live with and then it is up to her to say yes or no. Period.

You can't control your parents' decision.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
The true purpose of school - to EDUCATE children - was lost a long time ago. These days, it's all about free childcare and trying to fix all of society's problems. Hardly any education going on anymore, especially at the lower grades. At least not the type of education that most parents want their kids getting.

seriously you think it should confinue moving away from education?? Might as well just have distance learning in the classrooms then.

I didn't say that I wanted it to be the case, just that it is. I homeschool my kids because I can do childcare myself, we don't need fixing, and we also want our kids to be properly educated. It's sad, but it's the way it is.

[Anonymous]

School is childcare for the vast majority of people. What you idealize does not equal reality.