Reply to “School is not childcare”

Forum Index » Family Relationships

Reply to "“School is not childcare”"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]
[quote]
    Anonymous wrote:
    School is, of course, childcare, and our entire economy is built around that assumption. I have no idea why DCUM is obsessed with this fiction.

EXACTLY. Of course [b]one of the functions that school serves is to take care of children[/b]. I, too, think DCUM is[b] weirdly obsessed[/b] with thinking this isn't the case and there is something wrong with a parent who took a job assuming their kids would be in school during certain hours M-F.
	[/quote]

Um, no.

People who say "school is not childcare" are trying to remind parents that teachers are not simply glorified childcare providers who they can look down their nose at. They are licensed professionals who work very hard to develop lessons for their students, provide learning, and support students socially and emotionally. Yes, other parents depend on the school day as a place where their children are cared for during the day. But it is not a "weird obsession" to remind certain uppity DCUMers that teachers are highly trained professionals and not their nannies.
[/quote]

[b]Sometimes that's what people mean.  And sometimes they mean that they think that working parents are entitled for thinking that school should be open.  You see that line all the time when schools close for only marginally bad weather and people complain about having to burn through their annual leave.  Or when working parents complain about too many random closures for PD.  They aren't supposed to expect school to be open on any given day, and they're treated like they're abdicating responsibility for their kids because they have structured their working lives around the fact that full-time education is the norm.  Everyone is supposed to have multiple forms of backup care and never complain that it's hard when they have to go to work and schools are closed.  It's often a way to dump on working parents, especially ones who aren't well-off enough to have nannies or au pairs or whatever zillion forms of backup care they're supposed to have.  [/b]

And the sister in this case sounds like she's not expecting school to just be childcare, otherwise she'd presumably be fine with OP homeschooling her kids because that would provide her with free full-time childcare.  In fact, she seems to want her kids to actually go to school because she thinks its a better education.  [/quote]

PP - you have articulated my thoughts perfectly. Every time I hear the debate about reopening schools so that people can get back to work, I hear the "School are not childcare" refrain in my head. It takes me back to the days when I had three young children, and we had random marginal snow days or delays during the same months as profesional days and work days, when I was barely holding it together.  
[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics