Anonymous wrote:It's not the same work. There's overlap, but it isn't equivalent.

Do you think it's disrespectful for a woman doctor to correct someone who refers to her as a nurse? (Or vice versa?) Or are we all required to call everything the same?

Actually yes, in many cases I do. And I live that myself. I am in a male-dominated profession that requires advanced degrees. During the course of my career, I have been mistaken for an assistant, a secretary, a SAHM, and more multiple times. When that happens, I almost never correct people. I will only correct people if it would be deceptive not to.correct them. But otherwise, yes, I do think it's disrespectful. I reject the concept that it degrades me to have people think I am an admin or a secretary or a SAHM or whatever. I respect everyone who fills those roles. I would not correct someone who thought that I was a childcare worker. I think highly of childcare workers, and it's no insult to be confused with one. I will never promote myself by being disrespectful of the career of someone else. If I need to do that, I've done something wrong.

So when I hear teachers and unions talk disparagingly about how school isn't childcare, what I hear is disappointing disparagement and disrespect towards childcare workers. It has a classist and racist edge to it that makes me very uncomfortable.

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Anonymous wrote:We can only even have this argument because technology allows for "distance learning". A few decades ago, schools would just have closed, and then they wouldn't have been providing education OR child care. Before now, the child care and education were inseparable because kids had to be in person to do it.

Right, and I think that's clouding the discussion. I have an incoming kindergartener who can't read. (We're working on it, he knows some sight words and is getting better at sounding them out, but he isn't a comfortable, fluent, independent reader.) I'm frankly quite skeptical that they ARE separable. I suspect the parents or whoever is doing the childcare will also be doing an equal amount of the education as the teacher, if not more. I suspect kids will not learn as much if they have working parents, which would indicate that education is not something you can deliver at arm's reach. These are just my suspicions. I'd like to be wrong.

They are not separable for kids that age. Don't let the teachers posting here convince you otherwise. They are just trying to make themselves feel better and deny the reality that their physical absence is letting kids down.

If childcare and education are so separate, why do we have the saying that "parents are a child's first teacher" and why do teachers always talk about how important the role of the parent is in a kid's education??

People who truly love educating young children and feel called to do it know that education and childcare are intertwined. Unfortunately we have a not insignificant number of teachers who don't want to go in and teach because they feel like it would prevent them from being able to do other things they like, such as travel or hang out with friends or see extended family. They're afraid no one is going to want to hang out with them if they've been at school and they don't want to give that up. I'm not saying this is the case for every teacher who doesn't want to go in, but I have heard this kind of talk first hand from some of the young-ish, healthy teachers I know who want full DL. It stinks because a lot of us parents are willing to have school be that one thing we spend our "risk budget" on, while basically locking down in every other way, because we feel it's that important. But some teachers value their social lives more than their students.

Anonymous wrote:We can only even have this argument because technology allows for "distance learning". A few decades ago, schools would just have closed, and then they wouldn't have been providing education OR child care. Before now, the child care and education were inseparable because kids had to be in person to do it.

You don't think there was any "distance learning" more than a few decades ago?

The American School of Correspondence was founded in 1897, and it certifies a high school degree purely by correspondence. Online learning broaden their scope, but it was not the start of their mission. The US mail sufficed before that.

(Also, they don't provide childcare. )

Anonymous wrote:We can only even have this argument because technology allows for "distance learning". A few decades ago, schools would just have closed, and then they wouldn't have been providing education OR child care. Before now, the child care and education were inseparable because kids had to be in person to do it.

Right, and I think that's clouding the discussion. I have an incoming kindergartener who can't read. (We're working on it, he knows some sight words and is getting better at sounding them out, but he isn't a comfortable, fluent, independent reader.) I'm frankly quite skeptical that they ARE separable. I suspect the parents or whoever is doing the childcare will also be doing an equal amount of the education as the teacher, if not more. I suspect kids will not learn as much if they have working parents, which would indicate that education is not something you can deliver at arm's reach. These are just my suspicions. I'd like to be wrong.

We can only even have this argument because technology allows for "distance learning". A few decades ago, schools would just have closed, and then they wouldn't have been providing education OR child care. Before now, the child care and education were inseparable because kids had to be in person to do it.

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Anonymous wrote:I think the point is that childcare is not the primary purpose of school, if it were it would be open year round like daycare.

Yes, but it is A purpose of school. To say it's not puts an unfair amount of burden on working parents.

Closing schools definitely has a major impact on US families -- to the point where it can make it hard for families to stay intact and survive -- but that doesn't mean it is a mandate of the schools. Not of how they are designed. The mandate is the education.

Now that also doens't mean that it shouldn't be part of tha mandate -- it just isn't. SO, for example, if you have a kid who leaves formal schooling because you are going to homeschool or unschool, or if the child is over 16 and decides not to go, you can't just drop those kids off at school on the days you need to work. They are either an enrolled student or not, and if enrolled, ithey have to be in classes.a

Some countries have universal daycare provisions, or state-sponsered childcare availability. We don't. Maybe we should. But that's not the same question.

The mandate is not just education. Case point- 4 million meals being served this spring/ summer. These boards were literally begging people to pick up meals because some locations were throwing out so much food. Dont you think they could have cut some locations off that did not have high pick up rates? No, because they must feed families.

Case in point 2- mcps cannot open without providing transportation to schools to children. Why hasn't everyone been screaming, "school is uber!" Bussing is not education. But School cannot open without it by law. Because theoretically school is an uber also. You can't have one without the other.

The school systems and government chose to prioritize what they want- they could do DL and childcate not for pay if they chose to.

Meals is something schools took on as part of their responsibilities. So yes, there is an expectancy and now responsibility that they provide it. Childcare was never something schools took on.

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Anonymous wrote:How much public support do you think there would be for public schools if they couldn't be used for child care?

The remarks is thread are ridiculously out of touch with reality. Regardless of whether child care is a primary function of public schools or not, it's absolutely viewed and used that way. If we end up with universal child care, you can bet they're not going to set anything up for schools days between ~9-3pm.

I think the school is not childcare posters in this thread have been doing an admirable job demonstrating why people cringe when they say that. It's amazingly out of touch.

Ugh. It’s not being out of touch. It’s being a realist and being able to distinguish purpose from collateral. Childcare is not a purpose of schools. Education is a purpose of schools. To be sure, people get the benefit of childcare from schools, but that is not part of their mandate. They are not responsible for providing childcare. Totally understand that people relied on them for that and are now screwed, but that does not change what the schools are actually responsible for doing. In other words, yes, it totally makes sense and sucks that people don’t have a backup childcare option including k this crappy situation, but schools are not responsible for that situation because childcare is not part of their obligations. The inability to be able to understand this nuance is incredibly shocking to me.

Anonymous wrote:It means you need to figure it out. Lots of different ways to do it but stop putting your responsibilities on someone else. One parent, family, hire someone, day cares.

This is a horrifically libertarian or hyperindividualist view which makes me sad yet captures all the decay in our society. We need to have a safety net of some kind. We need to stop saying millions of children are “not our responsibility”. Are they the responsibility of the schools? Yes, usually, and now we are in crisis which requires us to come together, not push this off onto individuals who most of the time cannot just pívot away from their jobs.

The thing is, if you could design a "childcare" system for children ages 5 - say, 12, what would you design? Maybe a system where you send them to a facility, and they do some PE, music, education, etc? The distinction is stupid. It's like the distinction between pre-school and daycare for a 4 year old.

Incorrect summary of what happened.

(i.e., off topic, as you say)

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Anonymous wrote:It's not the same work. There's overlap, but it isn't equivalent.

Do you think it's disrespectful for a woman doctor to correct someone who refers to her as a nurse? (Or vice versa?) Or are we all required to call everything the same?

Teachers and daycare workers have overlapping duties. Just like doctors and nurses. No one is calling teachers daycare workers. We’re saying that schools provide childcare.

Schools did provide childcare. They don't currently. They also provided a lot of other things that went with children being there in person -- some of those things continued, like providing meals, and some didn't, like providing air and chairs and tables.

They did provide childcare. They don't have to. Change that if you want to, but it's a more involved process than just saying you think so.

Off topic.

Teachers shouldn’t be offended that they have overlapping duties with people they think are lesser humans and are occasionally compared to those humans on some level.

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Anonymous wrote:It's not the same work. There's overlap, but it isn't equivalent.

Do you think it's disrespectful for a woman doctor to correct someone who refers to her as a nurse? (Or vice versa?) Or are we all required to call everything the same?

Teachers and daycare workers have overlapping duties. Just like doctors and nurses. No one is calling teachers daycare workers. We’re saying that schools provide childcare.

Schools did provide childcare. They don't currently. They also provided a lot of other things that went with children being there in person -- some of those things continued, like providing meals, and some didn't, like providing air and chairs and tables.

They did provide childcare. They don't have to. Change that if you want to, but it's a more involved process than just saying you think so.

Anonymous wrote:It's not the same work. There's overlap, but it isn't equivalent.

Do you think it's disrespectful for a woman doctor to correct someone who refers to her as a nurse? (Or vice versa?) Or are we all required to call everything the same?

Teachers and daycare workers have overlapping duties. Just like doctors and nurses. No one is calling teachers daycare workers. We’re saying that schools provide childcare.

It's not the same work. There's overlap, but it isn't equivalent.

Do you think it's disrespectful for a woman doctor to correct someone who refers to her as a nurse? (Or vice versa?) Or are we all required to call everything the same?

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Anonymous wrote:It is ridiculous to say, “oh, I know that school as an institution has been providing childcare for the history of history, but that’s just ancillary to the mandate of education. I don’t know why everyone on earth can’t just whip up an easy solution for childcare that doesn’t involve the largest childcare institution in the world.”

Words mean things. Legislation means things.

If you want school to not just provide childcare by happenstance, but by part of the mandate, then lobby to change the mandate.

Yes, words means things. So saying that school is not childcare is ridiculous.

Yeah. Pay attention to the words. "School is not childcare" =/= "The mandate is education."

Schools happen to provide childcare, but as we can see, they do not have to. That is why they aren't.

If you want them to provide childcare, then mandate it. While you're there, sort out what they are going to do with homeschooled or unschooled kids whose caregivers don't want them in class but may want sporadic childcare for their own reasons.

I think you’re off topic here. School is education and childcare. People think that it isn’t. Those people are nuts. Clearly. That’s on topic.

Schools are required to provide education. They can shrug and say it’s not by job to provide childcare. The fact that they’re not required to supply childcare is a major failure of government. That’s off topic.

What people think -- as well as your opinion of them -- isn't particularly relevant to what schools are required to be. That's a matter of federal and state law.

Change the law if you want to change the requirements, or mandates. Or rant on anonymous forums that other people are nuts, but it won't have the effect you seem to desire.

The law does not change what schools actually are. Why are you being so obtuse? The topic of this thread is regarding people who don’t think school is childcare. It CLEARLY IS CHILDCARE. That’s objective.

It also CLEARLY PROVIDES AIR TO STUDENTS. But it is not required to provide clean air for them if they are not there in person.

So you agree school is childcare. Yeah! Hooray! Huzzah! That’s on topic. Thank you and good evening.

*amused*

I agree that schools happen to provider childcare, chairs, and clean air to students who are there in person to fulfil the mandate of providing education. If education is provided virtually, don't expect you to be able to demand childcare from them, just as I don't expect you to be able to demand chairs from them

Thank you for agreeing with me.

And if you created a relevant thread to go with the opinion here, I’ll comment there too. I might even agree with you on some of it.