Back to School - Warehousing your kids
Labor Day has passed and today I watched eleventy-trillion rugrats on their way back to school, little uniforms still fresh, backpacks still clean.
Here in Ontario, today marks the first day of what my gentlemen friend refers to as “middle class welfare for parents”: all-day kindergarten.
I’m not a huge fan of children, I admit, but I don’t want to see bad things happen to them. I see all-day kindergarten as a bad thing. First, let’s look at the mental and physical costs. Five-year-olds have really short attention spans and need lots of naps. Recent studies have shown that kids need to sleep 10 hours a night in order to grow and maintain mental acuity. Instead of allowing kids to have the time they need for rest and unstructured play, parents are instead sending them to concentration camps - literally, camps where they are required to concentrate.
Furthermore, all-day kindergarten is nothing more than free daycare for the middle classes. Mom wants to work? She doesn’t want to pay for a nanny? She ships her toddler off to the mines while she heads to the office. It saves her a fortune in babysitting, so now she has more of that yummy take-home pay that allows the family to have 2 cars and a big screen TV. Previously, she would have to abandon her child with a paid caretaker (there are no grandmothers left on the planet apparently), which really cut into the family trip to Disney and the leased SUV.
Look, when I was a kid, we were po’. So po’, in fact, that we couldn’t afford the other o and the r. I had both my Nana (happy birthday today, Nana, wherever you are) - my dad’s spinster aunt who lived with us, and my mother only worked part time. We had one car. We rented our apartment. Mom had the same shoes for years. But I was loved, and I knew it. There was always someone reading to me, or teaching me something, or doing arts & crafts with me. Nana was a big lover of board games. I got naps every afternoon, and I was cared for when I was sick. My lunches were prepared with love, out of fresh, non-halal food.
I understand that there are some families where two working parents are a necessity, especially as our economy comes out of hard times. But are there enough of those families to warrant all-day kindergarten across the province? No, I don’t think so.
Seperation of “school and state” is the only answer! The children are getting more indoctrination than education.
Comment by Pauly Jr — September 7, 2010 @ 3:14 pm
It must be really easy as a non-parent to sit back and criticize those of us with children. How is a child 6 years old that much better equipped to deal with the lack of naps the 5 year old will face in a a full day of kindergarten? Also please explain to me how 4 extra hours of class time takes away from the 10 hours of sleep I agree a child that age needs. At that age children learn much faster that they do in later years. They strongly represent a sponge at that age, absorbing all they can. This is not about “middle class welfare” but the reality of changing times. My kids all had the opportunity to attend full day kindergarten and their education has benefited from it. A childless person should never have the nerve to call a parent “selfish”.
Comment by Scott Smith — September 7, 2010 @ 3:47 pm
Scott
Only a guilty conscience would make anyone go off as strongly as you did in that comment. Please calm down. Should I not have the nerve? Um, despite not having children, all residents pay school taxes. I have no issue whatsoever in funding education, but I don’t see how funding all-day kindergarten qualifies as “education.”
I’m very glad your children benefited from spending 6 hours with strangers. Some kids can thrive in any environment. Others however need their parents areound for more than just bathtime.
How often did you or your wife make yourselves available to attend class trips with the kids? The days of the volunteer mom seem to be behind us, don’t they?
As for 6 year olds also needing a shorter day, I agree. What I think a lot of people fail to realize is that once our society changed from agro to industrial, we could no longer have the wee ones underfoot because we no longer worked our own property. So kids were warehoused in the quickly-created public school system so that parents could get out and contribute to the economy. How this system affected children was of very little interest to the tax man, who needed first dad and then mom to be raking in the bucks. If we still worked our own farms, our kids would be nearby, still learning, but having time to be unstructured children, which is exactly what they are.
RG
Comment by Right Girl — September 7, 2010 @ 6:50 pm
I agree that all-day Kindergarten shouldn’t be mandated (it isn’t here; home-schooling is an option). But that’s about all I agree with.
Comment by Trish Smith — September 7, 2010 @ 7:53 pm
I don’t have any kids but if I did, I think it would be important to raise my own child. Should we allow the progressive movement to take children 10 hours a day for kindergarten how much longer before we start having mandatory boarding schools.
Do not allow your children to be indoctrinated in anyone’s sociology. In fact parents should set aside a few hours each night to go over their children’s schoolwork, to help their child where they may be confused or to correct where the teacher is confused.
Comment by Wil — September 7, 2010 @ 8:07 pm
Wil - it isn’t so much the curriculum (or lack thereof) but the loss of parental bond. That’s what I find so sad, and it’s a lot of guilt on parents that makes this issue as contentious as breastfeeding vs. formula.
RG
Comment by Right Girl — September 7, 2010 @ 8:09 pm
Jesus fucking God, until I wander away from my own blog, I forget just how dumb people can be.
Children are basically pack animals until they’re twenty-one and were treated as such up until about 80 years ago. They plowed the goddamned fields and, if they were lucky, one in three of them lived to see their fifth birthday. And you know what? Life was much better that way. At least we didn’t have debates like this one, if only because we were all busy with truly important things, like getting cholera.
For the fucking life of me, I can’t understand how Scott’s kids are any better off than I was for their extra four hours of being wards of the state. In Ontario, at least, that extra four hours is used for “play time” and “socialization.” Personally, I found that time better used learning how to drink like a man.
On the other hand, I think that if you home-school your kids, they should be disqualified from any and all social services. If the government raises them and they wind up being titanic fuck-ups, then give them all kinds of welfare. After all, that’s a colective failure.
But if you home school them and they’re assholes, I have no problem selling them into sex slavery in Syria.
I’m all about personal responsibility.
Comment by skippystalin — September 7, 2010 @ 8:45 pm
Jesus Skippy, did you purloin my medication again?
RG
Comment by Right Girl — September 7, 2010 @ 9:40 pm
RG,
They’re good for my figure. That’s what they’re for, right?
Comment by skippystalin — September 7, 2010 @ 9:46 pm
I would just like parents to do some more real thinking about how their children are educated and what they are being taught. Too often the ‘professional’ educators are seen as experts and they have been treated that way for much too long - too many new and improved education approaches are adopted on the basis of nothing more than the doctoral dissertation and then 20 years later we find out that whole language was not all that great.
But parents are not allowed to question what goes on in the classroom even when the parent knows much much more than the teacher - my father had to teach me physics because the high school teacher was too inept to do so. But my father had a challenge on his hands because the school didn’t see him as an expert - I guess being an electrical engineer disqualified him from teaching Grade 11 Physics, but having a four year education degree with a minor in science made for a qualified teacher!!
It is time that parents took back the schools and made sure that the schools actually taught things that parents consider to be important and I’m betting it is not playing nice or socialization, but rather math, science, reading and writing!
Comment by Maureen — September 8, 2010 @ 11:20 am
You really kicked over the beehive this time. I’m still trying to figure out where Skippy came from (or is going). I tend to agree with you on Scott, that’s self defense for sure. Maureen has some very good points. My parents grew up in the farm life, school during the winter, farm in the summer. Mom’s ninety something and still outworks my wife. It was childhood disease that got the kids, not overwork. We do have it better today than our parents had it, but is public school for kids and mom shuffling paper in some office better than mom and the kids at home? Good question, but my childhood memories, especially the good ones were not of school but of the times I spent with my parents and grandparents. Which is I think the point of your article and when a person measures their life, is it the diplomas or the good memories that count. Sorry to wax philosophically, but…
Comment by R-Robert — September 8, 2010 @ 1:07 pm
Guilty conscience? Someone wanting their children to have all the education they can? Sounds like you could have used a little more yourself. Or is this due to a crappy childhood you had?
Comment by Stu Pitazz — September 8, 2010 @ 3:33 pm
I guess I shouldn’t be surprised at your reaction to my comments. The line about not liking children in the first place told me to expect this. Good luck Wendy, try to get over whatever it is about children that pisses you off so. Reply all you like, this will be my last word on this. I can read the lefty blogs for this kind of opinion.
Comment by Scott — September 8, 2010 @ 3:41 pm
All day schedule of kindergarden prepares kids for the all day grade one class they take, the year after. No kid can fail kindergarden but you can fail grade one. Plus it might toughen them up too, the little brats.
One year left until my oldest starts kindergarden, and yes I can’t wait to start saving $ on babysitting.
Comment by Terry — September 9, 2010 @ 5:04 pm
I hated nursery school more than kindergarten. In nursery school some dork would run around giving out wedgies. But in kindergarten we got to nap on thin mats on the floor to toughen us up. And we got to shove plasticine up our noses. Back in those days (the 40’s) you flunked grade 1 if you couldn’t spell shit. One kid in my class flunked both grade one and two. But today he’s richer than short bread.
Comment by Angus MacDonald — September 9, 2010 @ 7:54 pm
All-day kindergartens have time set aside for naps and unstructured play. Those are not things that children are deprived of in kindergarten.
You say, “Free daycare for the middle class” like it was a bad thing. And don’t working class kids go to kindergarten too?
It has been the case for at least a decade now that for most people it is not a viable option to raise a family on a single income. Incomes have not gone up with inflation. Individuals are not paid a “family wage”. So some kind of public daycare services are a lot more necessary than you think.
Comment by MissaA — September 10, 2010 @ 5:52 pm