In Loco Parentis
September 6th, 2006 | by Craig |This fall marks our first foray into the public school system. So far, it has been, um, interesting.
The kicker has been one piece of paperwork the school sent home, requesting blanket permission for the kids to go to all field trips for the year.
Excuse me? I don’t think so.
We’ll be looking at each trip and deciding whether or not it’s appropriate. That’s our job, whether we like it or not.
So, in my never-ending mission to be branded “One Of THOSE Parents,” I wrote the following to the school to explain our non-answer on the question:
It is our position that it is inappropriate to write a “blank check,†as it were, for field trips. We think it is far more reasonable to grant permission for each field trip, after we have had a chance to learn the content of the trip, and decide for ourselves whether or not it is appropriate for our child.
We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause, but we also ask you to understand our position and our concern.
Now, I don’t think they’re going to be taking elementary students to Mapplethorpe exhibits or anything like that, but I’m a little disturbed at how easily we’re letting our responsibilities as parents slip away from us.
I can see some parents saying, “Hot dog! We don’t have to fill out one of those lousy forms for each single trip! W00t!”
Further, we also got a note that the school is doing a fluoride program, in which a dental hygeinist comes in once a month and gives the kids a supervised fluoride rinse. At least it requires parental permission.
I’m not against fluoride, but is this really the school’s responsibility?
One of the points that was raised in Anthony Lewis’s books (reviewed here and here) was that our schools (and many other entities) are suffering from a bad case of mission creep. Nominally, our schools exist to provide an education, but now they are providing breakfast, lunch, day care, after-school supervision, and dental health.
Now, for saying that I don’t think the school should be in the food service business, I’ll no doubt be branded “anti-nutrition,” but let’s stop and think for a minute. Where does it stop? We ceded lunch a while ago. Now we’ve ceded breakfast. They’re wanting us to cede dental care, and let them take field trips wherever they want.
If that isn’t a slippery slope, I don’t know what is.
Look, we’re sacrificing our kids on the altar of “Me, Me, Me,” and gladly handing everything over to the government and the schools, so we don’t have to worry about it. From where I sit (and probably my own parents as well), parenting is a thankless, dirty job. You’re up to your elbows in urine, feces, paperwork, school trips, soccer games, football games, meetings and the whole nine yards, and its hard damn work and you don’t get a vacation, no matter how bad you want one.
But as the cliche says, no one wants to have their gravestone saying, “I wish I’d spent more time at work.”
My sinestra friends will no doubt see the answer in more government-provided day care, so that parents can make a “living wage,” but the answer lies right in our own hands, folks. Do we need the biggest house, the newest car, the latest boat, the 100″ TV?
Give some of that stuff up, and you win back the most valuable commodity on earth: time. You only get one chance to screw up your kids, and why not take the time and effort to do it your way, rather than paying someone else to do it?
15 Responses to “In Loco Parentis”
By Shane Mason on Sep 6, 2006 | Reply
Craig,
I agree with you here on the field trip issue. Last year we were often surprised to hear about trips for the first time over dinner. It would be nice to know where I kids were all the time.
As for the other part, read the comments on this post
By Craig on Sep 6, 2006 | Reply
But all-day kindergarten isn’t the answer, either.
If all-day kindergarten is good, then all-day pre-school must be better.
Somewhere, we decided that education is not about actually learning things, but about self-esteem, and we can’t find our way back from that.
Quoth Jack Handey:
That’s where we are today. More school isn’t the answer: better school is.
By Shane Mason on Sep 7, 2006 | Reply
More school isn’t the answer: better school is
How the heck do you argue with that? Say “NO! Better school is NOT the answer!” Don’t set me up!
Seriously, I certainly don’t think that all day kindergarten is the only answer. I am claiming that at that age children are sponges. So many children aren’t getting the start they need at home. They don’t get a d*mn thing but spongebob and ninendo. They need that head start. In some cases, the children are better off staying with their parents that year.
Craig, the very first problem with our education system is facts. Children are taught to the test and taught to pass test. This didn’t just start with NCLB but years before with Quality Basic Education and before. They are not being taught methods of inquiry.
I was surprised when I went to college and figured out that they weren’t teaching me ‘facts’ that I could write down in my notebook so I could regugitate them on a test. I didn’t learn to ‘write code’, I learned the art and theory of compter programming so that I could go out into the world and learn everyday how to solve the problems that arose. Can’t anticipate and memorize solutions to them all. By giving children a ‘toolset’ then they can find the solutions they need.
That is how the curriculum is failing our children.
By Sarpy Sam on Sep 7, 2006 | Reply
The school forms are always so interesting to fill out every year. A lot of times we line things out and initial them so they don’t have permission to do whatever they please with our child. The administration hates it in the long run when parents care.
As for the fluoride thing, out dentist said it was a bad thing to do so we did not give permission for the school to do it. I thought I was going to have to get a lawyer to get the school not to do it. They said nobody had ever refused before and they didn’t know what to do. I told them to leave my kid alone would be what to do.
Give an inch, and the bureaucrats will take a mile. Be a parent, stand your ground Craig.
By Craig on Sep 7, 2006 | Reply
I couldn’t agree more. They are taught what to think instead of how to think.
The best thing I ever saw in my years in school was an individualized math program in middle school. You took tests that showed your mastery of the subject matter, then went on to the next level, as high as you could go.
It wasn’t followed through in high school, though. So, for me, my freshman year of Algebra and half of Algebra II was review. And I wasn’t the only one. So we wasted a year and a half of class time that could have been better spent on just about anything.
The sad thing is that with the Federal Government holding the purse strings, things aren’t likely to change any time soon. If there’s one thing the government (and teachers unions) hates, it’s competition.
By rita on Sep 7, 2006 | Reply
We got to this point thanks to all the parents who don’t parent….unlike you guys. Wait until you see how many parents don’t bother to show up for parent-teacher conferences…or anything else that involves their child that involves a little effort.
By Dani on Sep 7, 2006 | Reply
I guess I was really naive in terms of what to expect. When I was little, the teachers naturally tried to individualize instruction for everybody. Like your math course, Craig, in grade school we had a reading program that was color-coded from olive green to platinum with about twenty colors in between (guess which color was for the kids who couldn’t read as well). I suppose now that would be considered a blow to the “olive” kid’s self esteem, but what it really did was let the teacher easily individualize the reading instruction, and continue the appropriate level from year to year. It was great. The kids were motivated to move up through the pretty colors, and they could see the progress. By sixth grade I didn’t have to do any of it and my teacher, Mr. Nielsen, gave me “Brave New World,” and then “1984,” to read.
Now my three kids are all in Catholic school, and I am happy to say they did individualize math starting in about eigth grade- but we had my son out during 6th & seventh grade. In 3rd-5th we’d get teachers who really “got it,” and some that didn’t. We even had him taking math through an online course from Stanford during school hours, but eventually I couldn’t take his extreme unhappiness any more. Now, as a freshman, he’s taking geometry, having finished up algebra with Stanford & at St. Francis. A psychologist told me long ago, if you want your kid to have individualized instruction, you have to do it yourself, for the most part. Parents who are not involved in education, especially if their kid does not fit the mold, for whatever reason, are running a huge risk.
Interestingly, my kid’s “problem” with ADD and depression stopped when he left school. I still feel guilty about letting him stay in for as long as we did. He hasn’t taken any medicine since then, and now he’s in high school and doing fine.
By Chad on Sep 7, 2006 | Reply
It irks me a little bit to hear the federal government disparaged when it comes to education.
I understand why the disparagement happens, but I think it is too broad a brush to demonize the feds on that issue.
My wife is whip-crack smart and that likely has a lot to do with her Catholic school upbringing. Yet, I don’t believe for an instant that her primary and secondary education, taken as a whole, were better than the education I received in public schools.
I attended part of first grade in Wisconsin, fifth, sixth, seventh and part of eighth in Georgia, the rest of eighth and a small part of ninth in Virginia. Everything else for me, including Kindergarten, was in federally-run schools. Judging only by my experience, I’d say that there are people in the federal government that quite possibly have a clue about education.
And our fluoride rinses, lice examinations, hearing and tuberculosis tests weren’t optional, but that was back in the 70’s. The blanket field trip authorization seems a little silly, though.
By Craig on Sep 7, 2006 | Reply
Chad–
You and I went to school at about the same time, and while you are right, there are some damn fine teachers out there, and people who are very passionate about kids and doing their job for very little pay.
Things are not the same now as when you and I were in school. Again, it’s more mission creep than anything. Is fluoride intrinsically bad? No, but we get our fluoride from toothpaste. It’s called taking responsibility, and there seem to be more and more people willing to give that responsibility to someone else.
By DMerriman on Sep 7, 2006 | Reply
Dang troublemaker!
By dogette on Sep 8, 2006 | Reply
I couldn’t agree more that blanket permission is way too much trust in who-knows-what & who-knows-who. Trips to places you don’t approve of, to see stuff you may not want the kids to see (yet? over your dead body?), with “guidance” (slant) you don’t approve of. Kudos to you guys for being THOSE parents.
By Jay Stevens on Oct 7, 2006 | Reply
I couldn’t agree with you more, Craig! Surprising, perhaps, for one of your sinestra friends, but I think parents should be more in control of their kids and more present…
…only thing is, who can afford it? You claim it’s a simple matter of a smaller house or one fewer car. That seems to deliberately ignore the reality of trying to make ends meet nowaday.
Take my family, for example. We’re a two-income family with one car and a two-bedroom 1100-sq-ft house for four people. I can’t much smaller, I can’t shed any more cars.
I’m in computer software, and my wife is a successful writer. And we’re just getting by.
It’s not our savings or spending habits. It’s the health care, dummy. If our health care costs for the entire family weren’t $1,000/month I could quit or get a part-time job and be a full-time daddy. (I actually want to do this.)
So how do non-professional families do it? No health care? Four to a room? Seriously. Here in Montana, it means a three- or four-income family.
So where do the kids go when mom and dad are working two jobs each? Public school.
If you want to fix the “mission creep,” you need to start putting forth some solutions on how to solve the problems the schools becoming a band-aid fix for.
By Craig on Oct 8, 2006 | Reply
Here’s where I think your flaw in thinking is, Jay.
Do you spend $1,000 on health care, or health care insurance?
It’s a small distinction, but crucial in my mind.
That’s about what I pay, as well, and I sit here thinking that when all is said and done I wouldn’t even spend that much without insurance. That is to say, my family’s regular health care probably falls well under $12k/year, yet we’re paying it whether we use it or not.
I’m talking in a very general sense here and not about you specifically, Jay, but I think people can do it if they want to. We’re proof of that.
For example, is housing too high? Can you move somewhere the housing isn’t so high and do the same work for comparable pay? Are you spending too much on gas? Can you move closer to work and/or use public transportation?
I think when many of us say, “I can’t,” what we really mean is, “I don’t want to.”