It seems to me we're not really discussing what I expected to discuss - because I've made all the arguments you're making, and defended them. I know exactly where you're coming from. But I find it interesting how people in other jurisdictions make all the same philosophical arguments, even while paying for very different things. One lady further down thinks it's crazy that our government provides basic school tools, pencils and notebooks, for kids, but in other ways she completely agrees with you - and philosophically she's on a similar page. Yet the things she pays for, and expects to pay for, are very different.
Forty years ago, it was an accepted fact of life that people had to budget for their children's school supplies, even their books, because that was simply part of having children in school. I can certainly see the point of advising high school students to buy the books they're studying in language classes, for example - for twenty bucks per term, you get to study the books, and keep them for your personal library, you can mark them up if you wish to, let them get dog-eared, and no future student is going to have to put up with your markings unless they choose to buy a used book from you. (I don't like this idea for anything other than literature books, though - those are generally available in cheap paperback editions. Science and math books really are expensive, they're built to be durable, and they should be loaned out by the school each year.)
We've gotten to the point in Ontario where every single aspect of education is the school's, or the board's, or the province's jurisdiction. We provide their notebooks, their pencils, their textbooks, their babysitting over lunch hour even if a parent is available - everything. We've organized our school days so that there isn't time to go home at lunch, so that kindergarten is all day, five days out of ten, instead of a more humane half-day every day program for our littlest students. The reason for that? It's cheaper for the busing. We do all this, make public education entirely the purview of professionals in a school setting from eight-thirty until three, and then we're surprised when the parents don't feel comfortable in the school. We're surprised when the general public, especially the Ministry of Education, expects us to be entirely responsible for every aspect of a child's education. We complain, with good reason, that we're being held responsible for things about our students over which we have no control, but philosophically we've set ourselves up for that. When we take absolutely all control out of the hands of parents, we shouldn't be surprised if they expect absolutely all results to come from us, too. And yet that's not reasonable. A child's home life as at least as much, and most studies say more, to do with their success as anything we do in the classroom.
Parents have a responsibility to see to their children's education, in whatever environment that occurs. For most, that means supporting what goes on at school. We could go on forever about the poor little kids who go home to crappy home lives and oh, isn't it sad. Of course it's sad. Of course we, as a society, have a responsibility to help as much as we can. But I'm not convinced that taking on responsibilities that are traditionally parental, and making them part of the public school system, is the best route to go for that.
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Forty years ago, it was an accepted fact of life that people had to budget for their children's school supplies, even their books, because that was simply part of having children in school. I can certainly see the point of advising high school students to buy the books they're studying in language classes, for example - for twenty bucks per term, you get to study the books, and keep them for your personal library, you can mark them up if you wish to, let them get dog-eared, and no future student is going to have to put up with your markings unless they choose to buy a used book from you. (I don't like this idea for anything other than literature books, though - those are generally available in cheap paperback editions. Science and math books really are expensive, they're built to be durable, and they should be loaned out by the school each year.)
We've gotten to the point in Ontario where every single aspect of education is the school's, or the board's, or the province's jurisdiction. We provide their notebooks, their pencils, their textbooks, their babysitting over lunch hour even if a parent is available - everything. We've organized our school days so that there isn't time to go home at lunch, so that kindergarten is all day, five days out of ten, instead of a more humane half-day every day program for our littlest students. The reason for that? It's cheaper for the busing. We do all this, make public education entirely the purview of professionals in a school setting from eight-thirty until three, and then we're surprised when the parents don't feel comfortable in the school. We're surprised when the general public, especially the Ministry of Education, expects us to be entirely responsible for every aspect of a child's education. We complain, with good reason, that we're being held responsible for things about our students over which we have no control, but philosophically we've set ourselves up for that. When we take absolutely all control out of the hands of parents, we shouldn't be surprised if they expect absolutely all results to come from us, too. And yet that's not reasonable. A child's home life as at least as much, and most studies say more, to do with their success as anything we do in the classroom.
Parents have a responsibility to see to their children's education, in whatever environment that occurs. For most, that means supporting what goes on at school. We could go on forever about the poor little kids who go home to crappy home lives and oh, isn't it sad. Of course it's sad. Of course we, as a society, have a responsibility to help as much as we can. But I'm not convinced that taking on responsibilities that are traditionally parental, and making them part of the public school system, is the best route to go for that.