> But getting kids out of the house so parents can work and into a social environment where they see other kids is extremely important for most families and society as a whole.
Yes, and that can be accomplished in a variety of ways, of which schools are one way (probably the riskiest way, in the current pandemic). Take your kids to the playground in the evening. Set up social playdates with other families. Let your kid sleep over at the neighbor's house. Let them visit their cousins and grandparents. Let them walk to school with other kids. Give a firm "no" to your boss for that 4pm meeting!
From what I have seen, most American kids seem to have no friends near where they live, and most American families have too many helicopter parents to let these normal channels of social interaction to work as intended. So they prefer that teachers serve as the helicopter for the majority of their workday instead.
Normalization of the workday to adjust to the fact that most families have working parents is what's needed, not saddling teachers with absorbing that extra load of childcare in addition to teaching.
I can do that because I work remotely for a software company. How's someone who's working the drive-through going to do that? How's the manager of a Walmart going to do that? A pharmacist, a bank teller, a delivery driver?
Taking your kids to the playground in the evening does not address the fact that most people have to work during the day.
What sucks is that if you don't have enough, you might not get hired or not get hours.
But that's yet another issue with our society.
No solution can serve 100% of the people 100% of the time. I would say that American society is already unbalanced enough in this regard that most people who can tell their bosses no for a 4pm meeting (e.g. the administrator participating in a meeting for some committee) are not doing so.
For example, in your example, a bank teller would tell their boss, who would arrange for a replacement. Maybe the bank would have to hire a few more workers, but normalizing this would help a lot. What happens now is that people get punished for it, implicitly as well as explicitly in a fashion that seems to be a holdover from the days of the 1950s. Addressing this as a society rather than shifting that responsibility on to teachers would, in my opinion, be more equitable and sustainable.
> Taking your kids to the playground in the evening does not address the fact that most people have to work during the day.
Yes, the cherry-picked suggestion that you mentioned does not. How ever, the other suggestion that I had in the same paragraph of having them stay with their grandparents or cousins would address this problem. Treating “normal social interactions“ and “watching over kids when their parents are not around“ is exactly what I am recommending against.
Why not say that schools are a mix between learning and childcare, learning finishes at X and then there is activities/playground time after that.
> Give a firm "no" to your boss for that 4pm meeting!
Great for those that can. What about families that require physical presence or abnormal hours?
> most American kids seem to have no friends near where they live
As a Brit in London, I don't live near many of my friends. We often meet up in central London as its convenient. When I was a kid, many of my friends didn't live near me because school was a few villages away and I liked people from other villages. Kids don't choose their friends based on location.
To me, it seems inefficient for every parent to sort their own childcare when you could centralise it into an institution dedicated to children?
Great! In America, some schools do provide these sorts of programs, called "after-care" for people who cannot take charge of their children after school time. They are typically not handled by teachers, and you have to pay extra for them. There are solutions like kibbutz, which other countries have implemented, that would be a good fit as well.
In practice, I have observed that enough parents do seem to be able to handle their childcare (where I live) that it's not a free program that's paid for by society through increased taxes. But that's a possible option as well.
Also small children require way more constant attention than you seem to admit.
The adults don't need to set up playdates, but they do need to think about traffic and general safety.
...and wearing a mask, social distancing and germ theory.
Anecdotally, from when I was in school, the parents who first and foremost treated school as daycare and expressed such sentiments also didn't really care whether their kids learned all that much or behaved well.
Now whether or not schools should be primarily childcare is an entirely separate debate.
If schools explicitly acknowledged their dual purpose, then they could more cleanly separate the two functions. I think doing so would even improve the educational component.
I've volunteered in high school classrooms quite a lot. The amount of wasted time is astounding. Hours upon hours of boring nonsense that somehow actively detracts from learning. Students are so bored from sitting around all day. Also, they instinctively learn that 80% of every lecture period is filler nonsense but are quite bad at guessing which 20% they should be paying attention to.
Even in subjects that shouldn't be cut (e.g., Geometry) the lecture periods could be safely halved and probably improve educational outcomes.
Schools are great facilities for child care, BTW. Computers, gyms, fields, sports equipment, books, ...
Why not just admit that about half of the classroom time alotted to most subjects exists for fill-up-butt-in-seat-time purposes only and then openly embrace the fact that the school is an educational institution whose physical plant is also useful for leisure/childcare? Heck, university campuses already do this...
By calling themselves "babysitters" they are expressing they are being insulted by the parents. They are trying to convey that they deserve more respect than what they are receiving.
There are likely a large number of school board members, teachers, and even parents who complain because they want more emphasis on the teaching and less on the babysitting. I can imagine a lot of tension in the future around this fundamental contention.
Then, when they graduate from school, we expect them to swim and thrive in an environment that they have very little experience in, and that which a lot of people somehow muddle through life without certain vital skills like cooking.
OK. School functions as 'daycare' center. Sure. Because our society is structured such that parents are forced to work two jobs.
Except more bullshit and people giving you way too much homework.
Education and keeping a child busy are very very different things and should be different. Else the quality of education, which is already not held as high as it used to be, will erode further.
IMHO.
However these days it's often necessary for both parents to work, and thus no one is available to watch the kids (and i'm glossing over single parents for simplicity).
If education was prestigious, we'd pay teachers more than $30k per year.
In the case of teachers, we take advantage of their passion for helping children, even to their own detriment (i.e. buying their own school supplies).
Yes, the education aspect is more 'prestigious'. But getting kids out of the house so parents can work and into a social environment where they see other kids is extremely important for most families and society as a whole. The attitude of a school board member implying babysitting isn't their job must be coming from someone who either doesn't currently have young kids or comes from a wealthy enough background that they can't even fathom why this would be an issue for others.