But one letter home, a year, to the parents should be enough. After 10, they
should know better!
Cheryl

On 1/19/04 12:12 PM, in article ,
" wrote:

On Mon, 19 Jan 2004 15:10:21 GMT, "D Kat" wrote:
It's not the schools - it is the parents. You have to have training and
get a licence for just about everything except for what is most important to
our society - being a parent. I was appalled a couple of years ago to see a
young girl (at most 7 years old), standing outside in sub freezing weather
waiting for the bus wearing a short skirt with light tights and shaking with
the cold. The mother was watching warmly from inside the house. They had
recently moved in next door and had lived in Florida. What do you do at
moments like that? Pull over (was driving to work) and say "this isn't
Florida and your child needs winter clothing you idiot"?
Precisely why schools need to teach things like this. There are
classes on having a baby, but after that parents are on their own. If
they didn't learn something from their parents, or haven't learned it
on their own, how are they going to pass it on to their kids? I agree
that parents should teach their kids, but they can't teach them
something they don't know.

This also gets to a discussion on what's the purpose of a school and
an education. If its just to study academic courses (read'n rit'n 'n
rithmetic) then it doesn't belong. However, I've heard that the point
of a school is to prepare kids for life. In that case, teaching kids
how to prepare for a bitterly cold day in New England is in scope. A
lot more useful and practical then memorizing what year Columbus
sailed the ocean blue.

snip
Seriously, there a lot of cases of frostbite the previous two days - kids
just weren't dressed properly for the cold and lots of buses ran late
5-10
minutes. I can imagine between that and the heating costs (there is a
constant stream in and out of all the buildings), it was the wiser move.
Kids weren't dressed properly, don't they teach that in school? Some
common sense classes may be in order

Swyck