Glorified Day Care

Whenever I check into Twitter these days all I seem to find is evidence of the slow creep of the state straightjacket, and video footage of people fighting. Today the topic is Labour's plans to have children brushing their teeth in school. Yesterday it was Conservative plans to create a generation of 'smoke-free' people, by ending cigarette sales to people born after 1st January 2009. Again, all interspersed with footage of fighting, stabbings and other street drama.

It's a wild dichotomy. States so powerful they can regulate every aspect of our lives. Yet so weak the streets are like a jungle.

As an individual it's hard to make plans in this world. Especially if you have grander dreams beyond your own immediate life. Caught between the lions and tigers, and Skynet.

I have a few projects, one of which is to create a better vision for education. However, though I broadly know what I want to say, I'm not quite feeling it at the moment. And when I see talk of children brushing their teeth in school I realise it's an uphill task, with plenty of pitfalls.

One aspect of it is that I believe parents should be able to choose the hours their child spends at school. If you want your child to go to school for only a few hours a day, or a few days a week, that should be your call.

Of course, the cries will instantly come:

"How will that even work!? 😠"

The current norms of the world are so ingrained in people that anything different to what they already know is instantly met with an angry brick wall. So I'm thinking I'll literally have to start with an illustration of a day or a week in the life of a child in my imagined better system. A little story, to paint a picture for all the people too lazy or unwilling to try to imagine what it could look like themselves.

Another aspect is that modern education is pretty much just glorified day care in real practical terms. Many parents find the idea of reducing the school day (or home-schooling in general) appealing, but the reality is they have to go to work, so need to send their child to school. However, even here, education fails - because as a form of day care, it's terribly inflexible. It doesn't work around the parent's work hours, the parent must work around the school hours. You have to leave work early, or enlist a friend or family member to pick the child up at 3pm, as you don't finish work 'til 5pm, or whatever the case is.

This partly helps me reply to the cries of:

"How can you have children starting and finishing school at different times?

How would that even work? 😠"

My reply would be, "Well, how does it work with day care?"

If you needed day care to cover 12pm until 5pm, and every day care centre said, "Sorry, you must bring your child at 9am and then pick them up at 3pm - this is all we can offer." People wouldn't be too impressed.

[And stop, I know what you're thinking, "..but the lessons?!! How can you teach children if they're all turning up at differing times?"

The future education will be tailored to the individual. In this age of the internet and online lessons you won't need classroom lessons with a teacher trying to impart their knowledge to thirty kids at once. Children will open their laptop and pickup where they last left off on their maths or English. (Don't worry, I've got it all sorted.)]

The Real Danger

This returns me to the real pitfall though, and those plans for teeth brushing. The left (and the right, and most of society) are so anti-freedom these days that if I start pointing out that school should operate more like day care, they'll just say, "Great, let's just put the kids under state supervision 24/7."

It won't be, "Let's give parents more freedom and optionality." It'll be even longer school days, and they'll have the kids sleeping in the classroom, like in China.

(bless these little ones)