We’ve reached the point at which ad campaigns can depict workers courageously demanding not better health care benefits or decent wages or collective bargaining rights but . . . to be given a few minutes for lunch.
Is this what Iowa City schools are teaching our kids to expect?
C/o digby. Related Times article here.
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3 comments:
Interesting that one of the ways in which the idea of "taking your lunch" and taking vacation are acceptable nowadays is to frame them as Childhood activities.
"Take your bike back from the bully who took it"
What a confused society we are! Children need to grow up and accept adult responsibility for their school work and stop lollygagging about, and adults can only take lunch breaks and use up those vacation days if they rebel and act like children.
PsychMom -- Yes, and school is your “job” – even though you didn’t ask for it and you’re not paid and have no freedom to quit or find a better job and no hope of ever being promoted to a position of authority. One of the (many) things that bugs me about telling kids that school is their “job” is the vision of employment that it embodies – basically the crappiest job you could imagine. If school is a “job,” we need to introduce kids to the labor movement!
Yeah, I used to believe that too, that schoolwork was the work of children. I don't see it that way anymore.
Some time ago our school was contemplating new parent/staff surveys to evaluate how the school was doing. Long after the meeting, it occurred to me that we were leaving somebody out. We never ask the children what they think of their school. I recalled in university, we regularly got class/professor evaluation forms.
So I posed this to the principal that we devise a form for the students as well.
She said it was a cute idea, which I'm afraid that means it's not going to be taken seriously.
So yes, we are teaching them they have no choice, they have no say, and what they think of school and their teachers doesn't matter to the adults around them. We don't even think of them when we are considering whether the school is a good place or not.
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