Comments on: Swiss Saturday: Fines for Taking Your Kid on Vacation a Day Early

By: observer

observer — Tue, 05 Jun 2018 01:13:07 +0000

It’s one thing to focus on kids who are not managing to get their learning done. Fining the parents is not going to work, though. It’s been tried.

There is actually a lot of evidence on what DOES work, and it’s not teachers trying to micromanage parents’ decisions. Parent education and outreach, practiced with some basic respect DOES work.

As for the issue of kids who are going back and forth, the idea that you are going to force parents to NOT travel, or to leave their kids behind (with whom!?) is a recipe for trouble.

By: observer

observer — Tue, 05 Jun 2018 01:09:01 +0000

In reply to charles. No. The parents are paying just as much as anyone else. And the fact that the government is handling the distribution of education does not mean that it gets to dictate every detail of of every child's education. There are a lot of things that are very individual, and which are in the parent's purview.

By: Claire

Claire — Mon, 04 Jun 2018 15:44:54 +0000

I don’t agree with a ban on homeschooling but it needs to be monitored. This is to ensure that education of a reasonable standard is taking place but, more importantly, to ensure that homeschooling isn’t being used to cover up abuse. Schools are at the frontline of safeguarding children.

By: silvertech

silvertech — Mon, 04 Jun 2018 13:07:18 +0000

I had no idea the Swiss were so strict, I don’t have kids myself, but I have friends who do and I think I will ask them… it might be different here in the French-speaking cantons, I noticed that people here tend to be less strict and rely on common sense a lot.

By: KAW

KAW — Sun, 03 Jun 2018 03:53:46 +0000

US teacher. I feel like these policies are pretty strict but overall not a bad thing. Elementary doesn’t take final exams, middle and high school do. I have had MANY students miss their finals for family vacations, oversleeping, or whatever. In fact, in over 10 years of teaching I’ve never had a round of semester finals where NO ONE missed. Kids who miss finals can make them up, but how well do you think they’ll do? Plus, I’m required to enter zeroes and then I have to adjust the grade later on – more BS paperwork on top of the mounds I already deal with. And the general attitude of parents is that they are entitled to make outrageous demands regardless of the reason for the absence. This is just kids who miss at the end of a semester. Lax attendance “policies” and lack of funding for truancy courts make this a true downward spiral. Kids miss four weeks to visit family out of the country and we as teachers MUST give alternative/actual assignments all in advance (I usually have no idea what I’m doing four weeks in advance, because next week’s lessons depend on the mastery of last week’s content). The bottom line is that it is PROVEN that attendanxe is crucial to academic success. And we all hear constant refrain about public ed being broken in the US and sooo much better in other countries. Maybe if we took things just as seriously we would see fewer cases of educational neglect and more of my 7th graders would come to me reading at grade level!

By: Maria Rose

Maria Rose — Sat, 02 Jun 2018 16:58:47 +0000

Apparently most commenting here, don’t take their children out of school excessively, but there are parents who do, and usually, these students need to stay in school to achieve the grade performance skills in basic school skills (reading, writing, and math). Most parents who have achieved schooling beyond high school will strive hard to make their children attend school, even if it means they do school work on those days they take children out of school for extended holidays.
But if you are dealing with parents with little education skills, they don’t see the value of keeping the child in school during times they need them home either for assisted childcare for younger siblings or to actually work with the parents. Where I live (New York), we get students who are brought back and forth from the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico depending on the time of the year. The time period spent in school here varies depending on how long they are taken back to those places I mentioned above. Being that the two school systems are entirely different with less emphasis on (reading, writing, and math) and the going back and forth between the two systems doesn’t help the children learn.
Having a system in place that makes the teacher part of the decision on whether removal from school is permitted is a very viable option. I wish they would extend that everywhere through grade 12 to eliminate dropouts from school. There’s plenty of ways to get around physical presence in school as long as eventually, the children achieve the basic learning skills.
There’s no reason in this time period for a whole group of people to not have these skills.

By: charles

charles — Sat, 02 Jun 2018 15:32:26 +0000

Aside from Germany (and others) making home-schooling illegal; I agree with getting permission to remove your kids from school – even for a day. After all, the tax payers are paying for someone’s kids’ education isn’t it reasonable to expect the parent to make sure they are following all of the school’s rules to get that kids’ education as well?

By: the gold digger

the gold digger — Sat, 02 Jun 2018 14:15:54 +0000

Some states in the US fund public schools by attendance. That is, if a student is not in school for a day, the school does not get that day’s money for the student. Yet the school’s expenses continue. I can see why these schools would get a little touchy about absences.

By: Becky Mcintyre

Becky Mcintyre — Sat, 02 Jun 2018 13:52:03 +0000

Agreed. Here in California, the last week is about parties and field trips and cleaning out desks. My kid was an A student and attended private schools. Missing school was a huge treat, and not something we did often, but we did it without fear of repercussion.