Once upon a time, school

Name a date. Any date. And that is when school will open where you are.

Most of us have calendars that have helped us run our lives for years. We rely on being able to count on things happening when they are supposed to.

School in our country is supposed to start in August or September. Why? I don't know, maybe because when we were mostly rural that was when farm children would be less missed as farm hands. Or maybe because it is too hot to sit in a one room school house with no air conditioning. Who knows?

But it is not a sacrosanct time. It is a tradition. It is expected.

But it is a choice.

A choice now based on money. Without kids in classes parents don't have daycare. We discovered over the quarantine that we can still feed these kids who need help. We can still reach these kids via zoom and other forms of virtual learning. 

But we want their parents serving us in person, making hotel beds, running cash registers, cleaning buildings, doing all the menial work wealthier people enjoy having done. Most doctors can afford alternate care for their children, LPNs cannot. Janitors cannot. Store clerks cannot.

This is more a matter of whose families are more important. Are poor people's children more disposable? Are their relatives more disposable? 

If we are going to force them to work without compensating them with enough to adequately protect themselves and their children then we should be spending whatever it takes to protect them.

I don't know what all that would entail, but if it were my child's life there would be no limit to what I would do to keep him or her safe. Even if it meant Lucite cubes with air filters and little porta potties inside them. Why would they want less?

Basing a country's way of life around the idea that wealthy people are more worthy and love their children more deeply so that poorer people are more expendable is the worst sort of fairy tale.