The main reason why I wouldn’t even bother lining our budgies’ birdcage with any of the three major papers is that—with the exception of a few notable instances—they generally don’t seem interested in producing newsworthy stories.
The fact is, school is the axle on which our Capitalist societies turn. There are a lot of parents out there who need childcare in order to work full-time. When those parents disappear because they’re at home with the kids, things get sticky in a lot of places.
The public sector not-a-mandate seems to have quietly fizzled at the same time that the Ministry of Education has reaffirmed its commitment to bringing the lower Forms and Standard 5s back out to school early next month.
We can pretend the decision to send unvaccinated children to school with maybe-vaccinated teachers has nothing to do with the steadily increasing caseload, but that doesn’t make it so. As much as I want my daughter to return to a life that allows her to interact with her peers and actually physically meet and spend time with her teachers, I’m not prepared to play dotish just to see the (much-needed) end of digital school.
How does one account for the strange dissonance in telling parents that their unvaccinated children couldn’t attend in-person school while also failing to ask teachers if they’d been vaccinated?
Against the backdrop of SEA results released last week, in which almost 7% more students scored under 30% than last year, I wonder if we grasp what kind of whirlwind we’re preparing to reap if we continue to ignore the ways we’re allowing children to tumble into the gaping chasm between those who have the good fortune of meaningful educational support and those who don’t.
I’m not saying “The Black Jacobins” should be on the primary school curriculum. I’m simply saying that, as a nation still struggling mightily with the lessons our former colonial masters taught, we should probably be doing better than this when it comes to educating our children about their history.
What if we ditched SEA exam and finally decided that all ah we is *actually* one and therefore every single child deserves to be provided with a meaningful education?