In Babies and more We have talked on many occasions, and we will continue to do so, about the importance of creating a solid emotional bond with babies since they are born, getting involved in raising babies, knowing their processes, respecting their rhythms and spending a lot of time with them to meet them. , allow them to know us and create a relationship of affection such that education is something pleasant to do and that time with our children is useful for them and for us, so that they feel loved (and if they feel loved they feel heard and important to us and therefore their self-esteem is high) and so that we feel fulfilled as parents and as people.
When this does not happen, when this link is not created, the children seem to speak upset and soon bother. Or said in a less crude way, the reconciliation between work and family becomes very complicated, because parents' wishes can almost clash with their responsibilities as parents and educators.
An example of this is what happened a few days ago, in which CEAPA (Spanish Confederation of Associations of Parents of Students), which in theory represents all parents who are part of the AMPA of our children's school, has requested that schools remain open 12 hours a day, seven days a week, eleven months a year, that is, from Monday to Sunday, twelve hours a day, so that parents can reconcile work and family life.
At this point it is where one wonders what the hell parents have understood by work and family conciliation, since I call this work conciliation, well, dry, because the word family does not enter a situation such that children only appear at home to bathe, have dinner and go to bed, day after day.
Other requests
In addition to what has been said, CEAPA has also requested that classes begin every year the first week of September and end the last of June, that the continuous school day ceases to take place in the schools in which it is held (in which group all school hours in the morning, starting earlier and ending later), the establishment of work permits for parents to attend school meetings and the creation of a greater number of places in early childhood education.
Reconcile work
They say that these measures aim to reconcile work with the family: “It would help parents to take care of their business. It would mean a real reconciliation of family life with the professional ”, explains Manoli Ocaña, member of the board of directors of the Association in the Balearic Islands.
However, as I have already mentioned above, the measures are aimed at modifying school calendars at various points, which would allow parents to work quietly, even have a business and eliminate many headaches related to schedules. of the children
Let others educate them
All benefits for working parents (and for employers, who would rub their hands) would be achieved at the cost of children being locked up, almost literally, in school. This would make education fall into the hands of the school almost exclusively.
If we take into account that, with the current schedules, there are many parents who already assign the educational responsibility to the teachers, it is better not to imagine what would happen if the children were in school twelve hours a day, seven days a week.
Would they improve academic results?
In another statement, Ms. Ocaña comments that these initiatives "Not only would they help the conciliation but they would raise the low academic level, (well) the children adjust to do nothing for an excessive time ”.
That the percentage of school failure in Spain is very high is something that we all know and that is evident. That school failure has to do with the number of hours children spend in school, no. In a country like Spain, where we work more hours than most European countries to produce much less, It is absurd to think that offering more teaching hours to children will achieve better results.
Luckily, few parents support these measures
If the news had been written at the end of December I would have been calm thinking that it is an innocent one, however we are in September and I see no reason to write such a story in humor, so I must believe that it's true.
I am (somewhat) calm, because luckily few parents support this measure. A survey conducted in the ABC newspaper in this regard shows that 90.6% of respondents do not want schools to open on Sundays, while the remaining 9.4% consider that it should be done. In this survey nothing is said about 12 hours a day, but I want to believe that it would not be a very accepted measure either.
But nevertheless…
If this were not true, if the majority of parents actually voted “Yes” at 12-hour school hours, we would attend a strange situation in which The parents, instead of struggling to get better schedules and finish the day before to be with their families, would be supporting spending a few hours with their children, with everything that is usually implicit: lack of contact, lack of communication, lack of understanding, lack of complicity and lack of self-esteem of children by spending little time with their parents and feeling, probably, unimportant for them.
Today's society is excessively superficial and consumerist because of the shortcomings, insecurities and complexes that we drag. If instead of solving this by offering our children unconditional love in the form of time, contact and education we give those moments to the state, which love will offer very little, we will be repeating the same mistakes that were made with us and encouraging that everything remains the same or even worse, because we are the parents, who ask for these measures.
Photos | Pdam2, Amsterdamize, Steve Polyak on Flickr
In Babies and more | Mercadona and work and family conciliation, The 10 commandments for work-family reconciliation, UNICEF asks for greater family reconciliation, Approved Plan Educa 3, to reconcile what?
