After school programs
make me angry. Our society is in a state
where most of the time both parents and any family members that might be able
to help take care of and parent
children are unavailable for most of the day.
Instead of making parents available to parent their kids by changing
this fact, they offer to parent our children for us in after-school programs.
This is not a good thing. If we are going to continue to have families
in our society they need to spend more than 2 hours a week awake and in each
other’s company. Family time should be
the GOAL of having children. The goal
for parents should not be to raise productive, socially acceptable drones for
someone to employ at low wages and few benefits. Our goals are focusing on the wrong things! I looked at several articles on “how children
spend their out-of-school time.” Every
article I could find listed the advantages of after school programs as “successful”
children. “Success” being measured by
standardized tests and earning power.
Are these really the goals we want to set for ourselves
and our children? It’s no wonder to me
that most Americans report they are unhappy.
Of course we are. We are valuing
prestige and earnings above our emotional health! How many “unhappy” Americans are in
soul-stealing jobs that discourage creativity and encourage “fake it until you
make it?”
In summary I believe that out-of-school programs are
going to push us further in the wrong direction. How long until we are scheduling all our
children’s time with government run and funded programs? How long until we just turn over our kids to
them in the morning while we go to our drone jobs and only see them in the late
evening? How many of you already live
like that? The goal should be: allow more parenting time for
parents, not set up more in-lieu-of-parents
programs.
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