Sunday 19 June 2016

Teach or Beach?

I know this is a very outdated post so I shall keep it brief. This is inspired by the case where a father refused to pay a fine for taking his daughter on holiday during term time - there is a rule stipulating that parents must seek the permission of the school before taking their children on holiday if it is in the school term. The man then proceeded to take the case to court, where he won. However, I do not agree with this.

First of all, this creates a new problem - if he got away with it, what's stopping everyone else from doing it? Yes, it's cheaper to go on holiday when children are supposed to be in school, but surely this could change if the numbers of those going away at these cheaper times increased. If all families followed this example, then it would be extremely hard for schools to remain consistent, especially if a student is away one week, and then another the next and so on.

Most importantly, however, this seems to diminish the value of education, not to mention showing disrespect for those individuals who make this possible. I don't think many students realise just how privileged they are to have access to this level of education on a daily basis, and to take it for granted in this way is almost in insulting to those to whom such learning is unavailable. Children need to understand the value of hard work, and make the most of the resources that are open to them while they can. Otherwise, they could waste the best years of their life.

No comments:

Post a Comment