$40 Day Government Initiative Is An Article Of Faith In Parents
On July 31, 2014, BC Finance Minister, Mike de Jong, announced the $40 day initiative to pay parents during a teacher strike: "Parents can utilize that money to acquire tutoring for their children, they can use the money to explore other educational opportunities as they see fit and for some parents, it'll be basic daycare."
Headlines that call this payout “childcare subsidies” do an enormous disservice both to the intent of the funding initiative and the many efforts that parents are now assembling to keep up to their children’s educational needs.
Why isn’t some well-meaning media outfit reporting the many opportunities that parents, ex-teachers and community organizations have already organized for education, learning and skill training? Find out how many have already started homeschooling programs.
I’m really hoping this initiative is a start to government devolution of the rigid centralized system to one that will encourage and inspire people to innovate and find resources that will fulfill the diverse needs and talents of children in this modern era. The possibilities are immense and exciting. Why are we bound to these rigid, man-made regulations which so repeatedly cough-up turmoil to what could be nature’s way to be responsive and loving to people’s needs?
Let’s not forget what public education historically is about. It’s about states’ efforts to give all parents equal opportunities to have their children educated apart from those parents who have already been teaching them themselves, providing tutors, or sending them off to private schools. Government assistance to public education was never meant to be indoctrination through government schooling. It was part of the safety-net thinking to help those who were unable to do it alone, financially or physically.
This $40 day reimbursement is there to help those parents, who — having already registered their children in public schools — now find themselves deprived and left high and dry because of a walkout by government workers. By virtue of being the parents or caregivers they have a rightful claim to the education funds collected from taxpayers for the education of the young in our province.
Further down the line, parents will be negotiating for a claim for the education of their children 13 and older and for those needing extra premiums for special needs.
[published to CKNW article on “childcare”, and to BCCPAC 20140908]