Our church primary school has only shut for one day during the recent snowfest and that was because ice was making the pavement outside and the access inside the school almost impassable. Yay for them I say – well done those dedicated teachers who’ve driven in through difficult conditions to come and educate our children. But there have been many grumbles on the school gate about it being open. People seem to be full of doom and gloom about getting their kids in.
I’m trying to work out if their attitudes about to going to school in the snow are normal or are only normal in an area where people’s emotional capacity is already stretched by everyday life, making the extra hassle brought by snow just one thing too many. Here are some of the things I’ve been hearing:
- We should stay off school when it snows because I or the children might slip on the way to school and get hurt
- We should stay off school when it snows because the children might slip over or get cold during playtime because the teachers send them out to play in the snow
- We should stay off school when it snows because the other schools are off
- We should stay off school when it snows because it’s snowed
Have you heard anything like this where you live?
Actually, I was slightly hoping for another day off today because I had a home school experiment planned. I was going to see if the kids would do some studying for me if I set the day up like a normal school day with break times and games and things. It all seemed possible because we tidied the house yesterday for our Open House.
But looking at the weather forecast, I suspect that proper school is back now for the rest of the snow season, so I’ll have to save that experiment for another time. In the meantime it doesn’t look like the school’s (already bad) absenteeism rate is going be looking up this term.
The Vicar's Wife 