A View from the Isle

Imagine this:  Your class is going on a school trip to Washington D.C.  Your parents can’t afford to send you, so you stay back (with some other kids in the same boat), but instead of spending the time learning about anything you play word search and Sudoku for days.

When your parents find out what is going on, they decide that your time would be better spent at home doing something interesting and productive so they keep you home.

All sounds like a good plan, right?

But when the end of the year fun day/field day comes around you’re not allowed to go and not only that you have to spend the time in detention because you missed school.

Yeah, I’d be pretty pissed off.  My parents would be livid.  The sad thing is, I’m not making this up, though I wish I were.

One of the Channel Editors here at b5 is going through this right now and getting no satisfaction from the Principal (who isn’t being a “pal” right now) or Superintendent of the school system.

Here are her posts on this saga:

• Expensive Class Trips and Those Left Behind
• Punishment After Shocks
• Open Letter to a Public School
• More Expensive Class Field Trip Drama

Gayla, our beloved Lifestyles Channel Editor, is standing by her boys.  In fact, as you’ll read, she is going to spend the detention time with her boys as a show of support for them.  Oh, if Gayla’s boys don’t spend the time in detention, a completely unsuitable punishment–not that they should even be punished at all, they won’t get their report cards.

Great, holding grades hostage because you had the unmitigated gall to stand up for your kids’ education and not make them feel like economic pariahs.

Not good guys.

I find this whole thing just sickening.  Why do the kids who are left behind, because their parents couldn’t afford to send them on a class trip, have to be punished with just sitting around all day?  And then be further punished when their parents chose to take charge of their education and decide they’d be better off being at home?

Come on, they could have done a virtual tour of D.C.  The Smithsonian has some great stuff online.  What about Google Earth?  They could have “flown” all over the city.  Something to give the kids something fun and, perish the thought, intellectually stimulating to do.

As MJ our Travel & Culture editor said: “Traveling can be expensive, but it shouldn’t cost you a grade”.

I hope that we can draw some attention to this issue and do something good from it.  Any kind of discrimination is wrong.  Economic discrimination, essentially punishing kids for being poor.  So, so wrong.

Education is a right, not a privilege!