"News that the Ministry of Education is shutting down crèches at places like gyms and swimming pools that do not meet the criteria for early childhood centres is an example of PC lunacy," says Joanne Black in the latest Listener. These child-care facilities are attached to leisure facilities, not to centres of learning -- as Black says "how much can a child learn while Mum does 30 laps of a pool" -- but according to the Men from the Ministry "the carers do not meet the criteria for childcare" and closed is what these centres must be. By order.
It's not about learning, you see, and it's certainly not about quality. It's about control.
Many of you will be aware of the gimlet-eyed seriousness with which successive governments have taken the issue of teacher "qualifications" and licensing -- using the phony issue of qualifications as a stick with which to herd out of the profession experienced (but not recently brainwashed) teachers, and to ensure that those who are allowed to stay are only those who are up to date and on-side with all the phony baloney now peddled at teachers' colleges. Obviously the gimlet eye is now turning further afield, to ensure that common sense has little chance of creeping into a child's surroundings wherever they may be, and for however short a period of time.
What's the next stage, asks the friend who sent me this snippet: children removed from homes because mother doesn't meet the criteria? Demands for parents to be licensed?
Or would that be giving the grey ones ideas they shouldn't be having?
2 comments:
Sushi in South Auckland is trumpeted today as a blow to obesity yet here we read that gym creches are to be closed. So what's mum or dad to do if they want to get ripped?
This inflexible myopic stupidity.
I say they should also ban common play areas in cafes!
Quiet, Greg. These bastards can't recognise sarcasm ...
PC, Lindsay Mitchell wrote a piece on this particular absurdity recently. I co-managed Australia's oldest gym for 3 yrs in the early 90s. We had a warm, comfy playroom for the tots of parents who trained between 9-midday, M-F. It was a free service for those members, whereby we employed two lovely women, mothers themselves, for that purpose. Suited the members with pre-schoolers; suited the two mums to work 15 hrs a week while their own kids were at school.
We heard rumbliings of this 'licenced creche' bullshit, then, but it never came to pass.
GB, you call this 'inflexible myopic stupidity'. It's worse than that. It's yet another violation of property rights.
There are two types of NZer: those who get that and those who don't.
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