Daycare Schooling

I've been wondering - while talking to my mother, which is always inspiring - how true it is that schools are mainly for daycare.

There are breakfast clubs, after school clubs, and I've heard rumours of supper clubs but I have no references for those. It's obvious to me that these would solve a serious daycare problem for families where all the available adults work regular office hours... but it bothers me, too.

I already think that most of the school day is dead time, nothing-time, filler-in-time. It's presumably valuable for children without alternatives, just like the daycare clubs, but I can't see how it's useful to most of the others. I can remember sitting around waiting a lot, in school, while the teacher prepped something or corrected something or while some people were finishing off whatever task we had been set - and it only got worse in secondary school, when moving from class to class and settling in and finishing up ate chunks out of every lesson; it could easily take 5 minutes to change classes, 5 to settle down, and 5 to finish up.

There's no answer springing handily to mind, which is a shame, because I could make a fortune if there was. I do think that the problem is that non-family activities take more time and are given higher priority by The Universe At Large than family activities, which is why Rob has worked unpaid overtime every day this week including a few minutes today, and expects to do so again next week or give up an entire weekend day, and isn't likely to be "allowed" to take his time off in lieu - in spite of being grossly underslept and not having spent much in the way of Quality Time with his two-year-old, let alone with his 8-months-pregnant wife.

Work is such a high priority, in this age of the Leisure Industry, that everyone assumes it's more important than personal lives. So the schools need to provide daycare, at least as much as education.

It smells all wrong.