Cold Child Left Behind

The best pal of Blogtrog is a teacher in a very poor school district. The school in which she teaches is very cold in the wintertime. The children wear their coats in the cold school so they're not distracted by the cold and can go on learning.

Yesterday, the teachers at the cold school were told that the children can no longer wear their coats in the cold school. Reason: no reason, it's just policy. See above, these are poor children. They don't come to school in warm, LL Bean fleece gear. They sometimes come to school during the winter in short-sleeve shirts. Literally, when one kid when asked by his teacher why he was wearing only a t-shirt, he told her that he only had one long-sleeved shirt and his brother was wearing it that day, so on a day that at its warmest was 28 degrees, he had short sleeves and that was all.

In a time and place where test scores are the main focus of an administration, where innovative teaching is seen as a threat, where kids walk down the hall screaming "F*ck you, p*ssy!" to their fellow students, I have to wonder: if there's a kid who, in the face of all that distraction, actually wants to learn, and all we have to do is let him wear his coat so he can, why is anyone standing in the way of that? Why does it matter if he learns in a coat? Calling Administration of the cold school: What is wrong with you that you would begrudge a child staying warm in the winter, and god forbid, learning?

It seems to me that public policy and taking care of the children ought never diverge from each other. But if and when they do, there had better be a damn compelling reason for a policy that doesn't take care of the children.

This just ain't it.