Today was the first day of term three. The kids’ holidays for the past three weeks were completely wiped out by the New south Wales government putting Sydney into lockdown Basically banning anyone from leaving the city. Not that any other destination would allow anyone from Sydney into their state/town/whatever.

Schools have been encouraged by the politicians to do that thing they laughingly call ‘remote learning’. In other words keep your kids at home and have them sat in front of a computer screen all day via google classroom (or whatever the hell they call it). But the schools themselves remain open and it is not against the law – or rather the lockdown restrictions – for kids to attend the schools. At least as far as I know.

So, for Daniel it was back to school…

When we arrived there were very few signs of any other kids. Two or three kindergarten age plus one maybe a year below Dani. I thought he might be the only one in his class but it turned out that there was a 20% attendance for his class and about the same for his school year. I think those numbers will increase as the week goes on but that’s still a lot of kids being kept at home. Dani attends an independent school so the parents of the kids in that school pay for the privilege. I suppose I am just puzzled as to why so many parents are keeping their kids out of school when they are paying for it. In our case we are lucky; it is being paid for by Dani’s mum’s company as part of her work deal. But there’s still no way he won’t be attending.

For me school is not just about English, Maths and history classes etc. It is also about mixing with your peers and also other adults in positions of authority (the teachers).

Of course it is totally up to the parents but I feel they have not been allowed the benefit of informed consent in all this. The media hysteria is all one way so effectively they have been frightened out of their wits. (Actually in Australia there is a TV news channel that speaks a lot of common sense. But only one.)

The very same thing happened last year. So much for lessons learnt eh? After a few days the kids started returning to the classroom. Quite rightly in my opinion; even if it was only because the parents could not deal with them schooling from home. We shall see how this year’s scare tactics pan out. Things have a habit of changing rapidly and on a daily basis.

Consider this…

All of this got me wondering. If (or when) the wonderful politicians say that young children can (or should) have the vaccines, will it be the other way around? Will those kids now absent from school – the 80% majority – suddenly all be there waiting in line for a needle? While the small number in school right now are not? Food for thought eh?…

The world is becoming an increasingly confused place to grow up. I really fear for my son. And his classmates – whether they were in attendance today or not. And every child caught in the middle of this nonsense.