In their fiery anger about the teachers strike, the parents may have inadvertently given some credence to a longstanding complaint of the teachers. The great majority of the news coverage and parent outrage has concentrated upon how the strike has hampered the parents’ ability to go to work when their children have nowhere to go. There has been little, if any, complaint that the children are losing valuable days of instruction in reading, writing and arithmetic.
Decades ago in Chicago, the parents concern would have been aimed at the missed schooling. Teachers have long complained that the current day parents treat school simply as a babysitting service and that they do little to assist in the education of the child. It now appears that there is merit in this complaint from the mouths of the parents themselves.
— Thomas H. Fegan, Chicago
