The Vancouver Courier reports on the launch of a website – The Shorty List – that will provide families with access to anonymous reviews of child care centres, schools and preschools in Vancouver. The idea is hard to criticize on one level, given that families have both a right and a need to know about the quality of their child’s care or education.
And this is also why the site is a sign, or a symptom, of several problems with BC’s current approach to child care. The site may hurt more than help, because it moves us away from treating schools and care programs as essential and core to our democratic society; moving us to a less fair, more unjust community. This worries me a great deal, especially given some of the quotes attributed to the site’s founder, Karen Chester (excerpted below).
The site also provides a way to contrast what’s right about how we care for and educate children over six years of age to what’s wrong with how we care for and educate younger children. That’s because the site misses the point that most older children in BC attend publicly funded and publicly run schools, that can (and are) held to account by democratic processes and institutions (such as elections, journalism, public forums, advocacy organizations and pubic sector unions), making this review site approach a step in the wrong direction for school-aged programs.
For school reviews, a better use of the time would be would be to support more objective journalism, such as the The Tyee’s fund for investigative journalists, or getting more families involved in the school governance process. We need websites and news organizations to let families and others know about the quality of the care and education our children are getting in the schools, because we – the public – are responsible for OUR schools. But, according to the Courier, Karen Chester seems to say that she views public schools to be less like utilities and more like incidentals:
Sites like The Shorty List operate in the U.S., the U.K. and Australia, according to Chester, who argues if individuals can easily find restaurant or movie reviews online, there’s no reason they shouldn’t be able to find information for the care and education of children. read more
If this is what Chester actually said, then she’s clearly forgetting that schools are not at all like movies or restaurants (a movie costs 10 bucks and couple hours of your time – compare that to the value and commitment of a K-12 education). She is also missing the mark because while we may want restaurant reviews to decide on the best tasting food, we don’t want to rely on review websites for ensuring that back kitchens are clean and food is safely prepared. For that we rely on a public system of food inspection, far more thorough and less open to manipulation by interested parties than is a review website. The premise of the website cheapens and corrodes the true value of education, which is deeply troubling given how much our democracy depends on good public education and care programs.
Our school benefit from clear standards of professionalism, public accountability, elected governance structures and a funding model that doesn’t rely on the whims of the market. (Find any four star restaurants in a poor neighbourhood lately?) While our schools are not perfectly fair and can be improved in many ways, the way to do this is not to review them like they are nothing more than a date-night movie or the dinner after. If we need to improve how we hold our schools to account, let’s not make the mistake of treating them like something other than an essentially public institution that stands at the core of our democracy.
As for daycares, the problem illustrated by the website becomes more vivid – because unlike most schools, daycares and other child care programs are funded in a patchwork of private and public sources, with little direct democratic oversight over the standards of care. While there are basic regulations, akin to the food safety inspectors at restaurants, daycares and preschools are operated as if the best system for our youngest children should be the jungle of the marketplace. Given this reality, perhaps the only available option is for families to go to a website and look up anonymous online postings about daycares and preschools in the neighbourhood.
But if this is the best option available, given how paltry a source of reliable information this forum could ever provide, we should all be concerned about the current child care system itself. Families and children deserve fair access to quality care care and early education, which is why families seek out any and all sources of information. Just like the Courier article reports below, many families talk with neighbours to find out about most suitable teachers for their child, to learn of problems at schools and daycares and to find the best available place for their child’s care:
[Chester] asked total strangers at the neighbourhood playground for recommendations and tips when she was searching for childcare for her children. “I suppose this is just a way of taking that playground chat online, so you will have contact with a more diverse set of parents and get more opinions. Really, the opinions and comments from other parents are probably the most important things we use for finding information. read more
Public schools are public treasures and are governed in ways that allow the public to ensure that our expectations in terms of quality for all children are met. As an overall system the public schools do an incredibly good job of providing universal education for almost all children. Just like public schools, child care too should be at the heart of a fair and democratic community. While they can do better, especially in terms of including children facing extra challenges and overcoming the dual legacies of racism and colonialism, especially for First Nations children and families, we – the public – are the one’s in charge and the one’s responsible and capable of realizing the full vision of public schools. Let’s not lose site of this by treating schools as if they are any other service, no different from a $20 meal and $10 movie ticket. There’s no value in cheapening the value of public schools.
Our child care system should also treated as a pillar of a just and democratic society. Just because we’ve so far failed our children by not setting up a publicly accountable and democratically run child care system, doesn’t make child care any less valuable then our public schools. So while the site The Shorty List may seem like a good idea, it’s actually just another indicator of what’s wrong with how we’re prioritizing child care and how far we have to go when comes to providing children and families the kinds of care programs that we all deserve.
