Following a link from Spunky's Blog, I went to read the article Have schools turned into social workers?.
There are so many quotes in there that I could comment on - like the
one about how little time in school is actually devoted to learning,
but I'll let that go for now and only focus on this: (Posted as a
comment to the article by someone named student07) "After reading this article it made me realize how important
it is for school corporations to have school social workers. If the state
mandated that all schools employ school social workers, teachers could focus
more on educating their students. "
Good
luck with that, dear. Here in Florida our public schools don't
even have to have a nurse on staff. Back when my kids were still
in the system, the following happened in one year, and these are
just the things I know; I wouldn't be surprised to hear other horror
stories from parents in grades I wasn't then involved with.
1) A young boy fell off the jungle gym and complained of shoulder
pain. He was told he was fine. Apparently when he got home
that afternoon the pain was so bad, his mom took him to the emergency
room and it turned out he'd been walking around with a dislocated
shoulder! When I talked with his mom the next day, she was
*understandably* upset that no one had taken her child seriously and no
one had called her.
2) I walked a young girl with a fever and bad cough to the
nurse's station - a room with six beds run by a woman who had no
medical training. (She told me this herself once.) When I
brought this child in and explained her symptoms, the response I got
was, "What do you want me to do about it? I can't give her any
medicine." As patiently as I could, I replied, "You could call
her mom." She reluctantly did so, only to find the mom could not
get to the school immediately. The poor woman was at the hospital
with her toddler, getting stitches from an accident. I told
little Jordan to lie down on one of the beds and rest, but the
non-nurse said, "No way." She instructed me to take this sick
child back to class until her mother could get there! I have NO
clue what those six beds were for, but apparently they weren't for
children who were ill.
3) My own daughter slid under the chain link fence that surrounds
the playground, cutting her leg from knee to ankle. Not only did
I not get a call about this - hello? She was cut by a dirty,
metal fence! - they sent her (she was 5 years old at the time) to the
bathroom to clean out the sand specks herself and was then given a few
band-aids to stick on. This was 4 years ago and she still has a
scar. I realize that there may have been nothing to do about the
scarring, but I certainly would've put antibacterial cream on the wound
and cleaned it up much better than my little kindergartener did, though
she really did her best.
Any time I mentioned any of these incidents to other parents, they
would invariably say, "Oh, no! We have a nurse. I've seen
her in the nurse's station." To which I would have to
explain, "No, you've seen a woman who walks around in scrubs (how
misleading is that?) who is not a nurse nor has she ever received
medical training. Her job is to go through all the files and make
sure shot records are up to date. I know; I asked her."
If we can't even can't a nurse on staff at our public schools, I don't see us hiring social workers any time soon.
Well, I could be wrong there. Since public schools really are
more about socialization than education - maybe they'll decide having
social workers monitoring the kids is a great idea.
One
final thought. Do schools not have counselors any more?
Aren't they basically the equivalent of social workers anyway?
