Schools, colleges and institutes are not institutions created so that families can work, this thought is an error that must be eradicated, they are institutions at the service of education from birth. It cannot fall on the children’s backs and on the school, the right and the need to work of the families, and much less, in conditions of health insecurity like the current ones.
Currently, in the de-escalation situation that affects us, it is essential that the administrations facilitate the reconciliation of work and family, especially to the most vulnerable families with the fewest resources to resolve it. But it must be done from its original meaning: the world of business and administrations. It cannot be done from a concept that does not respect the rights of children, that does not exist and wants to be implemented: that of work-school reconciliation. This is the concept that the administrations are betting on, almost contemptuously and ignoring the precise security, when considering opening the Early Childhood Education centers so that families can work.
It is very important that society situates and understands that school is the consequence of the State assuming to cover the right to education that boys and girls have, and to do so from a perspective, that of offering quality public institutions for all and all, that respond to that right.
The State also has the function of helping families so that, in turn, they can offer the right to education for their sons and daughters as the first social link and in the best conditions. One of the aspects of this facet is the necessary reconciliation of work and family, which requires the combination of labor, social and health policies that provide these families with the necessary resources to “be” with their creatures in the best possible way, because without “being” there is no link and without link there is no security and balance in the construction of personality; Without this, the function of the family is damaged at the beginning.
The Convention on the Rights of the Child defines these two aspects of support for institutional and family education with which the states have committed themselves by signing it. Two aspects necessary to protect and defend those rights. The Convention affirms that “Childhood is the most precious asset that society has.” When a family contributes a child to society, it is contributing a good, and society has the obligation to protect and care for that contribution, always respecting the best interests of children, which, according to the Convention, must prevail, especially when it collides with Other interests.
But childhood, in current societies and specifically in Spain, seems to be an endangered species due to the difficulty families have in having creatures and to get them ahead and because, when solutions are given that are intended to help, they What they do is overload the weakest link by institutionalizing it as an easier option.
Knowing the origin of something allows us to understand later erroneous meanings, and this occurs with the emergence of the first institutions for boys and girls from 0 to 6 years old, whose exclusive function of “guardian” was aimed at, especially their mothers, working in an inhuman industrial society; for this, in most cases, the creatures were crowded by hundreds without minimum life conditions. But over the years it has been recognized that boys and girls are subjects of rights, that the right to education is from birth and that their family is the first one that must have the conditions to welcome and care, educating them with it. .
The institutional function with which the State contributes to developing the right to early childhood education determined that this stage emerged, as the first stage of the educational system, supported by scientific knowledge, which defines this vital moment as the one with the greatest environmental influence in a developing organism that grows and changes more quickly and power than in the rest of life. That is what determines the need to take care of that environment, so that the potentialities can be developed or to modify, improving not worsening, the genetic and social conditions of origin. It is what is known as epigenetics, the most powerful confluence to modulate the development that includes the human personality.
Nursery schools and children’s houses are, therefore, the institutional contribution of the State to complement the opportunities offered by the family and to compensate them, from this institutional place, when personal conditions or the family nucleus are vulnerable. Thus, social equity becomes a basic function of the school, which educates taking care with the necessary quality and warmth at these ages.
This surviving welfare vision has now become evident with the situation of a pandemic that led to the immediate closure of educational centers for safety. The administrative solution in the face of economic pressure is the reopening of the 0-6 infant education centers, so that parents can work, precisely the most vulnerable and complex to guarantee security measures. And it is done, in addition, against the criteria and recommendations of the WHO and the Spanish Association of Pediatrics that recommend that the stage of early childhood education be the last to return out of respect for their rights and specific characteristics, incompatible with health protocols recommended. Do not act from the devaluation of children’s rights, from recklessness, even from recklessness.
With what we know today from the contributions of science, in no case can we return to that healthcare vision. The opposite would be to turn schools into instruments for this work-school balance, an inadmissible concept because the necessary balance is work and family.
Schools, colleges and institutes are not institutions created so that families can work, this thought is an error that must be eradicated, they are institutions at the service of education from birth. It cannot fall on the children’s backs and on the school, the right and the need to work of the families, and much less, in conditions of health insecurity like the current ones.
It is the companies and administrations that have to solve this family labor need and make it compatible with that of parents who can “be” with their children to protect and care for them by educating. This is the reconciliation of work and family.
That is why the solutions, shared in meetings between Madrid early childhood education groups and unions (CCOO, CGT, STEM and UGT) to address the needs created by the pandemic, confinement and de-escalation, and to do so from a conciliation perspective truly compatible with the rights of children, they must allow public policies from different areas to converge in a technical table for children, the same one that the State Platform for Early Childhood Education 06 requests. This has to offer solutions from the necessary areas, from the health and school, with age-adjusted protocols that, for families and professionals, guarantee a safe future return to the classroom. From the world of work, subsidies, paid leave such as maternity leave, now due to force majeure, could be arbitrated. for one of the members of the family unit or for whoever composes it exclusively in the case of single-parent families; reduction of working hours; alternation of shifts when there are children and children who require it, etc. In short, it is about looking for options that make the educational care of boys and girls compatible with the need to work as an adult and thus allow society to have a future. The reconciliation of work and family is an essential instrument for this. to look for options that make the educational care of boys and girls compatible with the need to work as an adult and thus allow society to have a future. The reconciliation of work and family is an essential instrument for this. to look for options that make the educational care of boys and girls compatible with the need to work as an adult and thus allow society to have a future. The reconciliation of work and family is an essential instrument for this.
