Too much to ask of teachers?

My son's primary school has just redefined "Caring" and "Responsibility" and found a new way to piss off a mum with a logic major.

Dear Principal,

With regard to the converstion we had about the treatment of my son’s injured eye at school on Tuesday.

While I understand teachers’ reluctance to administer all but the most basic first aid on the premises, (in my opinion, even this extra responsibility is not covered by your salaries). I must confess to being more than a little irritated at the reason you gave me for your refusal. Just so we’re clear, I’m not irritated by the refusal itself (though it means my son will have to stay home while I work from home for the rest of the week), I just can’t let shoddy reasoning go by unremarked.

You claim that there are no staff that are medically trained on the premises, so nobody could put ointment on my son's lower eyelid. According to the doctors at the Eye and Ear Hospital, the only qualification required for this simple procedure was gardianship of a child. Of the thousands of medical practitioners in Australia, you would be hard pressed to find one who required that a parent obtained a medical degree before applying eye ointment. In the words of my own doctor, “A trained monkey could apply eye ointment.” So, that you have no medically trained staff is not a good reason for refusing, in fact, it’s rather bad. You could probably get your grade five kiddies to prove this with ven diagrams.

Here are three really good reasons for refusing that I thought were probably lurking in the background:

a) in the rather sad social environment where suing after an accident seems to be the knee jerk reaction of selfish people looking for someone to blame and vent their anger on, and as a result no one wants to take on any responsibility for anything, we’d rather not take responsibility for treating something as important as an eye, besides…

b) haven’t you been reading the news? We’re worked off our feet and underpaid as it is! we simply don’t have time to administer medication as well, sorry… and...

c) if he needs treatment every four hours, should he really be at school at all?

But of course, in this politically correct environment you couldn’t say those things without accusing me of being: a) the suing type, b) one of those thoughtless people who imagine teachers have all this free time on their hands to devote to their child, or c) a bad mother. However, personally, I would have preferred a bit of honesty over a reason that was logically ridiculous.

It amazed me that the doctor at the Eye and Ear Hospital thought it would be best that he go straight back to school, I wouldn’t be surprised if it amazed you too. Maybe she assumed the school would have a nurse, though it is more likely that she didn’t think about the logistics of four hourly ointment application at all.

For me, coming in to the school from university takes one hour out of a precious four and a half hour time slot, so in order to save a few precious minutes I have decided keep my son with me and work from home (while trying to avoid the temptation of the pool in the heat!). His absense will be sad for his buddy of course, but since I have a rather large dealine looming and extremely limited time slots in which to complete my task I see no other alternative. My son will resume school on Monday by which time he will not need the ointment or I willl have taught him to apply it himself. He said that he might be asked to speak about his experience at assembly and I wouldn’t want him to miss out on that.

Kind regards,

me

It will be interesting to see if they make it to the end of the letter and get the vital information :-) i.e. son will not be at school!