- Jan 4, 2008
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I think this one area where agreement will never happen. Every parent will have different beliefs and every family and every society will feel differently.
As happyfacemum said in Australia missing a day of school certainly would not be considered a big deal. But yes our schools are very different to the US. From what I have read it seems that in the US things like daily classwork and homework are a part of their school grades. Not so in Australia, kids will just work on a unit for several weeks and then do a test or assignment. The only thing that will count towards the grade is the test or assignment and it does not matter at all iff the kids did not do any work in class or at home. The work on the tests and assignments are covered over and over again just in case the kids missed it the forst 3 or 4 times. There is also FAR less emphasis on grades and passing even in the senior years. So yes our answer as Australians will be very different to the answers of our US counterparts.
However, having said that I have found it very rare (in fact not just rare I have never ever seen it before) that regular gymnastics competitions are held on a school day. Yes some school may be missed for travel on occaision but again its not that common. It seems to me that if I was running a meet I would want it to be as profitable as possible, so I would want to hold it on a day where I would get maximum people attending so I certainly wouldn't choose a school day, if I could possibly avoid it.
As a coach my stance would be of course to respect the wants of the family. If we did ever have a competition on a school day I would not expect any parent to remove their child from school if they did not want to. It would certainly be optional.
But I also think its unfair to expect that education has to be the number 1 priority in all families. It certainly would not be number 1 priority in my house. There are lots of families who have a different priority such as family, religion or work.
As happyfacemum said in Australia missing a day of school certainly would not be considered a big deal. But yes our schools are very different to the US. From what I have read it seems that in the US things like daily classwork and homework are a part of their school grades. Not so in Australia, kids will just work on a unit for several weeks and then do a test or assignment. The only thing that will count towards the grade is the test or assignment and it does not matter at all iff the kids did not do any work in class or at home. The work on the tests and assignments are covered over and over again just in case the kids missed it the forst 3 or 4 times. There is also FAR less emphasis on grades and passing even in the senior years. So yes our answer as Australians will be very different to the answers of our US counterparts.
However, having said that I have found it very rare (in fact not just rare I have never ever seen it before) that regular gymnastics competitions are held on a school day. Yes some school may be missed for travel on occaision but again its not that common. It seems to me that if I was running a meet I would want it to be as profitable as possible, so I would want to hold it on a day where I would get maximum people attending so I certainly wouldn't choose a school day, if I could possibly avoid it.
As a coach my stance would be of course to respect the wants of the family. If we did ever have a competition on a school day I would not expect any parent to remove their child from school if they did not want to. It would certainly be optional.
But I also think its unfair to expect that education has to be the number 1 priority in all families. It certainly would not be number 1 priority in my house. There are lots of families who have a different priority such as family, religion or work.