FAMILY TIME
HarmoS - A PARENT’S PERSPECTIVE
I remember when I was seventeen. It was – I admit – a rather long
time ago. I was finishing school in the Canton Ticino and my girlfriend was finishing
school in Canton Zurich. The summer holidays were not exactly wonderful, as the
two Cantons’ summer school holidays overlapped by only a single week. Great.
We never got to go anywhere until I finished school and moved to Zurich. The
various Cantons’ school holiday calendars have been synchronised to an
extent since then, but many other differences remain. One of the aims of the
HarmoS initiative is to get rid of the pointless ones.
As it is a hit and miss affair to create a family with many children of exactly
the same age, most of us tend to produce children one after the other, with a
handful of years in between. So most parents of more than one child have one
child in Kindergarten and the next child in school. Or the one child in one school
and the older child in another — perhaps in the neighbouring town.
So far,
so good. But if the various schools have different starting times, different
ending times, different lunch-breaks (and bear in mind that here kids still normally
come home for lunch), the nightmare is complete. It turns into a full-time job
for two people to bring and pick up the kids, feed them, get them back to school
on time... Hopeless.
I can’t help thinking that the current system was thought up by some grey-haired
politicians who had a score to settle with their kids and decided
to make life as difficult as possible for them.
What are the political parties
saying? Click here!
I fail to understand what any normally intelligent, marginally sane person would
have against making sure schools (and Kindergarten) actually start and end at
the same time across the various Cantons. Many people live near cantonal borders
and send one child across the border during the daytime.
Also, I simply don’t get the issue people have with a common system of
grading or measuring pupils’ performance across the various Cantons. Shouldn’t
that actually benefit the pupils? The anti-HarmoS crowd seem worried that this
is akin to forcing kids to march down the streets in synch, goose-stepping to
the same groove. What a load of nonsense.
And then my favourite gripe: Let’s all take up arms against a standardised
approach to teaching foreign languages in schools. Let’s all denounce the
evil influence of English, the language of rap and violence, and instead teach
kids in the German part of Switzerland the wholesome creed of French and Italian.
I mean, these ARE Switzerland’s cultural heritage. They are next to useless
in many cases for a future career in global commerce, but that’s totally
irrelevant. Let’s educate yet another generation of banking, insurance
and industry recruits who have difficulty ordering a Big Mac in English. Instead,
let’s rely on a steady influx of foreign staff to make up the deficit.
Our children are our future. They are Switzerland’s future. They are the
future workforce. They aren’t a threat. They are the way it’s going
to be. Understand that. Pave the way for them. Help them (and help us parents)
to avoid making life more difficult than it needs to be. There is no advantage
to having someone (usually Mum) narrowly avoid a nervous breakdown every day,
just trying to stick to an impossible schedule. Or for kids to fight with different
curricula just because they were unlucky and their parents moved a few kilometres
and they get to go to a new school.
Although “HarmoS” sounds a little like the name of an evil empire
in a sixties B-Movie, it’s long overdue. It’s something the Swiss
have voted clearly in favour of. So let’s stop stalling and actually get
something sensible done. Repeat after me: HarmoS is good. It’s obvious.
It makes sense. The current situation is ridiculous.
I haven’t found an argument against HarmoS that I can honestly take seriously.
Sorry. It’s a rare case of pro and pro. No contra worth mentioning.
| DANIEL SCHWARZ
CARIGIET Born: 1966 in Lugano, Switzerland - Mother American, father German Family: married to Astrid, father of Oliver |
 |
| Occupation: Freelance photographer / commmunications consultant |
|
DADS TIME archive:
Kids
Online
Technokids
SUPER
MOM - a Dad's perspective
Handycraft
with kids
“Vater
werden ist nicht schwer – Vater sein hingegen sehr”
Corporate
Dadness or “What's
wrong
with your wife, then?”
Cooking
with kids