You criminal scum, how dare you take your children on holiday!

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  • A father has lost his legal challenge against a fine for taking his daughter on an unauthorised term-time holiday.

    The Supreme Court ruled against Jon Platt, who had won earlier legal battles against a £120 fine in a case brought by the Isle of Wight council.

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-39504338
    ===

    Hang these bastard parents I say. How dare they take their children away from school and torture them with a holiday!...:rolleyes:

    What do you think?

  • I think children should be at school during term time and on holiday during the holiday period. This was how we all grew up and it was done for a good reason. Missing lessons puts students back. It also gives them the hedonistic idea that they can do what they like when they like.

    Parents in certain wealthy countries spend too much time on holiday away from home. They need to stop acting like film stars and create a better home ground atmosphere for their children. We used to look forward to the holidays and so it was worth working all term for. Now? They just seem to want to do as they please. They are moaning about workload, moaning about exams, moaning about being stressed out by life's little problems and they cannot discipline themselves.

    This is a recipe for disaster. If you don't want tough, ambitious, hard working immigrants walking in and simply taking your established civilization out of your hands, this is how to do it.

  • My parents took me on holiday in term time nearly every summer. I got a good degree and have never been out of work since so I'll struggle to accept there's a fundamental problem with it.

    There's a bigger problem that this legislation tries to tackle in typically simple terms and that is a bad attitude to education. Hopefully individual heads can spot the difference between wasters and good pupils that just happen to be taking time off.

  • I have to disagree. I think children should be at school during term time. It builds a sense of student community and discipline and a sense of working and waiting and enjoying.

    But I am from a different generation. I think one will need to study the effects on the general population of students where this is happening to see if there is any adverse effect. And to compare them to students who haven't experienced this disruption.

  • It's ridiculous fining parents for keeping their child off for a couple of weeks. Why not have a limit, say ten days, and impose the fine after that limit has been reached. The child isn't going to miss anything and can soon catch up, and the parents can take advantage of cheaper holidays.

    Now totally off topic and simply as an aside but still on the subject of education, I was a watching a quiz show on t.v. the other day and one of the questions to the adult contestants was 'What is an isthmus.'? I assume we all know what it is but it got me thinking that throughout all my adult life I've never been asked and never used the word. It's simply one of those useless bits of information pounded into our bored skulls during school lessons.

    The same of course applies to many things most of us have never actually needed to know about during our lives, algebra and logarithms, the main exports of numerous countries, isosceles triangles and many other things like the diameter of the Earth or the distance to the moon.

    I was talking to an old lady some time ago. We were chatting about how we all forget things as we get older. She said " We don't forget things dear. It's just that our brains get full up. " Well if she's right, and I'm sure she is, then that bloody school is mainly responsible for me forgetting the names of famous actors I see on t.v., what I went upstairs for and our wedding anniversary! :)

  • My parents took me on holiday in term time nearly every summer. I got a good degree and have never been out of work since so I'll struggle to accept there's a fundamental problem with it.

    There's a bigger problem that this legislation tries to tackle in typically simple terms and that is a bad attitude to education. Hopefully individual heads can spot the difference between wasters and good pupils that just happen to be taking time off.

    I think that's right.

    There is a difference between taking a holiday and kids perpetually bunking off school.

    I never bunked off school, ever. The thought wouldn't have occurred yo me and besides, I would have been too frightened to try, but I did take my summer holiday in term term, usually in May, because my parents could not afford the August prices.

  • It's ridiculous fining parents for keeping their child off for a couple of weeks. Why not have a limit, say ten days, and impose the fine after that limit has been reached. The child isn't going to miss anything and can soon catch up, and the parents can take advantage of cheaper holidays.

    If the limit were raised to allow a one off two week holiday every year, I'd agree with that.

    Now totally off topic and simply as an aside but still on the subject of education, I was a watching a quiz show on t.v. the other day and one of the questions to the adult contestants was 'What is an isthmus.'? I assume we all know what it is but it got me thinking that throughout all my adult life I've never been asked and never used the word. It's simply one of those useless bits of information pounded into our bored skulls during school lessons.

    Assume not! :p I had to look it up!

  • I think children should be at school during term time and on holiday during the holiday period. This was how we all grew up and it was done for a good reason. Missing lessons puts students back. It also gives them the hedonistic idea that they can do what they like when they like.

    Parents in certain wealthy countries spend too much time on holiday away from home. They need to stop acting like film stars and create a better home ground atmosphere for their children. We used to look forward to the holidays and so it was worth working all term for. Now? They just seem to want to do as they please. They are moaning about workload, moaning about exams, moaning about being stressed out by life's little problems and they cannot discipline themselves.

    This is a recipe for disaster. If you don't want tough, ambitious, hard working immigrants walking in and simply taking your established civilization out of your hands, this is how to do it.

    I have to disagree. I think children should be at school during term time. It builds a sense of student community and discipline and a sense of working and waiting and enjoying.

    But I am from a different generation. I think one will need to study the effects on the general population of students where this is happening to see if there is any adverse effect. And to compare them to students who haven't experienced this disruption.

    I do think younger people think they can do what they want, but probably an older generation has always felt like that about a younger one.

    I won't turn this into a debate about immigration, but I think that's a good point about hard working immigrants coming in while the lazy citizens stand around and do nothing.

    But, overall I disagree. Missing a week or two for a annual holiday, will not effect school "community" whatever that is and although it might put kids a back a little, it's only a few maths lessons etc, they've missed. I assume kids still do PE at least once a week, so nothing missed there and I also assume they still, if we're talking kids of 11+ in age, do lessons such as woodwork once a week, so again, nothing missed there much.

  • Sorry, I disagree, this kind of thing is not a good idea. But the British seem to be very keen on holidays and go on holiday so often we have begun to wonder when and if they do any work! Seriously, you've become a Hakuna Matata nation in the eyes of observers from elsewhere. Other European nations do this too. You struggle to get hold of them if you need to speak to them about business, etc, because they are forever out of the office on holiday. It's a bad habit they are teaching the rest of the world. I hope this never reaches SA.

    We couldn't afford to miss two weeks of lessons. Every day you learned something new and you missed the lessons with a teacher so how do you catch up on that? What if everyone decides to go on holiday at the same time? What if you need to do tests or whatever in that period and you miss them? (I see lately that tests and exams are upsetting the little darlings and stressing them, so I suppose the solution will be to abolish tests and exams and just give them their qualifications.)

    I find this all quite weird. But do go ahead, I'm just saying that I think it is foolhardy to have this approach when there are many who would work all year with no holidays to get ahead. If they happen to get ahead over the heads of your children, don't blame them for being anything but keen to achieve. And the world is choc full of underprivileged people who are dead keen to get somewhere and will undergo serious hardship to do so.

    Again, this is just my opinion. :)

  • Again, this is just my opinion. :)[IMG2=JSON]{"data-align":"none","data-size":"full","src":"https:\/\/http://www.forumbox.co.uk%5c/core%5C/image%…=%22%7D%5B/IMG2]

    You've said to me that you may well take a different stance to the traditional European/American view of the world, which is not really surprising considering where you live! That's good! You're coming at things from an entirely different point of view and that's most welcome.

    I agree to a point, western countries have become fat and lazy and it's going to be one the main "themes" I am going to explore further on this site.

    On your specific point about tests, obviously, parents should not take their kids out of school if tests are on, especially GCSE's. But, as you may know, education and/or training schemes is compulsory here now until 18. So, kids do need a little "slack" given to them.

  • I am from the British system that was in operation in SA during my school time. Add to that the enormously academic orientation of the Nationalist approach to education under the apartheid regime. But you could leave school at sixteen if you'd had enough.

    I'm accustomed to the old school hard work ethic, discipline, self directed achievement and always trying to be the best you can be. It's become a South African ethic and I think Americans have it too and I would suspect that its origins lie in our mutual lack of a social system. Each one for him and herself and may the best one win and may the one that doesn't win feel that there is always next time.

    It's very tough. Britain was once very tough and look what they achieved! Now they rely on foreign staff in hospital's and are presently tittering in the media about how Brexit will destroy the NHS on account of no foreign staff, etc.

    All bollocks. What you need is excellent training colleges for your own people to become medical staff. Problem solved. You have a giant population from which you can draw whomever you need.

  • I have to disagree. I think children should be at school during term time. It builds a sense of student community and discipline and a sense of working and waiting and enjoying.

    But I am from a different generation. I think one will need to study the effects on the general population of students where this is happening to see if there is any adverse effect. And to compare them to students who haven't experienced this disruption.

    It's two weeks at the most. It did not affect me in the slightest or my sister because our general attitude was good.

  • It's two weeks at the most. It did not affect me in the slightest or my sister because our general attitude was good.

    I agree.

    I suppose the Supreme Court rules as it did, because its concerned some parents always take their kids out of school. Those parents should be punished, this father mostly definitely should not have been.

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