In 1955, 30 per cent of Alberta's was spent on education but little on health care. In 1968 with universal health care, the health portion surged.
By 2007 health care got 33 per cent and education (kindergarten to Grade 12) received 17 per cent. By 2010, health care gets 40 per cent and education around 15 per cent. Meanwhile, hundreds of schools are closing, class sizes are ballooning, impersonal computers replace teachers. We now see more school dropout, teen anxiety and depression, more gang behaviour, binge drinking. Parents get angry sitting in wait rooms for emergency. How about the frustration of kids in devalued schools?
The items are related. If kids were more engaged in small, caring schools, sports and clubs for teens we'd see less anxiety, depression, teen pregnancy, alcoholism among teens and less drug use.
When we force parents out of the home to both earn full-time wages, we take from kids the natural and free ballast they could have to facing life. If no one is home when the kid returns from school, the restless mind goes wandering.
We can change the alienation of youth by funding parenting better, too. Instead of funding more day care so kids are in the care only of strangers, we should fund kids directly. That would enable care by someone the parents prefer to provide it, including grandparents, sitters, even nannies, dads and moms. A government that only funds third-party care and that defunds education is asking for huge health care bills.
When parents have little say in their own lives, they feel depressed, anxious, stressed and the medical problems they then have are also huge to the system.
We can reduce line-ups in emergency if we fund small caring schools and if we fund kids.
Beverley Smith, Calgary
