Delo says fighting over testing not good for children
Ljubljana - Commenting on the fighting over who is right and who is wrong in the debate on the testing of children at schools, the newspaper Delo says in Wednesday's front-page commentary that everyone has forgotten about the children, who are caught in the crossfire.
Testing itself is not something that children would not be capable of performing. But it definitely makes sense that at least the youngest children should have their parents with them at least at first, which some schools will enable.
Merely threatening with home schooling is not productive and in some cases it is enough to ignite a spark of resistance. When questions are asked why the testing could not be performed at home to avoid infecting anyone on the way to school, the resistance gets even stronger.
The government decree is again ill-conceived. It is destined to fall at the Constitutional Court if the resistance continues there. But health experts clearly said the self-testing was urgent at this point.
"In all the arguing over who is right, who is the sheep and who the enlightened, we have forgotten about the children," Delo says, asking how a child who wants to self-test but one or both of their parents do not allow it must feel, especially if the parents fight over it.
How does a child feel if their are the only one in their class who will not self-test or the only one who will? How do they feel when they listen to one thing at home while his teacher they love as well is saying something completely different?
Children are innocent in all this and they are in distress. They do not need arguments between teachers and parents or protests in front of their schools. What they need is peace and open schools, concludes the commentary What Our Babies Can Do and What We Are Doing to Them.