Gov. Phil Scott’s recent appointee to the state Board of Education feels that the state is being asked to take over too many of the jobs of the family (“Change of Course: Norwich Republican Joins Board of Education.”) John Carroll’s statement that ”It takes a family to raise a child. And the village should step in when the family can’t do what it needs to do.” unnecessarily confounds and politicizes a reality with which most of us, I suspect, can agree: Children flourish in a loving community.
Life in the U.S. has changed radically since Carroll was growing up. In 1958, 87 percent of children lived in two-parent families; today, only 46 percent do. And even in families with two parents, in more than 60 percent of them both parents work. In the ’50s, stay-at-home-mothers did, indeed, provide a village so that children could play in neighborhoods without needing play dates or organized after-school activities.
In our bubble of wealth in Norwich, a parent is often available to chauffeur children to after-school activities. Even when both parents work, one or both often have some flexibility so that a sick child or a dental appointment is manageable.
Just as our school schedule was set up for an agrarian society which no longer exists, so it continues to operate on a model which works for the increasingly rare family.
What could help? As a start, recognizing and responding to the realities facing many families:
If a parent misses work to take a sick child to a doctor’s appointment (because the office is only open during “working hours”), she loses pay.
If a parent works in a health care setting where morning shifts often start at 7 a.m., he will be hard-pressed to find a daycare that lets him get to work on time.
Summer programs, whose cost alone keeps them out of the reach of many, operate on schedules that depend entirely on a parent who can get to work late and/or leave early.
Most of us have heard of income inequality. The logistical challenges cited above create an inequality of opportunity further widening the income gap in our country.
My hope is that Mr. Carroll will work for programs that strengthen communities and families. We are all in this together.
Corlan Johnson
Norwich
Yes, I can imagine better.
While I’m not really old enough to have been taught to examine a patient’s chest by putting my ear directly against his or her naked flesh, I am old enough to have been around when listening through a patient’s T-shirt, as shown on the cover of Dartmouth-Hitchcock’s “Imagine Better” newsletter of March 5, would get you raised eyebrows at the very least, plus the request to do it over, “this time without the baffle.” Otherwise, why did people bother to make the face of a stethoscope perfectly flat? Why those instructions to press firmly enough to leave a little dent in the skin?
Perhaps I’ve missed journal articles demonstrating that you can hear just as much/well through an undershirt as through skin alone, maybe even through undershirt and dress shirt together, or even through a mackinaw. Love to see the evidence.
And I realize this may be just a posed picture, but the advertising guilds have long known that what you see is what you’re led to believe.
There are a lot of reasons for treating the physical examination with great diligence and skill, but two stand out: first, people can tell when they’re getting a knockoff instead of the real McCoy; second, and more important, at a time when the mantra is “too many tests,” one had better use the physical examination for all it’s worth as a preventive to missing something.
And please, give the young doctor a white coat that fits next time!
John S. Barrett, M.D.
Lebanon