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0 pointshawkesnest7y ago0 comments

But if the kids have a doctor in the family...they're being examined by a medical doctor. The idiots that don't take their kids to the doctor...are idiots.

Let's NOT institute forced doctor visitations (with all the cost, overhead, bureaucracy, potential for fraud, etc) for all parents, EVEN THE EXEMPLARY ONES, to deal with that problem.

Instead, let's figure out if there are better ways to ensure that parents have the ability/means/understanding necessary to get their kids to checkups.

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4 comments · 1 top-level

carlob7y ago· 3 in thread

> The idiots that don't take their kids to the doctor...are idiots.

Do you think that being a teacher is easier than being a medical doctor?

I know somebody who is a primary school teacher in Northern France, on the border with Belgium (a disadvantaged area for France, but no worse than some parts of the American South), every single year she has to deal with medical or social issues that would have gone otherwise unnoticed: abusive families, contagious diseases that went unnoticed, kids who were not eating healthy at home...

My point is that it is often thanks to public schools that we don't need forced doctor (or god forbid social serivices) visitations.

hawkesnestOP7y ago

> Do you think that being a teacher is easier than being a medical doctor?

What the hell does that matter?

Look, I'm not saying there isn't value to public education. And I'm not saying that educators don't provide a valuable and important service. But forcing public education as the panacea for finding all the ways parents fail their children is sub-optimal.

If you want to find abuses, diseases, malnutrition, etc, then let's mandate yearly doctor visits. I'd back that up WAY more than forced public education.

carlob7y ago

> What the hell does that matter?

If you think that homeschooling is fine, but homedoctoring is crazy, then you think that being a teacher is a job that any idiot can do, while being a medical doctor requires a specific set of skills.

I'm not saying that all homeschooling parents are crazy and are doing a horrible job, I'm just saying that people have to study a bunch of stuff before becoming teachers, and even then they work as a team and have different specializations, I highly doubt that most people can do a better job than them on their first shot.

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burfog7y ago

For my kids, contagious diseases come from the doctor's office. (there is a concentration of sick people) The most horrifying disease was hand/foot/mouth disease, which really should be called hand/foot/mouth/anus disease but that would be rude. It can cause paralysis. There is no vaccine. My kids got huge blisters, including one that fully covered the end of a thumb.

So, bear in mind, that doctor visit carries some risk and could even cause permanent damage.

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