School Ties

Over the last month and a half we've had a little battle with my daughter's school. In Japan, middle school kids walk to school on a specific route and her school is over a mile away from our house. So she walks two miles each day to go there and back no matter the weather. She also has to go to another middle school for Japanese class. Twice a week my daughter takes the subway from the station nearest her school to the Japanese class because this other one is farther away. On her way back the subway goes past the station near our house.

For some bizarre reason, her principal wants her to ride the subway all the way back to her school, tell them her class finished and then walk back home. That's ridiculous especially since she can just get off the train at the station near our house and walk 7 minutes and be home, instead of having to walk for half an hour. She can call the school from home to tell them she's back if they are so worried about her.

Two weeks ago, my daughter told her teacher she would just come straight home because it's safer and closer. You would have thought she had revealed she had the Ebola virus! The teacher went into a panic saying that's not what the rules say! You must obey the rule! They had to meet with the principal because not returning to school to walk the assigned route home was not possible! They had a very long meeting and they told her they would keep her backpack to force her to return.

Well, we had anticipated that and had told her to pack her homework in the small bag she uses for her Japanese class and just come home straight. She did just that, called the school, told them she was home and guess what happened?

NOTHING!!!

No one got angry at her, there was no punishment or retaliation. There's no even a measure in place to take action if a student breaks the dumb rule. So for now on, she will walk to school in the morning with all the other kids, take the subway to Japanese class and take it back home and call.

If the school had just said "good idea, do that" instead of giving us such a hard time, we would have more respect for them and we all would have been saved a lot of aggravation.

Now, I'm researching how many middle school kids had to go to the hospital all over the country each year, due to weather related issues because of the dumb policy of not letting them ride their bikes to school. This one may take years to win instead of a couple of weeks...