Well, the ignoramuses were let loose in Montreal recently and when they were done, two-year-old Jessica Dos Santos was expelled from daycare. Never mind that she has HIV, the virus believed to cause AIDS, or that her mother did not inform the daycare workers of her illness. What business is it of theirs?
The nervy owner of Les Petits Lutins daycare asked Jessica’s mother about the clear liquid medication she was to give the child every six hours. Naturally, the mother refused to comply but when faced with the possibility of her daughter’s expulsion, she revealed the drug was AZT, an anti-viral medication used to combat HIV. And little Jessica was out. Both workers and parents objected to the perceived risk of contagion.
The media was quick to expose the daycare and the parents for the ignorant fools they were. But this was a working-class neighbourhood. People can be very resistant to progressive ideologies and politically correct agendas. Experts were marshaled in to explain to the staff and parents that they were overreacting.
Even after several re-education sessions, conducted in collaboration with Ville Marie AIDS services and the McGill AIDS centre, parents and staff reiterated their Neanderthal position. But daycares are proven to have much higher rates of transmission of other diseases, and we don’t rally know enough about HIV transmission in daycare, said the parents.
Besides, said some, children have immature immune systems anyway. And bodily fluids? Please, must we go into graphic details? Diapers, drool, runny noses…well, you get the picture. Kids – and we’re talking two-year-olds – are not exactly big on personal hygiene, argued the parents. Even one chance in a million is too great a risk for my child, said one father.
The experts looked to the heavens and sighed. I mean, what can you say to people like that?
A spokesperson from the Quebec Human Rights Commission said that people who are HIV-positive are considered handicapped, and therefore are protected from discrimination under the Quebec Charter of Rights. She said that non one is obliged to reveal if they have HIV, or even full-blown AIDS.
Of course, not all daycare owners are alike. Another owner of a daycare in Montreal told the Gazette that he did not think parents should be told if the daycare accepts a child with HIV.
“I’d be ready to accept an HIV-positive child into my daycare centre, but I wouldn’t tell you if I had.”
“But if parents found out about it, we’d have to talk it out. The difference between a school and a daycare is that we’re at the mercy of money, and without the children we’d be out of business.”
Those of us who come down on the side of the ignorant Neanderthals wonder who is minding the children. Children in daycare, especially large operations like Les Petits Lutins, are at substantially higher risk of contracting many diseases, including several serious ones. Studies of HIV-infected children in such surroundings have been negligible, but there is reason to be cautious.
Champions of Jessica might also consider that she should not be in such an environment either. Her immune system is already seriously compromised by HIV, and increased exposure to the various daycare-related illnesses further jeopardizes her own health.
At the same time, unionized daycare workers in this province have shut down several centres indefinitely (six at last count) and many more are on rotating strikes, affecting hundreds of children. At issue is money. The government has wryly observed that it is not their employer. If they want more money, workers should turn to parents, not government.
Given the tax subsidies that parents receive for daycare, the government is surely a partner employer, and all this activity is a signal of what is to come. Under the guise of the UN International Year of the Family, there will be a big push for more and more institutional, government-funded daycare.
This kind of care is that least favoured by parents, but the most liked by social engineers. Quality child care and parental involvement will take a back seat to political correctness and union contracts. It is happening now, and it is going to get worse.
It is time for all the brow-beaten ignoramuses to come out of the closet and to question the assumptions of the so-called experts who would like to rear our little children.
