Well, thats lousy

One of the differences between the US and the UK is the school system, specifically, the expectations of the school around attendance. In a country where parents are summarily arrested for keeping their kids out of school, one develops a somewhat different outlook when considering whether to send the kids to school on a given morning.

When I grew up, if you were sick, you didn't go to school. If you had a fever, you stayed home for 24 hours afterwards. This simple system obviously left itself open to abuse (a radiator was always a useful device for skipping a much-feared test), but the net effect was that kids didn't repeatedly spread their various illnesses through the class.

Here, though, kids are sent to school regardless of their ailment. Fevers, stomach viruses, run of the mill colds. Head lice. Yes, kids are sent to school even if they have lice. I'm sure most of you remember those days when lice was found on some poor kid (usually the least popular kid in the school), and then everyone was called down to the nurse's office for a hair inspection, and the unlucky few who had the little critters in their hair were quietly sent home. Well, they don't do that here. Instead, the kids just go to school every day. And, naturally, this leads to epidemics - of lice and of many other things.

Caroline had lice yesterday. One of her friends had it a few weeks ago (her nanny told us) and naturally we've been checking her hair every day since. It's not a big deal, there's a treatment for it which seems to be reasonably effective, but I still find it odd that people don't feel compelled to take even the slightest precautions to avoid spreading diseases and, ick, bugs. Contrast this attitude with that of the Japanese, where sick people wear surgical masks to avoid spreading their germs, and the cultural difference becomes even more obvious.

Yuck. I'm all itchy now.