Sunscreen: Mom challenges school over kids' sunburn. Who's fault?
Sunscreen pros and cons aside, institutions, individuals, moms, dads, and kids have to start thinking more, and passing the buck less. There's a bigger social question about responsibility behind the story of two girls who got sunburned on a school field trip.
Sunscreen is at the center of a controversy in Washington State, where two kids were badly sunburned on a school field trip because they hadn't lathered up in sunblock. Their mom forgot to do it, the school wouldn't for liability reasons. Here, John Law, 10, applied sunscreen at summer camp in Fredericksburg, Va., last week.
Reza A. Marvashti/The Free Lance-Star/AP
Welcome to the land of bizarre summertime news.
If bus monitors-turned-almost-millionaires and ponytail-chopping judges weren鈥檛 enough, we also have this tidbit from Washington State: a mom irate about her children getting badly burned on a school field trip after school officials refused to give them sunscreen.
Because听蝉耻苍蝉肠谤别别苍, according to school policy, is dangerous. And a liability. All those additives and potential allergens, they explained.
And school district policy is clear that no medication 鈥� even sunscreen 鈥� can be applied without a physician鈥檚 consent.聽 (One teacher apparently even applied sunscreen in front of the girls, but said that she couldn鈥檛 share.)
So, mom Jesse Michener ends up rushing daughters Violet and Zoe to the hospital because they look about the same color as lobsters when they get home, while the principal apologizes for not having been able to do anything to protect them.
Um 鈥� where does one even start with this one?
Leaving the pros and cons of sunscreen aside (I wonder what the school district thinks about, I don鈥檛 know, soap), it seems to me that the whole story reflects a bigger social question about personal agency and responsibility.聽
I mean, it seems pretty backwards for a school 鈥� you know, an institution ostensibly designed to promote independent thought 鈥� to have a culture where individual actors have lost the ability to make reasonable, case-by-case judgments.聽
But it鈥檚 hardly rare. Talk to any number of teachers or administrators and you鈥檒l hear similar stories.
And it鈥檚 not just schools. Remember that story of the airport monitors hauling a toddler off a plane for being on the terrorism 鈥渘o fly鈥� list? The sort of non-thinking rule following, often at the expense of logic, and often molded by some sort of liability fear, is pretty commonplace in American officialdom.
But it鈥檚 not, I might venture, particularly helpful.
Because I think it impacts, among other things, parenting. 聽
I certainly don鈥檛 want to pass judgment here 鈥� goodness knows how many times I鈥檝e taken Baby M into town forgetting hat, sunscreen, diapers, even pants 鈥� but it鈥檚 hard not to wonder why, knowing her daughters were particularly sensitive to sun, Ms. Michener wasn鈥檛 a bit more proactive pre Field Day.
Now, a perfectly reasonable answer to this is 鈥淚 forgot, but I expected the school 鈥� to whom I entrust my kids every day 鈥� would provide a little backup.鈥澛� I鈥檇 be sympathetic to that.
But instead, there鈥檚 widespread, accusatory outrage 鈥� the sort that suggests the harm is totally someone else鈥檚 fault.
And that, also, seems unhelpful.
Maybe the real lesson in this is that all of us 鈥� institutions, individuals, moms, dads, kids 鈥� have to start thinking more, and passing the buck less.