Patamateria

Are schools responsible?

January 16th, 2008

You only have to listen to the news and commentaries on the radio (which I do as I travel from place to place at work) to hear that our British education system is responsible for all the ills of society, from pregnant schoolgirls to obesity. Pregnant schoolgirls because the teaching of sex education is apparently inadequate in our schools and so these poor ignorant girls have no idea…etc, etc. Obesity because schools are not teaching children about healthy eating and are not showing them how to boil an egg or prepare and cook vegetables.
So, remind me, where do parents come in?

Do they have no part in educating their children re these issues?

Maybe society has totally lowered its expectations with regard to the role parents should play in productively raising their children … maybe it’s OK to give birth and then hand over all responsibility to ‘the professionals’…

But on the other hand, surely families are the best place for children to learn about relationships and morals and healthy eating and exercise and so on and so on.
I have first hand knowledge that both these issues - underage pregnancy and obesity, and many others that schools are slated for - are being addressed by schools. That is, they are covering them as well as they can given the fixed time per week that they have to share between English, Maths, Science, Modern Foreign Languages, History, Geography, P.E./Games, Art, Music, Information Technology, Religious Education, Design and Technology, FoodTech (how to boil an egg…) and Personal and Social Education (including sex education).

So, I want to make a plea:

Let schools get on with what they do best, preparing young people for adult life by giving them a wide range of skills and knowledge so that they have a good foundation on which to build their futures.

And stop undervaluing and insulting parents by assuming they cannot give their children a good grounding in social values and basic life skills - like boiling an egg.

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