Teaching happens in every interaction a child has in life.
If the purpose of schools is to undo the instillment of parents' values (or lack of them), we should at least be honest about it. That's the assumption behind most debates of this type.
If the purpose of schools is to teach specialized skills that most parents don't have, then we should cut the crap so that kids can learn them.
If the purpose of schools is to babysit kids so that their parents can be used as human batteries for Nestle and Kroger, then God help us.
It seems like the primary purpose of school is to make sure kids have been well trained to sit still and follow the rules, learn how to jump through societal hoops, and have a place to be for parents who can't/won't deal with them all day. How much can a teacher really do, trying to enforce all this and get across a subject to 15+ kids in a room, who have various degrees of motivation (sometimes none) to want to learn anything?
It seems like there must be a better way to help kids acclimate into adults and give their parents a break/opportunity to work.
The premise here is that education's primary purpose is expanding knowledge. I think it's so naive of a take it could be on purpose ?
> One mother told me it permanently damaged her relationship with her son because it forced her to be an enforcer rather than a mom.
This is by design, or at least an accepted byproduct. Having parents rolled in and being on the same page as the school is part of the process. This might not be explicited, the school might not even be thinking about it a lot, but it's a no downside proposition for the school, and parents will be more willing to pay, volunteer their tine, not make waves etc. if they're acting as an extension of school at home.
When your kids doesn't do homework it's you, the parent that gets summoned.
The basic purpose of schooling is to preprare a kid for society, and what society wants is not just bright kids, but citizen pushing themselves and following the common line. When they'll be adults they'll have deadline and meaningless overtime instead of homeworks. As pointed in the article, behaviors can reinforced, and that's what homeworks do.
It actually is the job of teachers to raise kids though.
Just because a teacher is teaching a specific subject doesn't mean they're unable to also help the kid with growing up?
Recognizing and providing direction is specifically what a teacher is supposed to do.
One major part of school is to give children the ability to have more trusted alerts to help them understand the world and not keep them isolated into a single world view of their parents.
They joked around about parents wanting school back as a babysitting service. I don't think this is particularly far off or offensive.
School is a place for children to get an education, but many parents are clearly just trying to keep the kid alive and themselves sane. It's a babysitting service to them, and the education is a bonus.
It's not always the case, but often when parents really care about education, the child will reflect that behavior; and there's a lot of kids who couldn't care less.
Having heard my friends talk about schools opening up, not a single one of them has talked about how much better teachers are at teaching than they were. Or how much their child really needed to be one of 30 heads instead of getting special attention. They talk about how nice it is to have alone time.
Well, I disagree that it's the job of teachers to raise kids. That's entirely the job of a parent, teachers can help at will, but that's too much of a burden to place on them.
Raising kids is hard and difficult and the person with the greatest incentive to put in the best efforts to do so is a parent.
I genuinely enjoyed school from primary sections to university, but now as a parent I feel more and more that the school is also there to act as a buffer between the parents and children and push society's values down the kid's throat, for better or worse. i.e. Sitting 8 hours a day in school is a way to make it normal to sit 8 hours a day in a cubicle. I don't know if I'd want my child to go through that and be able to do any corporate job he'd be qualified to, or try completely exotic ways but have him more limited in choice afterwards because he didn't get the 'training'
Disagree. Most parents are not going to be good teachers of children, no matter how good they think they can teach. Being present/engaging doesn't cut it. School, especially for younger kids is all about social relationships, managing emotions/empathy and less about education/academics.
If anything this is an argument to let the kids be taught by their parents and let the kids help with the parents work like the "good old days" rather than in the biodomes that are schools.
I agree with you, I would also add that parents are also as important, children with parents that get involved in homeworks and other educative tasks (like watching documentaries, stimulating critical thinking) have better results.
If someone thinks that education is the teacher job and parents should not do anything I disagree, at least not in regular schools where a teacher could have up to 25 students in a classroom.
> It shouldn't be the school's responsibility to take care of all these basic parenting duties. Perhaps that is where we should start.
That's true, but as a society we've pushed a LOT of non education related responsibilities onto schools. Picking up the slack for parents that don't want to be parents, or those that are trying very hard but struggling is just the tip of the iceberg.
The problem is the attitude towards education that often comes with that. They aren't sending their kids to learn, but are rather just getting them off their own hands.
Anecdotally, from when I was in school, the parents who first and foremost treated school as daycare and expressed such sentiments also didn't really care whether their kids learned all that much or behaved well.
It's not about what is taught to kids but about what kids retain.
And it seems that primary role of school when the bottom line is considered is keeping kids busy so their parents can work in peace. So there's really no strong objection if some parents want to opt out of this because not many will.
This is a tough topic. Most teachers, including myself, can't help but feel upset with the lack of understanding that people have about the profession. Sure, school can be used to teach students "about life" (as the top Reddit post says). However, a lot of parents take this too far and fail their children at home. Teachers are trained to teach students responsibility, caring, honesty, respect, self-regulation, and so many other skills. We do all of this through a broad curriculum set out by the government and almost entirely out of our control.
I understand that it's easy to look at the teaching situation and blame the teachers. Students are changing, education is changing. However, parents are a critical component in student learning and success. Many of the students (that aren't on plans for their educational difficulties or differences) that do not succeed, often aren't properly taught the basics at home. I know I might get a bunch of arguments against me. But we do need to take more factors than the ones this article and corresponding thread speak of.
It’s not the school’s job job to teach anything beyond the academic material. It’s not a daycare and it is definitely not a parent surrogate. When it comes to building character, teaching resilience, that falls on the parents, extended family and community.
Stop blaming the teachers and start parenting your damn kids. Single parent families broken homes are the leading causes of poor outcomes for children in education and lifelong success. If the parents in America got their shit together, children would do a lot better in life.
I think what's missed in the discussion is the role of parents. Not everything has to be the teacher's responsibility. That is in the article, they say it's about parental choice. So parents can address the questions, and decide how to raise their kids. Why should it automatically be the role of the state to give a state sanctioned answer?
That lack of purpose is the point. If you can acculturate children to doing what they accurately perceive as pointless, joyless, regimented tasks and get them used to being told what to do, when to do it and how, to being ranked by an authority figure then school has done its job. An industrial society cannot function with people who won’t just put up and shut up.
As a parent and married to a wife who's a teacher in a public elementary school in a large school district, I can say all this talk of improving school, train teachers, etc is missing the mark. More of the responsibility rests with the parents, not with the school or teachers or administrators.
Sure teachers/school matter, but not as much as the parents from my observation.
> Society should care whether parents are providing a base level of education and opportunity to these kids.
And society should also care whether government-run public schools are doing this--not to mention whether they are indoctrinating children with values that many parents disagree with.
“Isn’t it obvious that good teachers want to teach children with parents that want them to learn? And punish their children when they are disruptive? And the school can kick out bad kids?”
Perhaps, but that kind of school is doing a different “job” than one tasked with ensuring a base level of education for all young people.
If the purpose of schools is to undo the instillment of parents' values (or lack of them), we should at least be honest about it. That's the assumption behind most debates of this type.
If the purpose of schools is to teach specialized skills that most parents don't have, then we should cut the crap so that kids can learn them.
If the purpose of schools is to babysit kids so that their parents can be used as human batteries for Nestle and Kroger, then God help us.
reply