Vocal Voices

Said something I agreed with this week. Gove said that increasing number of parents are raising children in "chaotic homes" with no discipline, structured meals or proper bedtimes. Yep, I agree with all that.
Youngsters are being left to "fend for themselves". Yep, agree with that.
Fathers are "fleeting" in some cases, says Gove. Some children go to school having had no breakfast as a result of poor parenting, not being skint. Yes, that's true.
He says that such families are in a minority, and that's true as well.
But where I disagree massively with him is this.
He says that schools are "required" to provide meals as well as teaching about morals, manners, discipline and punctuality. He says this is "increasingly necessary" and that schools have a "major role" to play in promoting stability in pupil's lives.
So schools should be required to bring up other people's children, in effect. I wonder how long it will be before OFSTED starts failing schools because they aren't being good enough 'parents' to them?

Gove's views are also shared by the Labour party. Education is now officially part of the social services.

Just a thought - if you always accomodate bad parenting by making the schools do the job of a parent, is the number of bad parents going to go up or down? I know which my money is on.
"Send 'im ter school, it'll be reight, teacher's'll gi 'im summat for 'is breakfast".

Imo failing families aren't going to be cured by society catering for their failings. they are only going to be cured when:-
1. It is no longer possible to make a career out of producing children for the benefits they bring in, and that means changes to family allowance.
2. It is made clear to everyone that responsibility for raising children is the duty of the family AND NOBODY ELSE.

Oh how I agree with you Cromwell.

As regards the "new" curriculum.........when will Gove and his ilk realise that teaching and learning are two vastly different things. You can teach till the cows come home, but that in no way means that the children will learn. If children have been brought up with open and enquiring minds, receptive to all that is being taught to them, then they will learn. That comes from the family though. They are with their family for 4 or 5 years before they begin school. In many cases the damage is already done before any school is favoured with their presence.

Education is now officially part of the social services.

Let us not forget that is also a view shared by educationalists, teaching unions and many teachers. None of them were very vocal with the dumbing down of the curriculum, the slackening of discipline or the setting up of breakfast clubs etc.; were they? Some actively fought for them!

They are, however, up in arms today at Gove's new curriculum for 5 - 14 yr-old. It aims to reintroduce English comprehension and the teaching of fractions in mathematics from day one at school. Whenever and however did those things slip from being taught? He might even require pupils to put their hands up to speak and also to ask if they can leave their seat to get a pencil or go to the toilet - now that would be novel.

Workingman wrote:Education is now officially part of the social services.

Let us not forget that is also a view shared by educationalists, teaching unions and many teachers.

Educationalists and teaching unions maybe; I don't honestly know too many teachers who think it's a good idea. But if the government(s) think it's a good idea, educationalists think it's a good idea and some of the unions think it's a good idea, what do you do if you're a teacher? Form your own union? Most that I know have gritted their teeth and bailed out as quickly as they could.
It's going to end badly. Years ago I read a Peter Hitchens article in which he said there were people in this country who would not be satisfied until all babies were brought up in state nurseries whilst theire mothers were sent out to work. I thought that was rubbish then; I'm not so sure now.
It is this notion that the State must and should take care of every eventuality for everybody that is so wrong.
There are many poor parents who will just become even worse parents because their uselessness is being pandered to.

In many coutnries abroad they don't even start school until they are six or seven years old; they still have long summer breaks. Ten weeks in Norway, longer than us in Ireland, France, Italy, Spain...

Apparently abroad they have this institution called "the family" which brings up children. Isn't that amazing? Do we think it might catch on over here?

cromwell wrote:Do we think it might catch on over here?

Oh wouldn't it be lovely if it did.

I am a big believer in children not starting school until they are 7 and am a lover of the long summer holidays. Fortuantely the staff at our primary school also believe that they start too young and therefore they do the bare minimum of the curriculum for the infant children and everything they do do is play based.

The possibility of the shortening of the summer holidays and lengthening of the school day really annoys me - it seems that it is just to accommodate working parents and make life easier for them, rather than being of benefit to the children. Yes, the children may get bored in the long six week holiday - but it is up to the parents to entertain them. And by only having a four week holiday it will put the prices of holidays up - more people trying to squish their family holiday into a shorter time. I understand that in some households both parents have to work full time - but they should consider childcare for school age children before they even get pregnant. It isn't up to the government to look after their chidlren at hours that suit them. Let them stick to after school clubs - I neither need nor want my children to be at school until 5pm. And if they government do enforce longer school days are they going to abolish any form of homework or is my child going to get home from school at 5.30pm and then start on her two hour homework each evening as well?

But as for the provision of meals, that I am in agreement with. For some children school really is the only stability that they get in their lives and for many, their lunchtime meal is the only proper meal they get each day. Taking away this provision from schools isn't going to make bad parents into good parents, it is just failing the children already being failed by their useless parents. I would class our little primary school as being in a pretty much middle class/upper working class area (if we have to get down to class) - we are not inner city, we are not in a deprived area. But I know that the head teacher is supplying breakfast for at least 6 children (from 4 different families) - out of her own pocket - as for whatever reason they are not given breakfast by their parents.

cromwell wrote:Do we think it might catch on over here?

Catch on? If you mean make a comeback the answer is probably "No!".

We used to have families, then society changed. Feminism wanted equal opportunities for women and, by and large, that is what they got. Work became the norm and the term "housewife" became an expletive. Long-term job prospects for just about everybody became few and far between; part-time work became the norm. The numbers of latch-key children exploded. Who would be home - mum or dad? If it was dad they would most likely get something from a tin or a packet from that new-fangled freezer thing and cooked in that new-fangled microwave thing; because dad can't cook. It it was mum it might be a proper meal, but if she was dashing off to work, well.... Either way they would sit down with it on a tray while watching TV.

At almost the same time schooling was changing. Grammar and secondary schools were closing to be replaced with the one-size-fits-all comprehensives. Selection was bad. Then, to compound that injustice, the 'O' levels and CSEs were scrapped for a dumbed down GCSE. Failure was a thing of the past. Teachers, yes, individual teachers, were over the moon. Child centred learning and free expression became the norms.

Those two things went a long way to producing parents who didn't have a clue. They went on to produce children who had even less of a clue... and they became today's parents.

Take a system which took 1,000 years or more to develop. Which was restricted to the elite for most of those 1,000 years.

And destroy it in 4 decades.

Well done.

I mean, why do we need a decent education and qualifications which mean something? Everyone else is going to make things, we're just going to go around selling them.....

A proud nation to a middle man.

What aspirations.

What foresight.

Mediocrity. A goal to be undershot.

It's just as well we still have a richer class which sends their children to establishments which pride themselves in discipline and education.

For the rest? It's a second class education with a first class smile.....