Why I'm glad I'm not a parent
Tonight, BBC3 are showing "The House of Tiny Tearaways", a show in which the behaviour of adults and their children are monitored and analysed Big-Brother style, "Little Angels", a guide to raising well-behaved kids, and "Who Rules the Roost?", a series which claims to 'reveal the reality of modern parenting'. It's 'parenting season', apparently. At the same time, the government are putting more pressure on schools to ensure that kids meet high targets and standards. I find myself very glad that I'm neither a parent nor a teacher.
- I'll try to give you links to various news articles as I go through so that you may look up more detailed information on any of the issues if you so wish. -
An increasing number of primary school teachers are finding that kids lack basic skills when they arrive at school, including a basic grasp of language and numeracy, and the ability to hold a knife and fork. This means that the teachers then have to waste time teaching these things to the children themselves. The attitude of many parents seems to be that once the kids reach school-age it's the schools job to raise them. Reasons for this include simply not wanting to raise the child ("I've already given birth to it and looked after it for five years, what more do you want?"), and having (or wanting to get back to) a full-time job. The sort of reasons that make you wonder why they had the kid in the first place. These are the parents who turn up to the parent-teacher evenings to hear bad things about their child, and proceed to blame the teaching standards.
Teachers are under a great deal of pressure to teach using the most up-to-date methods and equipment, to make sure that children attend all of their lessons and pass their exams. Anything that might be actually useful in later life gets missed out because if it isn't on the syllabus there isn't time to teach it. Teachers are having their lessons monitored and analysed, and are made to feel inadequate if they don't have all-singing all-dancing classes which help even the most challenged children get perfect exam results.
Contrary to this image of parents, there are a great number who do care about the raising of their children - possibly a little too much. This is the crowd that a great number of TV programmes and books are aimed at, because companies know that they can make money off the fear that these people have of being a Bad Parent. Countless authors and presenters are all-too willing to tell parents that they're doing it wrong, that there are modern techniques to ensure that children develop in the "right" way, and that if parents do the slightest thing wrong they can seriously impact their child's future prospects. One of the greatest fears that these (mostly middle-class) parents have is that their precious children could turn to crime, along with failing exams and not getting a well-paid job. And by attempting to help parents deal with these fears all these authors do is highlight and exaggerate them.
We are living in a world where we are told how dress, how to decorate our homes, the partners we should choose, and now how to raise our own children. Where does it stop?
Schools blame the parents for not teaching their children enough before they reach school-age. Parents blame the schools for not teaching their children enough. Society puts more pressure on parents to bring children up "properly". This blame-culture is becoming ridiculous. The system is a mess, and by the looks of things it's only going to get worse.
The government needs to stop blaming schools for the undereducated 16-year olds that come out of the system. Parents need to take responsibility for the education of their own children and start teaching them about the world (how to hold a knife and fork, as a good example) rather than leaving it to the schools. Corporations need to stop interfering with parenting - the people most likely to read and view the material are the ones who need it the least. And society as a whole needs to stop pointing the finger at the nearest target (scapegoat).
WebDragon out.
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Comments
From: Julia Freeman
What can we do to improve parenting? Well, we can't bring in a new crime of "Breeding without due care and attention" Which is a tragic shame. And we can't limit who can breed, eugenics being outlawed under the Human rights act. So the only thing we can do is encourage social responsibility amoungst members of our society so that they consider fully what being a parent actually means before doing it. Unfortunately, with an ever greater number of school leavers unable to spell responsiblility, let alone know what it is, this seems someone idealistic.
- And I see you count yourself among those unable to spell "responsibility". I disagree violently with the idea of having a state control who is eligible to procreate - it may solve one problem, but at far too great a cost to make it remotely justifiable.
Education is the way forward, as it always has been. It's my opinion that PSHE (personal, social and health education) classes in schools are massively under-used when it comes to teaching kids about the world outside the educational system.