School is 'the last moral force'

From the bbc (of course):

Poor parenting and the erosion of family life are leaving schools as the only moral framework in many children’s lives, says a head teachers’ leader.

and

Long working hours, chaotic home backgrounds and a lack of positive adult influences in children’s lives, meant schools were being expected to patch up social problems rather than focus on educational issues.

Actually, I think the long working hours, chaotic home backgrounds and lack of positive adult influences *are* the social problems, and I’m not sure that schools can patch those up, except maybe by refusing to open all hours? No?

Then there’s the other side of it – I don’t think families in victorian times when schools first came into their own necessarily had short working days. I’m fairly sure that they often had chaotic home backgrounds. What I’m saying is that I don’t think these challenges faced by schools are new, but I think the rush to run around and blame someone else is what drives this type of comment.

Schools should always have been part of the moral force of society – and they are set up perfectly to do it wrong. You can’t give moral guidance to a pack, they are naturally going to follow the strongest leader, and if that happens to be a boy with a knife, then that is what they are going to do. What you need is to split the age groups, have smaller groups, and yes, focus on practical skills before worrying about education. There is plenty of time throughout life to gather pretty much any educational skill you might want, but I’m unconvinced that you can retrain someone as to right and wrong later on in the process, and if you can, it’s usually only be drastic means that will cost society far more than getting it right first time.

Stop worrying so much about children learning, they’ll do that if you let them, they are set up to do it. But yes, if you are there with them from 8 in the morning til 6 in the evening (not that I’m saying that that is ideal by any stretch of the imagination) then you are going to have to give them guidance, and practical skills and love and care.

So if you aren’t prepared to do all of those things, then what needs to change is our working practises, our rush to get parents out to work, especially single parents. Instead you need to support them to enable them to support their children and teach them all the bits you don’t want to get into.

Wonder if we’ll ever have a political party recognise any of that?