Put this together with my proposal in a thread a while back to increase the amount of time spent in school. I know that you can’t just keep teaching kids stuff 40 hours a week - brains need assimilation time. But, I think a lot of good things could come of keeping school open 40 hours a week all year long. I don’t think the regular classes shoul dbe expanded to fit these extended hours. Instead there should be more ‘electives’, more play time, more time for reading or drawing etc… It would be expensive to do. It would mean the government would be largely paying teachers to be surrogate parents. So be it. Teaching parenting would definitely be a part of that task.
Schools have already drifted too far away from academics. Many students graduate without learning how to read or write, and yet we’re talking about the need to learn “real life skills”? Parenting skills and life skills are best taught by parents and others outside the school setting. These are subjective areas and it is a dangerous idea to have the notion of what constitutes good parenting handed down by the government. Yes, I realize we have a lot of bad parents out there, but that doesn’t mean the solution can be found in the schools. The schools have enough problems without adding yet another burden.