KEY POINTS:
An urgent public debate is needed about the future role of schools and teachers. Alongside that debate should be another one about the role of parents and families. The two seem to be increasingly blurred.
This issue was first raised in the build-up to the Tomorrow's Schools statement, in which the primacy of partnership between the community and schools was seen as paramount. The sad thing is that the concept of "partnership" has never been accurately defined or tested.
The result is that we now have a situation where "partnership" seems to involve schools being increasingly required to take over the roles once regarded as the domain of parents and families.
The question of what children and young people learn and where they learn it is complex. We all know that learning occurs in a variety of places - the home, early childhood centres, schools, community settings, sports and cultural groups and just sitting around chewing the fat with friends. It has always been this way and probably always will be.
There has always been something in that mixture about balance.
Typically, families have taken the responsibility for teaching children certain knowledge and skills. Parents teach their children language, what food to put in their stomachs, how to brush their teeth, when to put on a sun hat, how to get on with others, the "birds and bees", and when to flush.
Schools have provided parents and families with the support needed so that children see there is consistency of importance and approach to these necessary skills.
But schools have also focused on more "formal" aspects of education: teaching children to read and write, mathematics, science, history, the arts and how to socialise in larger institutions with many people. It has been expected that parents and families will support the school in these endeavours.
Parents hear children read, help them with homework, try to fathom out algebraic equations, and assist the teacher in the aftermath of an altercation.
Once again, it is about consistency of importance and approach. It is about families and schools working together to achieve the best for our children and young people.
This balance, however, has shifted in recent years. Increasingly it appears that early childhood centres and schools are being expected to undertake fundamental areas of teaching that parents and families have always performed and should continue to perform.
Schools are social institutions and it is not possible to precisely separate out what should be "school" learning from anything else that exists in the life of a child or young person.
In fact, one of the reasons schools exist at all is to socialise our children beyond the bounds of the family and introduce them into civil society in a systematic way.
As such, the need for children to interact with adults and their peers in various situations, and the need to keep them safe, has and will always be a function of schools in addition to teaching the curriculum.
But increasingly schools have been required to step up and take over vastly more than is either fair or reasonable.
More often, schools and teachers seem to be charged not only with ensuring higher levels of socialisation but also with teaching children the most fundamental behaviour, such as following simple instructions, taking turns with others, and simple manners (yes, they are important).
Teachers and schools are more often charged with identifying and dealing with aberrant behaviour that not only prevents others learning but is a danger to others, on occasions.
Schools now seem to have a major responsibility for teaching young people about sex and sexuality.
Teachers and schools now seem to be charged with ensuring that various aspects of a child's health and well-being are catered for, during school hours and often outside them as well.
Teachers have to assume responsibility for ensuring that children wear sunscreen and hats and be held accountable if they do not.
One school I have heard about has even had to provide toothbrushes for its children because many of the parents didn't.
And now we see schools taking on the responsibility for limiting the fast-food intake of our children and young people, in the somewhat vain hope that it will solve the increasing obesity problem the nation faces.
While schools are to be congratulated for their tireless efforts to raise the nation's children, as well as teaching them, where does it all lead? There are two obvious effects.
The first is that schools and teachers keep adding to what is already a very full curriculum. The result is that they will end up teaching less and less about more and more.
The second is that by taking over the teaching of those things that traditionally took place in the family, schools are reinforcing those increasing numbers of families who fail to meet their responsibilities in these areas.
Surely the responsibility for many of these basic social skills should go back where it belongs - to families. Many groups in our society are rightly demanding that our children are taught the basics well, that they are being equipped to take their place in a knowledge society and be confident members of a global community.
We are also asking our schools to take over aspects of the lives of children that have traditionally been and must continue to be primary responsibilities of families.
The roles of families and schools will always overlap, and should do so. The divisions are not clearcut and never will be.
What is required is a sensible discussion about true partnership - what is it that we, as a society, expect of our parents and families. And what can we reasonably expect from our teachers and schools.
What is not healthy is the current trend that schools are taking over those things that rightly belong in the domain of families, and that many families seem to be more than happy to allow this to occur.
For a teacher-educator it is becoming increasingly difficult to determine what it is that we should be educating our students to do. That needs to be defined and re-focused quickly.
It is neither possible nor desirable for teachers and schools to become all things to all people.
* Dr John Langley is Dean of Education at the University of Auckland.
