Mike Hosking: There's no doubt schools are forced to do parents' jobs

Opinion

I am liking the cut of Richard Hall's jib.

He is the rector at Otago Boys' High School - and he is telling it like it is.

And that, sadly, is a diminishing trait in this increasingly PC world in which we avoid telling the truth at all costs because someone is going to get offended.

His concern is a widely held one: the growing expectation that schools act as social as well as educational institutions.

He argues, and he would know better than most, that the increasing amount of inappropriate pupil behaviour is influenced by what he calls the disintegration of the parent network.

He also blames the accessibility of cellphones. Things like meeting the parents of your kid's friends, the things you might do at the school gate.

Trouble is no one is at the school gate, not any more. And certainly not once they're above about 10.

Now part of me wants to argue the world is full of people opining about the "kids of today". People have always done that. The world has always been going to hell in a handcart.

The kids of today have always been worse than when we were kids. Rock 'n roll was the end of civilisation, now it's cellphones.

We used to go to the school round the corner, now the selection is a science and so it goes. The good old days were the days when we really had it better, got it right and all was well, which is of course rubbish.

But it is true that life is busy and time is precious, and I can tell you from personal experience that the best quality time I ever spent with any of our kids was after school. Still is, to some degree. That time at pick up, or when they walk in the door.

That's when they talk, that's when the issues are split, that's when you connect more than any other time. Some argue dinner is key, I think that's a bygone era.

But there is no doubt that schools are expected to do too much in terms of what kids bring in the gate. Their baggage sadly goes well beyond the homework and whether their socks are pulled up.

So the rector's words are wise. If you're not doing the little things, the after-schools, the talking to other parents, making those connections.

Then he argues your distance from your child's influences is rapidly growing wider. I think he's right. And good on him for saying it.