Why don't we teach parenting in public schools?

There’s usually an action-reaction cycle in education between practical and interesting education, and the basics. If you spend 12 years building kids’ self esteem, and focus on menu planning and parenting skills at the expense of having them learn to think critically, read and understand math, you can bet that there will soon be a sharp reaction insisting on a switch ‘back to basics.”

1. Because it is not ‘academic” it is considered optional. Given current funding structures, life skill education has fallen by the wayside. We no longer teach driver’s ed, how to balance a checkbook, etc.

2. Even if it were agreed to fund, the curriculum would be an ideological battleground. We can’t even have a peaceful discussion on the merits of breast feeding in this society, let alone teach it in schools.

I agree with @zenvelo but would add that people probably expect that kids will pick this up from their parents and/or that it will come naturally to people once they feel the responsibility of having kids.

Also, there are probably people who feel that teaching this at an early age will encourage people to have kids at a young age which could impede career paths, etc…

My first thought, who is going to teach the teachers to be good parents!

It would probably open up the door for all kinds of lawsuits, especially if and when the kids start comparing parenting as it “should be,” with the kind of parenting they actually receive.

Yea, let the “establishment” tell us how we should raise our children.

Some issues need to be worked out by ourselves. We the people…

I agree with you, BUT, schools and teachers leave the parenting skills to the parents. i have always said that children in school is like a daycare, that teachers are just babysitters. some teachers cannot control their own classrooms. most students want to learn. those that are in school for just a good time, ruin the setting for those that want to learn. wish the teachers were in a position to teach parenting skills to the students.

What if what a teacher believes is not what you believe, as far teaching a student how to be a good parent? i guarantee, if this were to be implemented, that some parents would file a lawsuit for teaching their families’s “non-belief”.

Good idea, but it will never happen.

Not everybody is going to be parents so why waste the tax dollars when they are already cutting required courses to the bone.

@Cruiser Same reason we waste tax dollars on shop or home ec.

That’s what the parents are for.

@erichw1504 Too many of them fail miserably.

Perhaps it’s because:

1) School aged kids are far to young to be worring about being parents (not that it doesn’t happen far to often)

and

2) Ideas of good parenting vary widely and it is not up to state run institutions to tell families how they should be raising their kids. Sure, they should (and do) look out for things like child abuse and neglect. However the basic day to day activity of parenting is really not any of the state’s flippin’ business.

Sounds alot like the Brown Shirts from 1940 Germany.

I have long wondered why life skills are not taught in schools.

@Dutchess_III Well then that’s their fault. Not the school’s.

Why teach parenting in public schools when we don’t even teach reading, writing and arithmetic in public schools. A better question is why parents aren’t teaching parenting skills. And what makes anyone think the government can teach parenting skills when it can, or won’t, control the kids’ behavior in public schools?

Actually, my experience was that all teachers include life’s skills on a daily bases, however i think it would be a great idea to have a class just on life’s skills. With both parents working today, this would be a good thing.

I have been saying this for years.
Our schools should be a refuge, where after school hours adults can attend cooking classes. Learning proper nutrition habits, particularly how to make you grocery dollar work nutrisiously! (hope thats a word) Checkbook balancing, GED study, and so much more. Plus teach the parent how to help the child. This is a practice that I understand is being tried with much success in Harlem and I hope that it takes off.

It’s time we try a new approach…. how about this, having the government work FOR the people. I seem to have read somewhere where that’s a good thing. No?

I don’t know which school system you are talking about, but in our high school there are several life skill classes, and parenting classes for the teen parents that are students.

Because nobody can agree upon what is good or correct parenting. There is no such thing as common sense, because what one person believes to be fundamentally true and good and correct is what another person deems untrue, irresponsible and wrong. Same thing is true for religion and politics.

At my school, we have weekly “adult literacy” and they learn to balance a checkbook, fill out applications, shop by price and quality, those kind of things. We also offer parenting classes for free through health and human services. These classes are for people who are already parents, but the children are still there for it all, if the parent chooses.

My experience with public and private schools is that they do teach it, but perhaps too young. My children had life skills in middle school, where they had the robotic baby that they carried around, had a “spouse”, income, education level, job, etc. 6th grade was too young for that. I had 4 half years of home ec, in different grades. In addition to sewing, cooking, setting a table, throwing a dinner party, and arrange flowers, we learned how to iron, balance a check book, bake bread, cook a full meal, change a diaper and care for a baby, buy insurance, make doctor’s appointments, buy a car, and arrange a funeral. While home ec is pooh-poohed by a lot of people, that has a lot more relevancy than Calculus, to the average student.

When we had our 20th year high school reunion, they had us fill out these questionaires. One of the questions was, “What do you regret the most about high school?” The top grad, who is a successful surgeon, went to an Ivy League school, and Johns Hopkins, said that he wished he had taken shop in high school, because he loves making reproduction furniture as a hobby, and if he had known how much he loves working with wood, he never would have went to medical school, but would have chosen an entirely different path.

Along with Parenting education should be a requirement to attain a license for procreation. We need a license to drive. We need a license to sell real estate. We need a license to fly a plane. Which one of these is more difficult than raising a well balanced child? Which one is more important to society at large?

Parenting ought to be taught by parents. Besides that, could you imagine the possibilities for indoctrination? * shudder *

@GeorgeGee Why must the question be viewed as all or nothing? Not all decisions are 1/0 style binary computations.

@zenvelo Yes, it certainly would bring out culture wars. But they are going to be fought anyway.

@BoBo1946 I hadn’t gotten to that part yet.

@john65pennington True. I read an excellent rant on a blog recently by a young fellow who had just graduated from high school. He went on at length about how most parents just want schools to be a holding tank to keep their kids off the streets and out of trouble while the parents both are at work. I think we lost a great deal in America when we split up the nuclear family in favor or nomad-ship and 2 parents working.

@lucillelucillelucille Thanks. I hadn’t considered that view. I certainly wouldn’t favor that as a curriculum.

@rts486 Your story has touched my heart. :-)

@BoBo1946 I hear all the naysayers here, and they have valid points. But the simple fact something is difficult is not reason enough to toss the idea aside.

@thekoukoureport Great idea. Now, what is this skill you call checkbook balancing?

@YARNLADY, @janedelila, @BarnacleBill Really? I have never encountered this in my schooling of with any of my three kids growing up.

@Kardamom We manage to muddle through teaching biology despite all the young-earth creationists who insist we should be teaching the Universe is less than 10,000 years old.

@RealEyesRealizeRealLies Excellent point. The most important single thing we do in our lifetime, and most of us are complete novices when we do it.

@ETpro It’s difficult to judge an intangiable, but life’s skills maybe more important than writing, math, and science. After all, without people skills, it’s difficult to have a successful full fullling life. When I was teaching, we spent a lot of time on discussing life’s problems and how to cope with them. But, having said that, you can only donate some much time to that approach as you have to teach the subject matter first and farmost.

With today’s economic environment where both parents have to work, think this would be certainly something to consider. Tough call.

@erichw1504 When I said, “Too many of them (parents) fail miserably,” I wasn’t advocating teaching parenting in schools. I was just making an aside comment.

The schools here do teach life skills.

It’s about time that we do.

I think parenting has changed a lot and I’m not sure if learning at home is sufficient anymore. Back about a century ago, people came from much larger families on average and would observe and help raise their younger siblings. Also, extended families were tighter knit and so if you were the youngest child or came from a smaller family, you could always observe or help raise your nieces and nephews. A third point—our communities were tighter knit so people grew up observing and perhaps helping out with the neighbor kids more often.

Since many of us were raised only children and we’re more isolated in our communities, there are many of us who may have had great parents, but not a whole lot of hands on early parenting experience. When my daughter was born, I had almost no clue what to do with a newborn. I didn’t know how to burp her and I was terrified that she’d spontaneously stop breathing or that I’d somehow “break” her if I didn’t do exactly the right things. I had to learn a lot of stuff at (almost) age 40 that I probably would have learned as young as 10 (helping out siblings or nieces and nephews) a century ago.

I know people are saying there are a lot of different opinions about what constitutes “good parenting”, but to be honest, when they are babies, there really is a whole lot to learn that isn’t up for opinion.

There are lots of basic things you need to know how to do and these days, home isn’t the place it used to be to learn them. Knowing how to change cloth and disposable diapers, how to burp a baby, how to feed a baby with a bottle (even if you breastfeed, you need to know this), how to take a baby’s temperature, how to give them a bath. I could go on and on.

I think many of the people who are arguing about different opinions on parenting are thinking about it as a whole and not the basic mechanics of parenting that almost all parents can agree on.

@keobooks Excellent point. Basic baby care could certainly be taught without a lot of controversy. We’d probably save lots of children’s lives if everybody graduating hogh school knew how important a child safety seat is an how to properly secure one in their car.

The only people I have ever known who could teach the course were my parents.
And I infer from various threads that lots of you would not have approved of my father.
So which one of you experts is going to design the course?

@josie That same thought went through my head. Does parenting include spanking or should they be taught how to teach discipline with hitting their children? There are many different mutually exclusive parenting methods, who decides which ones to include and which ones to leave out.

And let me clarify lest there be a misunderstanding. My parents were great, and my dad, despite the fact that he was hard core, was one of my heroes

Also, for the same reasons that you won’t let religion be taught – except abstractly – in public schools. There’s no consensus.

Because most kids are too immature to take parenting seriously, so it’d be a waste of time, money, and energy to try to teach them. It’s better to teach them when they go to college or university.

@MRSHINYSHOES Perhaps. I tend to doubt it though, based on the coments above by people who did have some such instruction in school and state how it helped them manage adulthood.

@ETpro Most kids make silly jokes about condoms and reproduction, so trying to teach them about parenting? Good luck. Lol. ;)

Trigonometry is used by a very small percentage of the adult population, yet it’s taught.

Sports teams are in NO danger from budget cuts (at least not the fashionable ones like football), and even those few students who excel in them will only be able to play competitively for a few years.

Neither of these sound like a good return on investment, yet they’ve been a staple of public education for years.

6th grade does sound a bit early for things like parenting, but it’s insane to not at least give an overview of what that experience will be like. Isn’t school there to prepare you for adulthood, after all? Besides, maybe with some of the common details of parenthood presented in a classroom setting, there could be fewer boys who think having sex without a condom is “cool”, and fewer girls who think a baby is merely a little dress-up toy of their very own.

I’m not saying I’m down with the state dictating how to raise a child, but face it, parents—you’re not the only one with influence on your kid’s life. The state WILL step in on some level, at some time. So will Madison Avenue, in spades. So will your child’s peers, among many other potential influences. An intelligent student (I’m thinking high-school level here) would able to separate relevant and useful class material from the dross, just like in other classes/ work settings/ relationships. If not, um… maybe they oughta think twice about reproducing at all.

@peridot Thanks. GA.

Shouldn’t we teach the fundamentals of good parenting to all children?

I Say yes. So should psychology, after a certain age.
Even If they all fail the course, which is possible, especially if they find it boring or offending to their ego.
At least though they will somehow keep something in mind, and when the time for them to become parents comes, They will have something in their hands, to make a difference as parents…..And possibly human beings.
Above all though. Schools should be teaching, positive parenting. Because respect to people and positive energy is what this world needs. Not punishment, Just because we feel comfortable and more in control with it, for instance.

@kostaweb Well, not everyone agrees on how to parent. Some people do believe in discipline and having an atmosphere with some fear in the house. I think its a bit too much to think that any one person has the “right” method.

@kostaweb Thanks. GA1

@roundsquare Authoritarians (both authoritarian leaders and authoritarian followers) believe in strong discipline, keeping to ones own kind, and an atmosphere of fear in the home to ensure such segregation. They also happened to be the people behind Nazism, Communism as practices in Russia, China, North Korea, and Cambodia, and the world’s major dictatorships. It seems to me there are some beliefs we can sort through and mark as damaging—not to be taught.