Busy parents rely on schools to teach their children morals

‘Beleaguered parents need us to provide wrap-around care’:

BRITAIN: Working parents are relying on schools to teach children about morals because they are too busy to do it themselves, a teachers’ leader claimed yesterday. Andy Waters, chairman of the Society of Heads, said schools were increasingly required to act as ‘moral arbiters for children’s upbringing’.

He said ‘beleaguered’ working parents depended on schools to look after their children from dawn until dusk, including providing them with breakfasts and evening meals. But Waters, who runs Kingsley School, an independent Methodist school in Bideford, Devon, cautioned fellow heads against criticising ‘lacklustre’ parenting. He said it was important to support parents, many of whom were working to help pay school fees.

He said, ‘If our role is not to support the children from such families, then what is it?’ Paraphrasing a 20th-century U.S. religious leader, William Boetcker, he said: ‘You cannot help little men (the children) by tearing down big men (the parents) – we are all in this together.’ His comments came amid evidence that growing numbers of parents are sending young children to boarding schools because they are cheaper than hiring a full-time nanny.

He said it came as ‘more and more responsibility falls on schools to be the moral arbiters for children’s upbringing, and our often beleaguered parents need us to provide wrap-around care, breakfasts and evening meals, homework clubs and extra-curricular activities so that they can work the hours needed to earn the wherewithal to pay school fees’.

AFP