John Langley: Proper role of teachers is to educate, not to parent

Over the past five years I have written and spoken on numerous occasions about the need for a public debate on what the role of our teachers and schools should be.

This concern has been prompted by the relentless increase in demands placed on schools for ensuring things that were once fairly and squarely the responsibility of families and communities.

The recent suggestion that schools should have up to an hour of physical education a day, and that this will somehow curb the relentless march (or should I say lurch) towards obesity, is another in a long line of such demands.

Schools are social institutions and to a large extent it is not possible to precisely separate what should be school learning from anything else that exists in the life of a child.

One of the reasons schools exist is to socialise children beyond the bounds of the family and introduce them into civil society in a systematic way.

However, it seems that schools have been required to take over vastly more than is either fair or reasonable. Some examples readily come to mind.

More and more often, schools and teachers seem to be charged not only with ensuring higher levels of socialisation but, more frequently, with teaching children the most fundamental behaviour, such as following simple instructions, taking turns with others and fundamental manners towards adults and peers.

Teachers and schools are more often charged with identifying and dealing with aberrant behaviour that not only prevents others learning but is, on occasions, a danger.

Teachers and schools 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.

Schools seem to have a major responsibility for teaching our young people about sex and sexuality.

It seems that teachers and schools have to assume responsibility for ensuring that children wear sunscreen and hats or be held accountable if they do not.

And now we have the absurd suggestion that by giving children physical education for an hour a day we will crack the obesity problem.

Any reasonable analysis of such a suggestion exposes its flaws. Contrived exercise of this kind without such things as a balanced diet, more natural exercise and activity and engaging in other community endeavours, such as sports, will make not one iota of difference.

What point is there in children doing physical exercise for an hour a day if they then retreat into a regular diet of junk food, video games and inactivity?

Not to mention the billions that fast-food conglomerates spend a year trying to entice children and young people to survive on their products.

Is some responsibility to be put back where it belongs, to families to monitor and take responsibility for what their children eat and to educate them towards their attitude to food?

How about a fat tax on families where members creep over a certain weight? I doubt it, even though it's no sillier than the exercise idea.

All of this is simply too hard because it requires the problem to be addressed by those who are truly responsible. Much easier to dump the whole thing on teachers and schools and blame them if something goes wrong.

The wider question, though, is who is primarily responsible and for what?

We are also asking our schools to take over aspects of the lives of children that have traditionally been, and must continue to be, the primary responsibilities of families.

Schools do have a role in supporting families. Good schools and teachers have always worked with families and parents in this regard. But it is not their primary role.

It is also not to say that physical education is unimportant. It is a fundamental part of any decent curriculum.

But it should not be used as a cheap means of fixing a problem whose causes and solutions lie elsewhere.

The job of a teacher and a school is potentially infinite. More and more can be added.

As a teacher educator this is a major worry, because we run the risk of teaching our children and young people less - and less about more and more - if is expected that we must assume the mantle that parents and communities have traditionally had.

It is time for some sense and clarity in this debate. It is neither possible nor desirable for our teachers and schools to become all things to all people.

* Dr John Langley is dean of education at the University of Auckland.