Teachers or Parents: Who is responsible for raising the next generation?
Today marks the release of a new report I have written, published by the think tank Civitas. In Teachers or Parents: Who is responsible for raising the next generation? I explore the problems with socialising children when the roles and responsibilities of parents and teachers become increasingly blurred.
In a foreword to the report, Miriam Cates writes:
This excellent and timely report articulates why the raising of children has become so highly contested in the United Kingdom.
It used to be widely accepted that parents had authority over their children. Mothers and fathers were responsible for their children’s physical safety, for feeding, clothing, and sheltering their offspring, and raising them with a moral and spiritual foundation according to their own beliefs and traditions. Schools existed to teach children to read, write, and add up, and to impart the skills and knowledge that they would require for adult life.
Anyone who has set foot in a British secondary school recently will have observed that the remit of our education system has expanded far beyond teaching the ‘three Rs’. From ‘diversity week’, assemblies encouraging climate action, or adverts for the lunchtime LGBTQ+ club, British schools have become increasingly concerned with promoting social action to children.
As the report attests, in addition to their academic responsibilities, schools have always played an important role in ‘socialising’ children to prepare them for adult life. We take for granted that through their school experience, children will learn important virtues and ‘soft skills’ such as patience, tolerance, hard work, self-control, and how to work collaboratively with others.
But as this report so clearly sets out, over the last decade or two there has been a concerning ‘mission creep’ in many schools: responsibility for socialising children has morphed into a determination to drive social, moral, and even sexual change, often against the wishes and values of parents and the wider public. Many parents are concerned that teachers are undermining their right to raise their children as they wish, and teachers feel unsupported in their role by parents.
Read my introduction here, and the full report by following the link to Civitas below.
What happens in schools rarely stays within the classroom. Today, everything from the content of the curriculum, topics for assemblies, dress codes and behaviour policies, to the food served at lunchtime, is subject to public scutiny. Sometimes individual schools are thrust into the spotlight. In February 2024, Michaela School in North London hit the headlines after prayer rituals were banned and a muslim pupil sued for discrimination. Sometimes one issue prompts national debate, such as how schools respond to children confused about their gender. Many of these disputes share a common cause: tension between the rights of parents and the responsibilities of teachers.
Schools and teaching unions berate parents for failing to prepare children for school. Recent complaints have focused upon children starting school still wearing nappies; parents sending children to school with poor quality lunches; children not knowing how to use a knife and fork; or how to behave appropriately in a classroom. At the same time, parents express alarm about teachers overstepping their role. There was, until recently, significant concern at schools allowing children to change gender without their parents’ knowledge; using sexually inappropriate resources in Relationships and Sex Education classes;, and using the classroom to teach contested political ideas grounded in critical race theory or gender ideology.Â
Once, the division of labour between school and home seemed clear. Parents were responsible for their children’s physical, emotional and moral wellbeing while teachers were responsible for education. Yet, as we discuss in Section Two, schools have always provided an element of moral instruction and socialisation alongside teaching subject knowledge. By the same token, in providing food at lunchtime and lessons in personal hygiene or domestic science, schools compensated for the presumed inadequacies of some homes. Informally, some teachers no doubt went further in giving food or clean clothes to disadvantaged pupils, just as some parents buy books, hire private tutors and encourage children in extra study. Such instances rarely trigger disputes within a context of broad agreement among adults about the values and attitudes to be instilled in children and a general consensus about the role each member of a community plays in helping to raise the next generation.
This report explores how this consensus broke down. Over recent decades, the roles of parent and teacher have become increasingly blurred. Schools now promote adherence to beliefs that are more overtly political in nature. Lessons about gender, sexuality and race can run directly counter to the views of parents. Rather than teachers and parents working towards shared goals, parents come to be considered an obstacle to children developing ‘correct’ moral and political values. This sets up hostility between school and home which can spill over into blame and, in extreme cases, protests outside school gates. Parents are deemed inadequate while teachers stand accused of interfering.
Disputes between school and home speak not just to a lack of clarity about what it means to raise the next generation but also to a profound lack of trust between adults in the present. As we argue throughout this report, disputes between teachers and parents undermine collective adult authority in the eyes of children and prompt a crisis in socialisation - the routine ways in which a new generation is introduced to the norms and values of the existing world. This has a detrimental impact on both education and home life. Here, we consider why there has been a blurring of the boundaries between school and home, what form this takes and what, if anything, can be done to rescue both education and the paramountcy of the parent/child relationship.