Do we know what the role of the school should be in our contemporary society? One hundred years ago the answer to this question was relatively simple. A high school diploma meant that the graduate was proficient in basic academic subjects and ready for the workplace. Today schools are facing many complex issues and parents are frustrated. While it may be easy to blame the school district's policies or funding, we should be asking the broader question of what we should expect our children to get from their education. Not only that, we should also examine who should be teaching some of life's lessons to our children.

Right now it seems that the school systems are expected to teach our children everything and the schools are expected to turn out a well-rounded child. All concerned seem to blame the schools for any failure in this enormous task. Is this really a fair indictment of the school system? Shouldn't parents return to a more active role in educating children? Is there a role required of other segments of society besides the schools? Perhaps we need to examine where the responsibility needs to be placed.

As our population increases, the expectations for school also increase. Also, as culture changes the family structure, society expects schools to teach students more than the basic reading, writing, and arithmetic. Society wants a well-rounded student who can contribute to everyday life and the working world. As result, curriculum includes so many vast topics that teachers have little time to absorb what is expected of them. If teachers are having this much trouble, imagine the frustration level of the students who have to properly soak up in this much information in such little time. You have to stop and ask yourself the value of these expectations. Can the ability of teachers to cover every topic and handle every type of student really going to make the student contribute so much more to society? These are definitely lofty goals for our educators and students. Perhaps these duties should be passed back to others who participate in the child's life.

Education transcends the classroom. Not all topics lend themselves to classroom instruction. Many of life's lessons are learned outside of a structured environment. Parents should not expect the schools to teach all of life's lessons. For example, schools have discovered that if children do not have a stable and loving home, attempts to teach respect and acceptance are not successful.

The role of a student is to learn. However, a student can absorb only so much information during school hours before he feels overloaded and shuts down. Techniques for teaching all this information aren't always effective or up-to-date. The school system is so bogged down with demands from every side that by the time new educational techniques pass through this system, the techniques are sometimes decades behind.

As the saying goes, it takes a nation to raise a child. This does not infer it takes a nation's school to teach a child everything about the world. The role of school can greatly increase a student's outlook on life and ability to achieve; however, without participation from parents and society, the child is not going to have the ability to be truly well rounded.

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