Should my child have learnt what I refer to as essential life skills at school?

[SunriseSunsetFullMoon]

like resilience and emotional intelligence?
Situations that arise out in the public domain (educational establishments) that lead to confrontation or bullying or disappointment - is it all my responsibility as a parent to solely educate my child, or should the schools be doing it in the classes?
Some educators see what's happening and appear to choose to ignore the situation, and missing an opportunity to teach better behavior as well as incurring the consequences of ones actions. Or is that just to hard a job for them? And if it is - why?

AIBU to expect immediate consequences for behavior that creates fear or annoyance in others?

Has your child learnt how to critically think through situations - not to rebel, but be responsible and making informed choices. I can only do so much from my point of reference - surely the education system has more to offer than what I can see and have experienced with my child.

Would be interested in your thoughts and experiences.

Schools are there to teach reading/writing etc.
It is parent responsibility to teach everything else.

The complete lack of parental accountability and farming everything about child rearing out to the state is a sad indictment of our society and it won't end up well.

Your child, your job to teach life skills. At school it should be about learning the curriculum.

Schools are there to educate on book smarts. Everything else is your job as a parent.

YANBU to expect school to implement consequences for poor behaviour.

YAB hugely U to expect school to teach children resilience, emotional intelligence and to a degree, critical thinking. That’s on you as a parent.

A good school will help develop those skills.
So will a good parent.

sad to say but I think that ship has already sailed……. we’re already seeing the consequences right now!

I would expect that to be my job

True but current government are expediating the process further

Surely you can deal with confrontation, bullying, or disappointment at home with things like dealing with others at soft play or play dates with sharing or waiting turns or seeing others with a snack you’d rather have

Those are emotional skills and should be taught in the home.

It's nearly all down to you as a parent. With that caveat, a teacher should be creating a positive classroom environment where confrontation and bullying are not tolerated and where positive examples of behaviour, conflict management, disappointment etc are shown by the teacher. But if parents don't do their part then a classroom teacher isn't going to be able manage that whole task on behalf of every child they teach.

Resilience and emotional intelligence can be encouraged in a child by a parent all through their childhood. It's not something you can just teach and learn like a maths equation when at school.

You need to encourage and teach them so they know how to handle difficult situations at school or anywhere else. If something happens and they handle it poorly then you talk through how they could handle it differently next time. Emotional intelligence is highly teachable. Resilience though is in part genetic, some children will naturally be more resilient than others.

I can't tell though if this is really about kids learning to be resilient or if it's really about something specific that has happened with your child?

It's your job. Schools will encourage and supplement, but they can't start from nothing and give you a child who can do everything you've not bothered with on top of teaching them academically.

I'd be interested to hear what you think 'teaching emotional intelligence' looks like to a group of 34 children.

Why be a parent if you want to pass the responsibility of parenting to somebody else? Somebody who has likely gone into teaching because they enjoy/are good at a particular subject? I'm an English teacher, I know a reasonable amount about literature and language. I try my best to build resilience when pupils find Shakespeare tough and like to think I have quite high expectations.

Don't blame me when your kid is a brat who can't hold down a job, though. You won't have many teachers left if that too becomes their responsibility.

Is it 'too hard a job' for teachers No, of course not. That's not the issue. These things are taught explicitly as part of Personal Development and implicitly as part of general behaviour management and teaching in every lesson in every school. You are perhaps making the mistake of believing that if schools teach something, kids always listen, remember and apply it. And also that all teachers are equally effective at delivering this kind of behavioural education. In all jobs there are people who aren't that great! That doesn't remotely mean that schools aren't teaching this stuff.

Schools and teachers can only do so much - and that’s a good thing.Yes they shouldn’t ignore bad behaviour but I am not a fan of mission creep within the education system. I do not want schools to be the ultimate arbiters of right and wrong; it is my job as a parent to set my children’s moral compass.

I hate this idea that schools should be fixing all social ills - teachers do not have the skills or training to do this - they are not psychologists, doctors, fire safety instructors, social media experts, lawyers, swim coaches, etc… Let them do their jobs and we, as parents, should do ours.

Yes it’s your sole responsibility. HTH.

Schools do teach critical thinking, in all humanities subjects - it's literally on the English GCSE mark scheme. Resilience and how to understand and manage emotions are already on the curriculum in PSHCE/Citizenship/Life Skills or whatever your school may call it. Do people who say this stuff ever think to check what schools are actually doing before they complain about it?

It's the responsibility of the parents. Resilience and emotional intelligence begins in early infancy, this is really not the job of teachers.

Parents of brats think it’s school.

So if I was teaching in a 60 minute class of 30, where I've got 2 mins max per pupil (if I never spoke to the class as a whole at all in that hour, which is extremely unlikely) when do I have the time to have these deep and meaningful "learning opportunities" and discussions with every kid along with everything else I'm already doing?

If schools teach skills such as critical thinking and managing emotions then children and young people need practice to master those skills. Surely at least some of those opportunities will be at home, guided by parents?

It's both really, certainly not one or the other. There will always be parents who have social problems no matter what, so the school need to teach it aswell. By accepting it is both school's and parent's responsibility one can't offload the responsibility on to the other.

Are you a journalist?

First answer nails it!