whose job is it to make sure they are emotionally ok?

[justacigar]

Just wanted to hear people's opinions on the role of pshe in schools - do you think teachers have a duty to help children become happy, functional young people, or is that strictly the parents' domain? I'm not a media request in disguise - I've just noticed how little my dd's teacher knows her :she's 6 and in a class of 30. She is at school for 30 hours/week but they seem to spend very little time building their class community, apart from facile "we don't bully in this class" kind of stuff. bearing in mind how important "emotional intelligence" has been found to be as an indicator of future success, I would have thought this would be just as important as learning to read. thoughts?

so, all these v interesting comments beg the question -
what are schools for (should they be for, in your opinion)
and what are parents for? (should they be for)
I think custy you have been very clear - I disagree with you almost entirely, but I can see where you are coming from.

I think that parents should raise their kids in the best way they can, to have the behavioural norms that they see fit. The parents love them, feed cloth and house them. Urge them on, encourage them and nurture them.

When they get to school they learn other stuff.

Granted in Primary there is more of an overlap, but as far as I am concerned my job is to make sure the kids I teach learn science. They also learn literacy and numeracy, some cross curricular stuff, and quite a degree of how to behave. But first of all my job is to teach them science.

Only read last few posts but as per usual, I agree with Custy and MB! every word of it!

I don't see how anyone who says it is solely the parent's job to help children become happy functional young people, can then say that it's OK to put 3 month-old babies in nursery. If parents are the only ones responsible for emotional intelligence, where do other childcarers, aunts, cousins, grandparents etc. come in?

And where does that fit in with "It takes a village to raise a child", or is that something people don't believe in or feel is desirable or healthy?

obviously there is an effect of the family, friends, if yu are looking for a nursery you are not looking for academic education but a nurturing environemnt. So parent who send their children to a cm or a nursery are getting the emotionl security via a different route

By the time you get to secondary school you have to make sure that here is nothing in the environmnet that will damage the child or prevent them learning....they need to settle well etc, not be bullied etc. No one can learn if unhappy

I have an effect in as much as I hope to be a good role model. I model those behaviours i want to see and expect good standards of behaviour in my lab. But my job is to teach them science.

I can see that if parents cannot (often for understandable reasons) raise their children to be emotionaly secure, and then schools do have to fill in. But I don't think it is their primary responsibility.....at least not in Secondary

Good point actually Calig.

I totally respect your POV Custardo but I still disagree.

MB, of course your job is to teach them science but that doesn't mean there shouldn't be room in the week for citizenship. I feel that the rights=responsibilities concept is quite important to teenagers and as Nooka said, often these skills are best learned alonside our peers.

I strongly believe that a large part of my job, as a primary teacher, is pastoral care. As I posted earlier, this isn't just about discrete lessons it's intergrated into the whole curriculum as well as being a 10min adhoc session following a playtime incident.

It is absolutely first and foremost a parents duty to impart morals, values and social skills in a child. However, without sounding trite, we as society must share a collective responsibility to make sure this is happening.

Didn't mean that to sound so stern!

not at all

I have no issue with citizenship being taught in school, but I was ssimply making the point that in a very over loaded curriculm, I don't have time to teach in in science lessons....there are odd areas wher it crops up, GM, HGP, but asside from that I have my work cut out getting through the GCSE work.

I think the debate show the huge difference betwen primary and secondary school teachers. I teach secondary school too (well, used to, until this summer), and I definitely do not see it as part of my job. Like MB, I see my job as teaching my subject, and given that I used to see 300 kids a week for an hour at a time, I do not see where I'd get the chance to fit in developing them emotionally, when even knowing their names was a struggle at times!!

At primary though, having one teacher all the time, and given that the children are that much younger, probably means that there is more scope for it.

PSHE is not the answer. I used to teach it, and for my sins, even used to manage the subject... but the danger is that it is taught either by non specialists who know the kids, but are not fully equipped to teach it properly, or it is taught by specialists who are good at what they teach, but do not know the kids as they only see them for an hour a week. I have seen both systems in operation, and I have to say that we have to think what are we really trying to get out of PSHE. At the mo it is a mish mash of all other subjects, and I'm not convinced that it really works... I think we need to totally go back to the drawing board on this one and rethink perhaps the discreet curriculum, rather than adding another thing onto an already awkward scheme of work.

However, like other secondary teachers, I think the basics should be there, and it should be expected to be taught by parents, and not seen as another thing I can add in to my already massive list of things to do!

This is an interesting debate! We do work in the ei field and i am currently reading how to raise a child with high EQ by lawrence shapiro. i would have to say that based on what I have read there is a role for teachers as EQ involves things like problem solving but if the parents arent engaged they dont much chance of making a meaningful difference. There is quite a focus on PHSE in our kids school particularly in the early years and expectations for positve behavior are high from teachers and parents. As a result even the smallest have an understanding school values and positive behaviours and most are pretty well behaved

We're all wondering how we're going to fit in a MFL (probably French) when it becomes statutory in 2010!

I'm sure we can do away with something less fashionable which we can rotate back in in 10yrs time!

I think that if you want to make a difference with EI better start in reception when children are forming their patterns of social behavior. By the time they reach secondary school this is much harder to teach

I think that there is a huge difference between what you might wish to instill throughout primary school - and I would be horrified if it wasn't there, indeed I think it much more important than academic stuff, at least in the early years, and what teaching might be appropriate in secondary school. I would not be happy for the science teacher to be teaching my children about relationships (we had sex education from our biology teacher, and it was laughable!), but I do think that there should be time in the curriculum for children to express theirselves, and talk about how it is to grow into an adult, and how to cope with puberty etc. This should be done by someone who knows how to do it well, the same way we have specialists in other areas. As far as time in the curriculum, our local secondary schools appear to finish at 2.30. Our primary school finishes at 3.15 fgs! I had school until 4pm - if our local schools ran until then they would have an extra 7.5 hours for all sorts of subjects, time when I wonder just what some of those children are up to (maybe this is when the buses and everything else gets vandalised?)

yup, for sure, mb, by secondary stage the system and your training is totally geared toward teaching your subject/trying not to drown in paperwork. I think also the size of some secondary schools predicates against good EI teaching. If the head doesn't/can't know all the kids' names, how can the school have good ei practice? Still at the 18 month waiting list for anger management. That is totally risible................ But the question came out of my own experience with my kids, and I was thinking of earlier in their school careers, like nooka and homemama - just because mine are younger - in fact my eldest dd is coming up to the "threshold" age of 7, which is scaring me a bit as apparently after that it's much harder to instil good behaviour in them, and at the moment we are a family of screaming drama queens, my goodself above all. Homemama your school sounds great, where is it? I want to move house....