Rants, it's Custy's idea to have compulsory parenting classes for adults not mine. I agree with your points above.
Juule
'Your lack of confidence in being able to teach your own primary age children is quite sad. I don't have all your qualifications but I know that I can at least help my children attain what they need to know by the end of ks2. (and that isn't big-headedness, I'm just not indulging in false modesty).'
I think you're kind of missing my point and also attacking me and my parenting without knowing me or anything about my parenting. I am a very confident parent and very confident teacher thanks. I just would not presume to think I can replace the teaching and experience which my kids get at school from teachers and peers who have different, diverse and many skills and approaches and ways of motivating kids than I have. Anyone who can't or won't say this is desperately big-headed or has got their kids in the wrong school.
So to repeat my point, I can and do read to my kids and have from birth. I am better qualified than my kids' teachers in my subject. I have fostered a love in reading in my kids from birth. However, I do not have 20+ years experience in teaching young children to read. I teach 6th form and was trained and started teaching at secondary level. Nor can I re-create in my home the dynamics which go on in a classroom where a teacher (who has a very different job from that of a parent) and teaching assistants are encouraging children of the same age to learn to read. Nor would I want to. Nor, more importantly, would my kids want me to.
I support and expand on and provide the foundation for the learning that takes place at school for my kids but I am not their teacher. I am their mother.
If you and Custy feel that the 'education system' is interfering in family life I think you need to recognize that this is a personal opinion which is not shared by parents or families generally. You wouldn't believe how many parents have asked me and my colleagues for MORE help often more than we are able to give.
Custy, as far as your approach goes. What I understand is that you think Sure Start, Health Visitors, Parentlien, free parenting classes, courses offered by FE colleges, infor on healthy eating etc given by NHS to pregnant women, ante-natal classes, post-natal classes, free nursery education, midwives, parenting advice and contracetpion and health eating lessons in school, PSHE etc etc are inadqueate at supporting parents. You think there should be more investment in parents and parenting. And the one thing that you have suggested to better what is already there and which would mean we could stop teaching PSHE and sex ed and giving vaccinations in school and eye tests (even though as Martina pointed out you can be the best paretnes in the world and still not notice that your child is short-sighted)???
Compulsory parenting classes when people have already become parents???
Is this really the best you can do? And please tell me how these would work? At wha point would you attend them (before your child is born - I thought this was called ante-natal classes? When they are 1? Before you get pregnant i.e. when you're at school or university?)? how many would you go to? And who would look after your kids?? And what would these classes consist of? And who would teach them?
Do you think perhaps the classes on cooking might be a little bit redundant for Jamie Oliver? Do you think that perhaps Tany Byron may not benefit from classes on children's behavioru? Do you think my DP would benefit from classes on managing teenage behaviour when he works in a school for kids with severe emotioanl and behavioural difficulties and has regular training on this? Is it perhaps that you feel you need parenting classes? Or is it that that kind of information and education should be taught as part of the school's curriculum when kids are in school and then targeted to those parents who need it (through HEalth Visiotrs, midwives, Home Start, Parentline etc etc)?