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Surely it's both? The schools have control over the children 8h a day, time during which they interact with their peers. This is very likely the most important part of the day for socialisation and a part that the parents can't really influence much.
Of course the parents play an important role but so does the school. It's a collective responsibility.
This makes a lot of sense - if the children are at school most of the day, then the school has to be an ally in making sure they turn out properly. Traditional English schools (Eton, Winchester, Westminster) have always seen it as their responsibility to build character. It does result in a certain level of conformity of course.
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No, and don't call me Shirley.
As a parent your kids are ultimately your responsibility, your investment in the future of humanity. No one else can be expected to care more about thier future/individual well-being than you.
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I'd say that the school's responsibility is subservient to the parents' responsibility. The parents have a sort of "natural" responsibility over the child, in part due to being the ones to voluntarily create the child and to keep the child. As such, it's the parent's responsibility to actually check if the school is doing a decent enough job at raising their child during the 8 hours a day the child is there and, if not, to correct it in some way, whether that be changing schools, changing the way the school treats the child, making up at home for the school's failures, etc. It's like how some company's R&D department might be the responsibility of the vice president in charge of that or whatever, but it's ultimately the CEO's responsibility to make sure that the company has a system in place to hire a competent person for that role and to make sure that that person is performing that role competently, and so any failure of the R&D department is ultimately due to a failure of the CEO.
After all, parents also tend to have much more skin in the game for the child than the school, since the child doesn't stop being their child once they graduate, though the child does stop being the school's student. And generally, the relationship between the child and parent tends to be more sustained in the long term than the relationship between the child and the school he went to when he was a child. So from a purely selfish, narcissistic perspective, a parent would want to consider himself the responsible party, since if the school fails in raising the child right, the negative consequences fall more on the parent than on the school.
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No, when you're a parent the buck stops with you. The school can be your ally in raising your kids, but they are not the responsible party.
There are multiple responsible parties. The parents are the primary responsible party but the school is another.
I disagree. The parents are the only responsible party when it comes to raising the kid. The school is responsible for education, but they don't bear responsibility if the kid turns out to be a drug dealer or something.
To some degree this is cultural, and the vehemence here on both sides can be attributed to cultural assumptions.
In Japan the school is very much (I was going to put a percent on it but that would be pushing it) charged with raising the children. If you see a kid out in the world pulling some jackass stunt, the question "What is your school and who is your home teacher?" is enough to chill their veins. You don't ask "Who's your dad?"
Enculturation in the Japanese sense cannot occur outside the context of the group, so it is within the group (i.e. the school group[s]) that this process occurs, year by year, from a very very young age.
To some degree this is how one can understand the term "bullying" in Japan. There are of course exceptions, but bullying here is largely when you have a kid who for whatever reason just doesn't toe the line after years of having the rules dinned into his or her brain. (There could of course be all sorts of reasons for this.) So you have an entire class, not just one punk, turning against a student. Bullying here is not one monster terrorizing a class, but a class "terrorizing" one individual.
Teachers here, in particular in primary and secondary education, for the most part (of course I am writing generally) take the job of raising the children (子どもを育てる) as an explicit part of their jobs. In the cases of troubled students (think fighting in school, but also just basic withdrawal) meetings are held, and there is a great deal of discussion and handwringing, often in absurd ways and resulting in very odd strategies. If a kid makes up his or her mind to just rebel, schools will eventually go through with expulsion. And compulsory education only lasts through age 15, or the first year or so of high school.
I've probably overwritten this. I am aware it's different in the US, where people have specific ideas of parenting, self-expression, individuality, and personal choice.
It seems relevant that in the UK you have different classes for each subject whereas AFAIK in Japan you’re with the same group all day every day.
I think, anyway, my memories of school are faded.
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School might not be directly liable for long term consequences like someone eventually becoming a drug dealer but they are legally responsible and liable for most of what happens in school, extending far beyond just education.
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