Parents are failing their kids, and our teachers

When children are showing up to school unable to tie their shoelaces or sit at their desks you know something has gone terribly wrong at home, writes Kylie Lang.

Five-year-olds are fronting up to school unable to do age-appropriate tasks such as open a lunch box, tie a shoelace or read their name.

Some have such poor speech it’s as if English is their second language when it’s their first.

As for sitting up at a desk, forget it. Kids lack core strength due to spending too much time lying around watching TV or slumping over iPads instead of climbing trees.

However, it is overly simplistic to blame technology for rendering kids shockingly unprepared for the classroom. Parents are shirking their responsibilities in a sorry scenario that is getting worse.

Andrew Oberthur has been in primary teaching for 30 years, including 17 as a principal, 10 of them at Our Lady of the Rosary Catholic school in Kenmore.

He is alarmed by what he sees on a regular basis, and I don’t blame him.

Kenmore is regarded as one of Brisbane’s “better” suburbs. A quick Census check reveals 44.9 per cent of residents over 15 hold university degrees, compared with the Queensland average of 18.3 per cent. Four in 10 are “professionals”, double the state average.

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By those figures, you could reasonably assume that people in this “leafy western suburb” value education at least moderately higher than many other places. So how must kids elsewhere be faring?

Mr Oberthur, a 50-year-old father of two teenagers, has taken leave from work to write his first book, Are You Ready for Primary School This Year?

Don’t be misled by the title. It’s as much for parents as it is for children.

Children are starting school hopelessly underprepared. Picture: iStock

In the final term of 2018, Our Lady of the Rosary ran a “prep readiness program”, giving parents three months to get their young charges up to speed in four critical areas: speech and language, fine and gross motor skills, independence skills and social skills.

“We ask them to play games at home, to get kids outside to climb a tree to build their core strength — more green time, less screen time — and to read to them at night.

“If kids are put in front of iPads as a babysitting tool, they will not have to think for themselves, just absorb, but if they’re playing ‘I Spy’, they are using language all the time as well as their imagination.”

It’s not hard to understand Mr Oberthur’s frustrations with a profession he went into for life.

“If you ask a young teacher how long they reckon they’ll be teaching, they say a few years, because the burnout rate is so high.”

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What’s more, there is a gaping gender divide, discouraging men from taking on the job.

“Females can get away with things men can’t, no matter what the codes of conduct say,” he admits.

“A female prep or grade one teacher can comfort a kid by wrapping their arms around them or having them sit on their lap, but if a male teacher did that it would be unacceptable,” he says.

“If a student was to come up and hug me, the best I could do is stand still then give them a pat on the back, that’s the way it is these days.”

No one is denying the horrific offences that some educators, including clergy, have carried out on innocents, but it is also fair to say — and I’ve heard this from many a good male teacher — that the fallout has cast an unfair pall over men in general.

Some kids are now starting school unable to sit up at their desks. Picture: iStock

Mr Oberthur believes it’s time to bring parents and teachers together, to improve mutual respect and understanding and, rightly enough, the educational journey of young people.

Australia has a lot of catching up to do, with literacy and numeracy skills slipping in global rankings.

“If parents are asked to get uniforms organised, help with homework tasks and get their kids to school on time, then they should do it,” he says.

“They should let teachers get on with the job of teaching the curriculum.”

Educators are being lumped with an ever-increasing list of demands, from “teaching kids how to swim to sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll”.

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Add to the list the latest task of policing mobile phone use, which I wrote about earlier this week. Several schools have banned phones and iPads during break times to encourage children to have “meaningful conversations” and build positive relationships.

Shouldn’t this be the parents’ job, to enforce — and model — responsible use of technology, and to be across what their kids are accessing online?

Mr Oberthur says mums and dads must take a more mature approach.

He suggests three questions they can ask a teacher to diffuse tensions if there is an issue with their child: Help me understand what happened today? What is the school’s policy on …? How can we work together for the benefit of my child?

I’d like to think most parents are capable of such a rational approach, but when so many are offloading basics like teaching a child to tie shoelaces, I’m not at all sure.

Kylie Lang is a Courier-Mail associate editor.

@kylie_lang