When driving home today, I heard a piece on the radio about stress in school students. The piece was on a study done by the University of Melbourne, and it (rightly) said that both high school and primary students regularly suffered from stress, and a reasonable proportion (20 – 
30%) had difficulty controlling emotions and dealing with things like pressure from themselves, parents, teachers to do well. Social issues, disputes between friends and family issues – that is, normal teenage stuff – just compounded the problem. The study highlighted that children didn’t have the tools to deal with these emotions, and that stress management should be taught in schools.
I certainly agree with the findings about stress levels of kids. As a teacher, I see kids every day who are stressed about a multitude of things, and often all at the same time. Many students don’t have the skills to manage stresses, and they certainly need to learn ways to control these.
However, as good as this idea seems, I would like to draw attention to a few things. Teachers are expected to do things by many people (not that this in itself is a problem). State politicians, federal politicians, parents, community members like those from the medical profession, police, institutions with which schools are affiliated such as churches and wider community members all have expectations of what should be taught in schools, how often, in what manner and by whom. Like I said, this in itself is not a problem – schools are educating our most precious resource, of course many should have a say in what goes on.
It seems whenever there is a problem in society, often the way to fix it seems to be to do an education program in schools. Schools are expected to teach students about sun safety, road safety, healthy eating, time management, healthy exercise habits, drugs and alcohol harm minimisation, financial management, safe and defensive driving procedures, safe conduct at Schoolies Week, reproductive health, citizenship, preventing STDs and unplanned pregnancy and a multitude of other things, depending on who’s in government or what study has just been completed. Many schools have developed relationship building programs in response to requests from parents.
Both State and Federal governments make regulations as to how many hours must be spent in the classroom or doing particular activities such as literacy or Languages Other Than English. The sector with which the school is affiliated (eg state education department, church body etc) also specifies requirements.
Whilst I am not for a moment saying that these things are unimportant or that they shouldn’t be addressed, I would like to ask – what is the purpose of schooling?
Every moment of class time spent on healthy eating, or on a visit from a guest speaker about road safety, or teaching children about emotional health is a moment which is not spent on something else. And the things which get pushed aside? Less time on maths. Less time on spelling. Less time on history. Less time on grammar. Less time on PE. Less time on languages. Less time on the stuff which kids are suppose to go to school for – learning school stuff.
I get very frustrated when the same people who call for all this extra stuff to be done in schools are the same people who decry that our children can’t spell or do maths.
There are only so many minutes in a school day, only so many days in the year, and only so many years in a student’s school life. By all means, advocate for what you think is important to be taught in schools. However, remember that for every new thing which is added, something else is pushed out of the way. So, don’t just ask yourself is something is important enough to be taught in school. Ask yourself – is this important enough to make something else get left out?
(October 2007) (
