Parents have far more control over children than schools and through the late 20th century parents had a significant role in changing how children are treated. For some reason parents have decided to treat teens like full adults when it is in kids selfish interest by giving them “rights”, “choices”, and “freedoms”, but then they treat teens like innocent kids when it comes to responsibilities, entitlements and excuses for their actions. School teachers have fought this trend for a generation as the resulting classroom management problems have increasingly taken away from quality education time.

I’m not arguing that the schools are exempt from blame. I am just pointing out that there is a troublesome cultural phenomenon which the schools are reflecting and they have become the easiest target for blame from people who want to over simplify problems with children.

We also need to remember that teens ARE kids and their brains are far from done developing to a point where they think like true adults. Brain research has shown that human brains are not done developing until around the age of 25. Sure, parents should give these kids more adult like responsibilities and a high school education is only good for most kids, not all (it is unfortunate that there is a decreasing number of schools with strong “career centers” for vocational studies).

When it comes to problems like teen sex, blaming schools is like blaming the judicial system for crime. They certainly have an influence, but the laws and family values are written elsewhere.

The kids who are least likely to have problems in areas like teen sex are those who have parents that are involved with their lives, parents that set up clear rules, parents that follow through with consequences for breaking those rules, and yes, parents that give their teen children responsibilities and jobs that will keep them too busy to get into trouble while teaching them useful skills for adulthood.

I didn’t realize that Glenn Reynolds was so smart. I’ll have to read him more often.

School has less to do with education than it does with providing free babysitting for working parents and lots of job security for union teachers and school administrators.