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Poland's John Paul the Great canonisation this year [177]
school systems need big, deep changes. And parents do not always do
Just let's forget your negative view of the Church for the sake of disucssion for a moment and focus on consensus and the situation in the US before things began disintegrating.
Round the upbringing of the young the school, Church, parents and the poltical establishment worked together and shared essentially the same values which were inculcated in children. That educational unity fostered such tratis as honesty, decency, respect and the Golden Rule. Over time, the entities that had once worked togetehr became warring rivals, each with their own disintct priorities to the detriment of children and society as a whole.
A salient example was when a parent was called in to school over a child's behaviour or grades, the parent would try to see how to work with the teacher to remedy the situation and the child could expect to be punished (grounded, lose pocket money, etc.).
At present, the parent often attacks to teacher for picking on his/her darling little 'brat'. That makes teachers less inclined to discipline unruly pupils, and instils in the child a sense of impunity, that he can get away with murder.
Does that mean that today's parents support their children better than one or two generations ago? It may seem so. In actuality parents rarely really devote much time to actual child-rearing, to discussing things heart-to-heart , impressing on them ideals and sharing values. Parent-child interaction often amounts to little more than buying kids pricey toys, clothes and gadgets and driving them to sport practice, riding school, language lessons, etc. The parents delude themselves with the feel-good impression they are doing their job, whilst for lack of guidance the kid begins taking his cues from advertisers, the entertainment industry and the 'street' (peer groups).
