Give me a child until he is 7 . . .

Jaxjacky

Sago I though the quote was ‘..and I will show you the man’.
My brother went to a Jesuit school.

Indeed.
It is important to get it right especially when basing an argument on a quotation.

...^But perhaps try to keep to the values of the country is a good place to start^
Maybe, ilovecheese but does it depend on the country?

Sago

St Iganatius Loyola founder of the Jesuit brotherhood was way ahead of his time when he spoke these words, the first 7 years of a child’s development are the most important.
What is a little sinister though is the fact that Loyala’s words were apparently, “ Give me the boy from the age of 7 and he’s mine for life”

I think it was "give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man", same meaning. I think it resonates with Catholics particularly because of the difficulty of shaking off Catholic guilt.

As long as there are religious schools I think it is too hard to say what is acceptable to teach. But perhaps try to keep to the values of the country is a good place to start. Like Doodledog says, racism and homophobia should never be acceptable. Other things I find a bit more tricky, loyalty to the Crown for instance, is that still one of our values that should be taught in schools?

Sago I though the quote was ‘..and I will show you the man’.
My brother went to a Jesuit school.

NotSpaghetti

Here's a great 15 mins podcast about a school/family disparity about climate change (centred on a young boy in California after the wildfires).
www.thisamericanlife.org/770/my-lying-eyes/act-three-7

Thanks, NS. I can't hear myself think just now, but will listen to it later.

Sago

St Iganatius Loyola founder of the Jesuit brotherhood was way ahead of his time when he spoke these words, the first 7 years of a child’s development are the most important.
What is a little sinister though is the fact that Loyala’s words were apparently, “ Give me the boy from the age of 7 and he’s mine for life”

Yes, which is why I chose the quote for the title .

Clearly, early education is very influential, and there will be times when parental views conflict with those of the teachers, and times when teachers won't agree with things they have to teach. On the whole, I don't think there were many times when I felt conflicted about what my own children were taught - I'm struggling to remember an example other than when my son insisted that the alphabet included 'ee, eff, gee, haitch' (?) because Mrs X pronounced it like that, and once or twice when they learned things in RE that I found a bit difficult. Nothing important, though. The point is more that there was no persuading my son that 'haitch' is not how 'h' is pronounced, because he had been taught to listen to the teacher. There are, of course, many who would say that he was saved from his mother's ignorance by Mrs X, who is absolutely correct in her pronunciation - some of these things are not absolute, which is why there are, I think, questions to be asked.

These days, however, there does seem to be an agenda around gender politics, and I would definitely be at odds with the prevailing diktats on much of that. There are other threads for the specifics of the trans issues, but it got me thinking much more generally. Does a 25 year-old teacher, straight from university (or a 52 year old one with years of experience, come to that) automatically have a 'better' set of views than a parent? Possibly more sinister is the idea that 'someone' can set the agenda for controversial topics and how they have to be taught. Who polices that? Again, I started off by thinking of the notion that there are 100 genders, but maybe the same applies to topics such as slavery and colonialism? Who decides what is taught about these things and how is it (or should it be) monitored?

But so many of us go the opposite way from our parents and teachers just because. Not many people I know have exactly the same ideas as their parents had. They just don’t.

Here's a great 15 mins podcast about a school/family disparity about climate change (centred on a young boy in California after the wildfires).
www.thisamericanlife.org/770/my-lying-eyes/act-three-7

St Iganatius Loyola founder of the Jesuit brotherhood was way ahead of his time when he spoke these words, the first 7 years of a child’s development are the most important.
What is a little sinister though is the fact that Loyala’s words were apparently, “ Give me the boy from the age of 7 and he’s mine for life”

I agree. I'm not sure what I think about whether schools should try to 'correct' parental attitudes that conflict with the ones you mention, though. I don't know anyone who would want to bring up their children to be unkind, intolerant, selfish and closed-minded (but I suppose you never know ); but those values mean different things to different people.

If parents were teaching children that a teacher considered intolerant, for instance, but the parents felt strongly that the 'intolerance' was in fact a matter of principle, should the teacher assume the right to impose his or her own values?

I'm trying to come up with an uncontentious example, but it's difficult. Suppose parents were strict vegans, who believed that meat is murder, and their child was telling his classmates that they were murderers. The teacher believes in freedom of choice and tells the child that many people eat meat and that murder only applies when the victim is human. As this contradicts the parents' views, should the teacher be telling the child to be tolerant of others (so that the parents are wrong), or do the parents have a right to bring up their child with their own values?

I just think of seven as an important developmental milestone, and that at that age children's personalities start to become stable. It's about imbibing in early childhood values such as kindness, tolerance, unselfishness and an inquiring mind. And this is done through the values and behaviours that children see in their immediate family and surroundings. A big mistake, IMHO, to link it with school.