hese days there is a debate about whether teachers affect an intellectual and social development of schoolchildren’s more than their parents. While I support the point of view that the impact of teachers on students’ academic progress is more considerable, I stay with those who believe that parents affect children’s social lives more than teachers.
As for social development, despite the fact that children spend at school around one third of their work day, parents shape kids’ free time and social life. Children’s environment is often made up of their friends from school, some clubs such as sports clubs and others and also their parents’ acquintancies. All these three categories are affected by parents: they often choose a school and suggest their children which extracurricular activities they can attend. Therefore, all parts of schoolchildren’s social life are affected both directly or indirectly by their parents.↖️ The same thing cannot be claimed for teachers, so their impact on students’ social development is significantly less.
While parents could insist that their children attend some extra classes, teachers at schools still conduct the vast majority of them and shape their academic environment. This means that just in terms of time, which schoolchildren spend doing intellectual work, teachers are much more significat. For example, if the quality of lessons at school is not sufficient it is unlikely that parents will try to fix this by some extracurricular activities. They might just decide to change a school to another, which is more respectable. So, these examples illustrate that teachers are more important than parents for schoolchildren’s intellectual development.
To summarise, I support the point of view that teachers shape schoolchildren’s intellectual development more than their parents since the biggest part of students’ study is supervised by them directly . However, parents impact the social part of their lives more due to the fact that they affect all parts of it.