Good morning friends, just an exercise to practise "for and against essay". I have to recognize that it has taken me more than an hour to do it. It is a hard work for a Sunday morning. See you on Tuesday.

“SCHOOL PLAYS A MORE IMPORTANT ROLE THAN THE FAMILY IN SHAPING ONE´S PERSONALITY”

Did school play a major role in the development of your personality than did your family?

One point in favour of the role of schools is that it is at school where children first learn to socialise. Since the ratio is twenty-five pupils per class as a minimum, they get used to treat with different kind of characters and personalities and they will learn to solve many kind of situations and troubles between them, what means socializing.

An additional argument in support of school is that young people are exposed to a wide variety of subjects. One typical example of this are extracurricular activities such as visits to public buildings (police station, post office, fire station…), or trips to school farms , public library, theatre, etc.

What is more, the average child spends as many as eight hours a day in school, which is a logical reason to think that school´s influence is enormously important in his life.

On the other hand, most children have a closer relationship with their parents than with their teachers, which imply that a child’s psychological features are formed by following the patterns given by his or her parents.

Moreover, so much of the school day is devoted to competition and preparation for examinations that there is little time left for personality development. In example, in terms of primary education, the weekly time dedicated to subjects such as Maths, Sciences  or Languages is nearly the triple than the one spend in subjects such as Alternative Education, Arts or Citizenship.

Furthermore,  children usually spend five years of their lives at home before they even go to school. That is because they see their parents as the model to follow and of course children rely on them and turn to them any time they need help or support.

To sum up it is true to say that school plays a fundamental role in the formation of an individual personality. However, it is obvious that when we talk about unstructured families, usually the patrons followed are the ones given by the family and only in limited cases children are mature enough to understand that what they are taught at school is the good path to follow.