Not schools’ job to raise children

SIR, – With regard to Alan Titchmarsh’s call for schools to allocate time in the curriculum to get kids outdoors (Press and Journal, July 23). What utter rubbish.

Yes, children of today need to get outside more and smell fresh air and get exercise, but they need to take their faces out of their phones.

Yes, gardening is therapeutic but not if they have their faces in their phones. What’s the point of trailing them outdoors when they can’t be separated from their phones?

And why does it have to be the schools that allocate time to teach children that there is a whole big world outside of their phones?

Can’t the parents allocate their time to bring up their offspring?

Nowadays, when kids get to school they aren’t toilet trained, can’t use a knife and fork, they can’t form words properly, they don’t go outside to play. And yet people think that our schools must rectify these issues – no, these are issues for their parents to resolve.

You think you’re an adult, having a baby, but you are supposed to raise that baby to be socially accepted with manners of course, discipline and respect for others. Joan Stewart, Little Dytach, Cullen, Moray