It is fashionable to transfer to the school teachings that are alien to its function and, moreover, in an occasional way. For example, whenever the media report on young people admitted to the hospital because of alcoholic coma, the comment is often made: "That happens because they are unaware of the risks of drinking alcoholic beverages without moderation. It should be taught in schools.

It does not seem to matter that schools are overloaded with activities; it does not matter that many teachers suffer from professional burnout syndrome; we must continue to draw water from the bottomless well that is the school. The resource to the school denotes that it is seen as a multipurpose institution that can be disposed of arbitrarily.

Schools today are asked to teach traffic rules, to give courses on first aid, to deal with Education sexuality, to prevent alcohol and drug addictions, etc. All this is necessary, but should it be taught at school? 

John Amos Comenius, in his Didactica Magna (1657) formulated the utopia of "teaching everything to everyone". It was not too bold at a time when all known knowledge could be summarized in an encyclopedia, although it was criticized for not taking into account two important variables: age and subject of knowledge to be taught.

Many people who do not accept Comenius' utopia for lack of realism, incur in the incoherence of asking the school to teach almost everything. This is the case of parents who delegate to the school both the instruction and the training of their children.

 Jon Bradley, professor at School of Education at McGill University in Montreal, believes that, as a society, we are transferring responsibilities to schools in many subjects that are not related to their performance and expertise. They usually belong to the family. Attempting to redirect them to be taught at high school is usually a failure.

In a humorous cartoon by an unknown author, two opposing demonstrations can be seen. One is of parents with a banner that says "we want more hours of class". The other is of children, with another banner claiming "we want more parenting hours at home".

Accepting the unjustified and excessive delegation of tasks would detract from the quality of school teaching. The aphorism that "less is more" is always true: it is better to teach less content, but in a deep and comprehensive way, than a lot of content in a superficial and memoristic way.

Given the exponential growth of information, today it is more necessary than ever to apply the Latin proverb non multa sed multum, attributed to Pliny the Younger (62-114). It is preferable to learn few things of importance than many things of no importance. A true culture should be based more on quality and depth than on quantity and the scattered plurality of contents.

The place where learning that prepares for life is acquired is not only the school. This responsibility must involve society as a whole. That is why today we speak of a school without walls, open to its environment and in close interaction with it.

 Families, municipalities, businesses and the media are places of learning that, if they converge in common purposes, constitute an educational society. In it, parents, the first and main educators, have allies who share the same values and walk in the same direction.

The difference between society in the past and today can be seen, for example, in the question of manners. For example, it used to be commonplace for children and teenagers to give up a bus seat for an elderly or disabled person, and to help a blind person cross the street; if someone did not do so, their behavior was socially shocking. Today it shocks almost no one.

 Society is ceasing to play the old role of convergence of educational purposes. To recover it, the core topic is in the family: family, be what you are: a natural environment of Education where the values that give meaning to human life are discovered and cultivated. The improvement of the social fabric will only come about by regenerating each of the cells that make it up, the families.