What about contact hours between parents and children?

Franklin Zammit (The Sunday Times, July 10) is worried about the number of contact hours in our schools, and would like to compare them with those in other European countries.

I wonder if he, or anyone else who thinks teachers have a surplus of holidays, especially in summer, has ever tried keeping a class attentive for about five hours during the hot summer days.

Besides, why do people like Mr Zammit think that what other countries do is right and what we do is wrong? Why do we have to copy others, as unfortunately we have done in other matters, which did not turn out to be so beneficial, after all?

We should be more worried about the always shrinking contact time between parents and their children. Parents should be the first teachers and should be there to give them support in any problems they meet with throughout their lives, but especially in childhood and adolescence.

Unfortunately, as in other European countries, many parents are preferring to go on with their careers and leave the upbringing of their children to others, and this even from a few months after birth. They are too absorbed with their career and hardly have any time for their children, who are tossed about from playschool to relatives or nannies!

Yes, I strongly believe that this is what we should be really worried about, and not if there are fewer contact hours in schools or if we have the least number of gainfully employed women in the EU!