Sefer Hachinukh says any father who does not teach his sons to the point they can read the Torah and understand its simple sense, has not fulfilled the mitzva. I always thought this was what the Gemara thought the mitzvah was, Jews are required to know at least all of the written Torah. However, Arukh HaShulchan Yoreh De’ah 245;5 thinks that is just the definition of accustoming the child to Torah study, for him to do the rest when he grows older.
His view splits the mitzvah into two parts, the father’s and the child’s. The father is supposed to bring his son into the rhythm of study, defined as all of the Written Torah, but the mitzvah includes lots more.
[Last story: Years ago, I was chatting with an accomplished elementary school educator, and I expressed my view that students graduating elementary school should have at least learned all of Chumash, all the five books. His response? It can’t be done. Obviously, he meant in the kinds of schools where he was involved, given the demands of various curricular constituencies. It still means those kinds of schools have abandoned the goal of serving as fathers’ agents to fulfill the basic mitzvah of Talmud Torah, let alone an enhanced version of it.]
