Parents?? Parents??

02/02/11
I find it intriguing how the government, media, and other prominent community leaders are always talking about making schools better, and making a child's education better. Obviously, I think every child deserves a great education, and I think every child should have access to that.

However, for the millions of dollars we spend on education, for the countless hours that schools and their curriculum are discussed by both the schools themselves as well as the people observing schools through the fish bowl, we rarely hear any worthwhile discussion from those government leaders, from those businessmen, from those television news hosts, about the family. Has the parents role in their child's education been forgotten? Ignored? Or has the responsibility simply been abandoned?

We can look at lots of data about what makes a student successful, well adjusted, motivated. That data will show lots of complicated, tangled, correlations between various factors. From my classroom perspective, it seems that most well adjusted, successful students come from a stable home environment. Not necessarily two, non divorced parents, who make lots of money, but more so an environment where the child knows they are loved, knows someone is keeping track of them, and knows that there will be discipline.

My teacher friends and I talk about the things parents tell us. We have had parents refuse to give up their dating life to be certain their daughter doesn't sneak out of the house. We have had parents come to meetings drunk or stoned. We have many parents who don't come to anything in the first place.

Trying to fix the education of our children at school only, is probably an empty gesture. It is a regifted bottle of wine taken to a party for someone you don't really care for. It is a courteous clap for the average singer. To really fix a problem, you have to trace it back to its root. You cannot trace a child past their home-life.

How do you fix a home through government money and programs? I don't know. I simply know that ONLY trying to fix education through the schools, through the curriculum, the type of instruction, the technology used is a losing battle. Three out of every fifty kids will overcome their uninterested parents and do a good job with their learning and life. Most will struggle, with both their learning, and their personal adjustment. They will not know how to concentrate on schematics. They will not know that their boyfriends shouldn't call them slut. They will not know that some good things in life take time.

Until someone with some sort of voice is willing to start sanctioning uninvolved and unengaged parents, as uninvolved and unengaged schools are sanctioned, I doubt we will see many great leaps and bounds as a whole. But we will continue to have great sound bites from frenzied groups calling for better schools. We will have the crowds supporting those givers of the soundbites, and we will still have parents who don't know where their kids are at night, whom they are with, or if they have a test in biology the next day.