Generally speaking, experience has taught me most parents fall into one of two categories when it comes to the education of their children.
The first category comprises parents who live sacrificial lives committed to providing their children a nurturing, supportive environment at home where they feel safe and loved. The physical, intellectual and emotional well-being of their children is always their top priority.
These parents understand love means more than showering their children with gifts and giving in to their every demand.
They understand there are lessons in life that can only be learned through failure, so they avoid doing anything that will shield their children from experiencing the natural consequences of their actions.
These parents know the English word “discipline” comes from the Latin “discipulus,” which means, “to learn,” so they recognize disciplining a child is an act of love.
These parents teach their children to respect authority, to respect themselves and to respect others, and they model in their own lives the behaviors and attitudes they expect of their children.
They set high expectations in terms of behavior and learning, and they make sure they are active participants in the education of their children.
These parents understand school is more than just curriculum. It is where children prepare for their future, learning how to be responsible for themselves and laying a foundation for the life ahead.
It is hard to overstate how important it is for a child to learn how to do school well.
But each child is unique, and while the end result parents are seeking for each of their children may be the same, the methods used to achieve that result need to be adapted to each child’s individual needs and personality.
The second set of parents love their children every bit as much as the first, but they express that love differently. Their relationship with their children is more friendly than it is parental.
They talk a good game about school being important, but they’re lackadaisical when it comes to ensuring their kids are in school on time every day, and only become truly interested in how their children are doing academically the week before the marking period ends.
For these parents, the measure of how well their children are doing in school tends to be no broader than the grades they bring home on their report card, and they place the responsibility for making sure their children receive passing grades squarely on the shoulders of teachers — not on their children, and certainly not on themselves.
If their children fail to turn in an assignment, the expectation is that teachers will accept the work whenever they get around to doing it, and if the work is never turned in, they expect teachers to extend “extra credit” as an alternate way for their children to pass their classes.
These parents see their primary role as running to the rescue of their children whenever they are in trouble. If their kids misbehave, it’s always the fault of someone else and, therefore, any assigned consequences are unfair.
With this kind of champion at home, children soon discover they can easily manipulate their parents, whom they wield like weapons at school.
These parents are “on-call” all day just in case their children need to contact them about a teacher they believe is treating them unfairly. They listen to the child’s side of the story, and then jump into action.
As one might expect, the children of the first set of parents are far more likely to grow to be productive members of society with the skills necessary to achieve success in whatever path they choose for themselves.
This is not the case for the children of the second set of parents. These children never learn to take responsibility for their own actions, and have been conditioned to expect whatever problem they encounter in life, someone will intervene to save the day.
Children are almost always products of the environments in which they grow. To expect the same outcomes for children who grow up in homes that actively foster their development and those who don’t is wildly unrealistic.
Still, there are many people today who maintain that if all children are not achieving equally, there must be something wrong … with society.
These people believe that diversity of outcome is a problem borne of society’s failure to allocate sufficient resources to parents and children who do not take responsibility for themselves, for their own growth, for their own education and their own choices.
Their contention is that whatever choices a parent or child makes, good or bad, every child should end up in a place where they can thrive and prosper.
But more money and more resources are only effective if students come to school ready to learn, and that only happens when parents set and enforce comprehensive expectations concerning their children’s performance in school.
All the money in the world spent hiring and training staff is wasted on students who seek to accomplish little in school beyond disrupting the learning of others.
Yet when they fail to achieve, it is the school and its teachers who are blamed — not the parents and not the children.
To give the illusion of progress, schools and school systems lower standards. As a result, a lot of people are walking around today with high school diplomas who haven’t learned a thing, yet we are quick to pat ourselves on the back for rising graduation rates.
Every dollar spent on students who don’t want to learn is a dollar not spent on those who do, and gifted and talented students are almost an afterthought now.
Learning starts at home. It always has and it always will. Perhaps more resources should be devoted to building the capacity of parents to foster in their children the development of positive attitudes toward school, and holding parents accountable when they fail to do the bare minimum in that regard. Insisting children attend school regularly is not an unrealistic expectation.
If children come to school ready to learn, with an expectation they will learn, there is no limit to what they can accomplish, but until they come to school ready to learn, all the money in world won’t help them.
Instead, they are likely to become the next generation of parents raising entitled, misguided children who believe the world owes them a living.
Chris Roemer resides in Finksburg. He can be contacted at chrisroemer1960@gmail.com.
