Are parents to blame when their children do not do well in school? - Page 2

[Linda on the move]

Originally Posted by HappyMommy2 

Privacy Reminder: This thread is FEATURED ON FACEBOOK

This thread was started by "mothering," and I'm not really sure what that means about it.

Do you think they want us to debate more to be more interesting?

[HappyMommy2]

In another thread, they said threads started by Mothering means all bets are off... those will be posted other places, like FB etc.

[Kontessa]

 If a child is failing at homeschooling who would you blame? The parent correct? So why is it such a stretch to believe that the organization that many believe they are forced to use should not also be expected to preform? Forget that they system itself is often broken, trying to grade parents for grades is like expecting a mule to walk ass backwards. It might be entertaining for a moment for some, but there is no logic in it.

 Could it be that schools with parents who are very active do better because those school districts have parents with a higher income range, meaning the schools are in a higher income range, and have less things to over come on the whole such as gang violence? On average how much time do parents get to actually parent their children? Let me break down the time line for a neighbor we know. The 12 year old daughter is up in the morning and does not see her parents, one is in the military and leaves at 5am, the other leaves at 6am and works an hour away in a big city. The child comes home at 4:30, has extended afterschool fun. Comes home to am empty house. On a good day Dad is home at 5:30 and Mom is home at 6pm. They say hello, check homework while trying to make dinner. Dinner is at 7pm. They eat together as a family a few times a week but often in front of homework, computers, work papers, and TV. Mandatory reading for the 12 year old at around 7:30 and then bed around 8pm. The parents try and get some alone time together but they have to make lunches for the next day, clean up, laundry, check e-mail and facebook, pays bills. Quality time could come on weekends but they are often stuck with normal life catch up, cleaning and shopping for food and repairing cars. Neither parent can take time out to meet with teachers during normal hours. Neither can re-learn geometry fast enough to quickly help the child who's math class has gone on without her and whos teacher expects the parents to catch her up. With how much we work, with how much time our children are in school and doing hours of home work, when can parents pick of the slack of the failing school systems? The answer is not to force our parents to be Tiger moms, we don't need to catch up to China with testing. We need to put the love of learning back into our children, and take the zombie children out of the testing halls.

 I personally see this as another excuse to pass the buck, and to attack family rights. The schools are failing, fix the system.

[Wendy McDonnell]

I love the part about internal motivation...coming from a place of joy and ever-learning. When we, as parents, can model that, our children notice and may be inspired to follow.

[LynnS6]

Originally Posted by kathymuggle 

I also need to say that when parents "abdicate responsibility" it is not always "abdicating responsibility".  Some parents refuse to let their kids exhaust themselves doing too much homework, some value family and extra-curricular activities above schoolwork. 

But see, I don't see that as abdicating responsibility -- I see that as taking responsibility for what works for your child and your family. Not making your child exhaust themselves is different never checking up on them or telling the teachers that it's the school's problem if the child doesn't do their homework.

When ds was in 1st grade, he was totally overwhelmed by the required that he read (aloud) to us for 20 minutes a night. We made a unilateral decision to have him read aloud to us for ~5 minutes (some days it was 2-3) and then we'd read aloud to him for the rest of the time. (This was in addition to the bedtime stories.) We informed his teacher and she was fine with it. It would have been craziness to insist on the letter of the law. But it would have been equally detrimental to tell ds his teacher was crazy and he should ignore her.

[hakeber]

I think at very young ages, parents and schools should work together to meet the learning needs of the children and foster inquiry and a love of learning.  At older ages (like I'd say 12-18) it is partly the school and partly the children who are responsible for their own learning.  I do not think at that age the parents can do much more for kids for the most part unless they are teachers themselves or have specialized knowledge.  Obviously, homeschooling parents fall into the category of being teachers themselves.  If I suspect a student sof mine needs additional help beyon d the classroom and I cannot provide it myself I reccommend a private tutor with specialized subject knowledge.

[~Denise~]

Parents do have an effect on how well their kids do academically, but I think if we're talking about the really big differences, e.g. kids of welfare moms vs. kids of professionals,
even if both families care deeply about their kids' education, the advantages and disadvantages start so young and are so persistent on future learning.

Kids of parents on welfare hear about 616 words/hr while kids of professionals hear 2153 words/hr. By age 3, the welfare kids have 500 word vocabularies, while the professional's kids have 1100 word vocabularies. Kids can only comprehend books if about 5% of the words are new to them. If around 10% of the words are new to them, it's overwhelmingly hard. So guess who starts out behind in school and stays behind in school?

http://reading.uoregon.edu/big_ideas/voc/voc_what.php#research

http://www.centerforpubliceducation.org/Main-Menu/Instruction/From-beginning-to-stellar-Five-tips-on-developing-skillful-readers/Handout-Vocabulary.html

[Momily]

I work in a very diverse school setting (economically, and in other ways too) and I see two different situations.

One is families where parents are missing the skills or resources to help their children.  Perhaps parents aren't literate or aren't literate in English.  Perhaps parents are working long hours and kids are in the care of siblings and homework doesn't get done.   Perhaps parents do a good job of meeting kids basic needs but don't have the skills to encourage higher level thinking.  Familes are stressed by the challenges of caring for multiple generations, or by parental disabilities, or by poverty, and have less time to devote to stimulating their kids.  In these cases poverty is almost always a factor and kids do enter school behind, but it is 100% the school's responsibility to catch them up.  I think we need to distribute resources unequally so that we get equal results, with the kids who need the most getting the most.  I think it's the school's responsibility to figure out solutions, whether it's extended days, or homework clubs, or highly effective instructional techniques.  I say this recognizing that, as a nation, we're still figuring out exactly what this looks like, but I think it's our responsibility as educators to be relentless about figuring out solutions, and not to shift the blame to parents who are often putting forth superhuman efforts to keep their kids safe and healthy and to get them to school.

On the other hand there are situations where parents do things that interfere with their children's success at school.  I've had parents that I work with who bring their children to school routinely at 10 or 11, so that they child misses the entire reading class.  They keep their kids home for days on end and do not use that time for anything remotely educational (I did a home visit once on a chronically truant child and found the first grader playing Grand Theft Auto with no adults at home) They routinely keep their kids up 1/2 the night so they're asleep at school.  They refuse to enforce school values at home (I'm not talking about parents who sometimes disagree about things like how much homework to do,  I once had a parent whose custody agreement specified that dad pay for private school.  Dad didn't want to so he actively encouraged the kid to act up in hopes that he got expelled.  Once the child threw a brick at my head, and Dad told him "good job" and took him skiing on his "day off").  They never send anything back, books sent home for reading never reappear, permission slips are never signed so the child misses educational field trips etc . . . This kind of horrible parenting happens at all income levels, and can have a devastating effect on children's learning, because kids aren't available to be engaged at school, and because kids learn to disrespect school.  In those cases, yes I blame parents.  It's still our responsibilty to try and help, and I know that at our school we try really hard, but our level of responsibility is limited when kids aren't there for us to help. 

[kathymuggle]

Originally Posted by Momily 

On the other hand there are situations where parents do things that interfere with their children's success at school.  I've had parents that I work with who bring their children to school routinely at 10 or 11, so that they child misses the entire reading class.  They keep their kids home for days on end and do not use that time for anything remotely educational (I did a home visit once on a chronically truant child and found the first grader playing Grand Theft Auto with no adults at home) They routinely keep their kids up 1/2 the night so they're asleep at school.  They refuse to enforce school values at home (I'm not talking about parents who sometimes disagree about things like how much homework to do,  I once had a parent whose custody agreement specified that dad pay for private school.  Dad didn't want to so he actively encouraged the kid to act up in hopes that he got expelled.  Once the child threw a brick at my head, and Dad told him "good job" and took him skiing on his "day off").  They never send anything back, books sent home for reading never reappear, permission slips are never signed so the child misses educational field trips etc . . . This kind of horrible parenting happens at all income levels, and can have a devastating effect on children's learning, because kids aren't available to be engaged at school, and because kids learn to disrespect school.  In those cases, yes I blame parents.  It's still our responsibilty to try and help, and I know that at our school we try really hard, but our level of responsibility is limited when kids aren't there for us to help. 

Parents that do this are somewhat to blame if their kids do not do well at school.  There is nothing you can do about it, though.  You cannot legislate proper parent behaviour as it is  a) subjective   b) usurps parental authority and c) is a really slippery slope and in all probabilty a bunch of people who are not guilty of this sort of educational neglect will be unfairly penalized.

TBH I have issue with respecting school (this is not a point I wish to debate).  Some of it may be earned, some may be my own baggage, and some just come down to a different belief system.  Overall (not just on individual issues) if you do not respect/support schools you should not send your children there.  It is not fair to anyone.  Find a school you can support or homeschool.

Edited by kathymuggle - 5/29/11 at 2:43pm

[littlest birds]

Parents have a lot of responsibility to support whatever educational setting they have their children in.  And certain destructive behaviors from parents can cause failure.  Yet even though these examples exist, many children are doing poorly in school without a parents actually sabotaging the school.  Sometimes parents support their children's education poorly for reasons outside of their control.  There are also many influences beyond parents on the child's success.

The reward-centered learning approaches in schools are partially counter-productive.  It seem the best system these institutions can offer, and it has positive effects.  However, while rewards do help children make the effort, they also tend to train both our most competent and our least competent children that reading, for instance, is an activity only worth doing if externally motivated/rewarded.  Reading minutes are logged because they need proof they have "put in out time" "done their chores" etc. and clearly not for its own sake.  I have witnessed the secondary impacts on attitudes of this approach many times.  We make sure everyone is literate enough to pass, but few people seem to grow up wanting to read.  So many people have taste for reading only junk entertainment that reads like TV and nothing requiring any intellectual involvement.  Where does the often-elusive appetite for learning come from?  Ideally, everywhere.

There are quite a few aspects of our culture that are very anti-educational.  Television-centered and video game-centered culture are for instance heavily inclined that direction.  Not that your nourishing home life can't include these, but they can take over and kids not care about much else no matter what their parents say.  Are the parents alone sparking the appetite for all things electronic?  Did the parent's create the weakness in their children for lazy-minded activities?  No.  (Although marketers do everything they can to get in our kids' faces, and inflate that weakness so it leads to consuming their products and entertainments.)  Are parents fueling the "irresponsibility is our birthright" attitude among teens or is it a combination of influences?  This indulgent attitude also seems to be marketed heavily at our kids by large businesses who make money off the teen culture's spending power.  Parents can address this.  But success is mixed.  Each child responds differently to these intense distractions.

The consumer culture is somewhat anti-nurturing and sends a lot of messages to families that everyone should do their own thing, our society suggests that both parents should work full-time to fuel survival/the good life in a material world, and everyone ends up too busy to think, talk, and read together.  Can you tough it out and make good things happen anyway?  Yes.  But is there an awful lot working against it for most of us?  Also yes. 

There are many enemies of a "learning culture" and that is not the fault of individual parents.  How well they counteract those forces is something only partly in parents' control.  AND parents who grew up themselves without an appetite for learning, thinking, and exploring ideas for pleasure are hardly able to pass that on.  They are at a loss. Is that their fault?  They may try by encouraging reading and such, but their kids can feel that the parents themselves hardly enjoy it. 

I find it ridiculous to be blame-oriented in our thinking anyway.  Blaming doesn't work and it oversimplifies and creates negative relationships that are always counterproductive.  There are so many complex forces at work in our children's intellectual lives.  Parents have plenty of responsibility but not all.  A PP also made a very good point about the school culture and how important it is how compatible that culture is with each particular family.  I know that some of the things that lead to school success do not fit well with our family's lifestyle and beliefs.  We do not believe that the things that equal school success are the things that lead to being a competently well-rounded, healthy, and balanced adult.  Too narrow a definition of learning and success for us.  (But we homeschool.)  Anyhow, very good points in that post, too.