Maybe it's not the teachers; maybe it's you
I posted this article on Townhall.com yesterday. What a response! I'll bet I received at least 100 e-mails in my mailbox - and overwhelmingly positive. What was especially gratifying was to see how many came from teachers. But many, many came from parents as well.
There seems to be a consensus that the public school system is broken. I received a lot of interesting suggestions about how to fix it. I'll print some of them.
In my article I do not proscribe any solutions. But that's because, as a Libertarian, I avoid one-size-fits-all recommendations (that inevitably tend to be about government programs). And besides, my article is about parenting. Every family is different. Every child is different. The question becomes, what do YOUR children need from you?
What discourages me most about parents today is how many of them talk incessantly about their own needs. My answer is, YOU'RE THE GROWNUP! YOUR KIDS' NEEDS COME FIRST! And I am not talking about a stay-at-home mom who needs some adult interaction on a regular basis, or a working parent who needs to get some exercise, or the single parent who needs a babysitter so he or she can enjoy an evening out once in a while. I am talking about the ones who justify the parade of new men or women in their lives with the word "needs," or the ones who use alcohol or drugs because of their psychological "needs," or the ones who are never home because of their "needs." And to hell with the fact that they've brought helpless, dependent little people into the world who need to be educated, loved, developed as full human beings. Their needs come dead last.
Instead, parents tend to give in to kids' WANTS. And that is a very different thing altogether.
Anyway, my article from yesterday follows. I'll put up another post with some of the "Best of" the e-mail responses I received.
In Martha Zoller's recent column, she writes that parents should assert the control that they have by right over the government schools we fund through our taxes. I couldn't agree more. But she makes one comment that merits a challenge:
America has now produced at least two generations of post-WWII children who have grown up with a sense of entitlement to perpetual adolescence. There are vast wellsprings of immaturity, irresponsibility and selfishness in these generations, and their children are the proof.
My colleagues who are primary school educators tell me with chagrin that it is increasingly difficult for them to teach. Not only because their days are dominated by unhappy and unruly children. But also because in the face of larger numbers of children who arrive at school with emotional and psychological problems, teachers are saddled with regulations and bureaucracy intended to address the fact that parents aren't being parents. And so teachers are being forced to try to be parents.
When I say that "parents aren't being parents," I mean that in the most basic sense: children come to school not properly fed; their clothes aren't clean; no one makes them do their homework or go to bed at a decent hour each night; there is no discipline or organization (and children desperately need both).
Then there are the parents whose night lives (read what you want into that) send a very clear message to their children about insecurity and promiscuity - not to mention priorities. Oh, and did we mention the parents with substance abuse problems? Or those in and out of jail whose children have been passed from relative to relative or have been in and out of foster care?
And this is not a function of socioeconomic class. There are plenty of wealthy parents who indulge their children with expensive material items to attempt to compensate for the time they don't spend with them.
Neglected, rejected, ignored or abused, these children are needy, angry, resentful, depressed, enraged, aggressive and difficult if not impossible to control. They require extra time. Trips to the principal’s office. Reports. Meetings with parents and social workers and psychologists. Student aides. Conflict resolution training. They are often disrespectful, disruptive and even violent.
How are teachers supposed to do the job they are being paid to do? A teacher with 25 students in a class who has 45 minutes to teach geography, or arithmetic, or reading and who routinely has to contend with even a small handful of students whose antics eat up five or ten or fifteen minutes of that class time is hard pressed to meet his or her obligations to the students who are not causing problems. Add to that the pressures of “teaching to tests” (as teachers refer to the obligations imposed by “No Child Left Behind” and other well-intentioned legislation), and one can begin to understand the teachers’ plight.
Private and sectarian schools will go back to the parents and demand accountability, because they have a model that consists of standards and consequences. Public schools, on the other hand, have lost their way – and their will. Too few of them take a hard line with parents; a stand in which they say, these are OUR responsibilities – and those are YOURS. And if a school’s administration, or district, won’t take that position, individual teachers certainly won’t, either for fear of not getting tenure, or the threat of litigation.
For too long, public education has followed a top-down management model that operates on the principle - as Zoller intimates - that higher taxes and more regulations will enable government to parent - if not better than, then at least as well as - the parents themselves.
Teachers know better.
The combination of irresponsible parents, pie-in-the-sky theorists and Education Department bureaucrats has turned public schools into laboratories where problems fester, education decays, teachers are set up to fail, and all children – yes, even those without emotional, psychological or development problems - suffer.
Unfortunately, America does have lousy parents. But a substantial number of these parents could be – and should be -- held accountable for their children’s problems. This would enable teachers to be teachers again.
Yes, there are some ineffective teachers. It’s true that we will always have some children who need special help. And we will always need school lunches, social workers and other remedial and supplemental programs. Perhaps it’s even true that public schools will never be models of stellar education. But if more parents would grow up, step up to the plate, and be parents, schools would certainly be able to do a better job than they can now.
Don't take my word for it. Ask a teacher.
There seems to be a consensus that the public school system is broken. I received a lot of interesting suggestions about how to fix it. I'll print some of them.
In my article I do not proscribe any solutions. But that's because, as a Libertarian, I avoid one-size-fits-all recommendations (that inevitably tend to be about government programs). And besides, my article is about parenting. Every family is different. Every child is different. The question becomes, what do YOUR children need from you?
What discourages me most about parents today is how many of them talk incessantly about their own needs. My answer is, YOU'RE THE GROWNUP! YOUR KIDS' NEEDS COME FIRST! And I am not talking about a stay-at-home mom who needs some adult interaction on a regular basis, or a working parent who needs to get some exercise, or the single parent who needs a babysitter so he or she can enjoy an evening out once in a while. I am talking about the ones who justify the parade of new men or women in their lives with the word "needs," or the ones who use alcohol or drugs because of their psychological "needs," or the ones who are never home because of their "needs." And to hell with the fact that they've brought helpless, dependent little people into the world who need to be educated, loved, developed as full human beings. Their needs come dead last.
Instead, parents tend to give in to kids' WANTS. And that is a very different thing altogether.
Anyway, my article from yesterday follows. I'll put up another post with some of the "Best of" the e-mail responses I received.
In Martha Zoller's recent column, she writes that parents should assert the control that they have by right over the government schools we fund through our taxes. I couldn't agree more. But she makes one comment that merits a challenge:
"America is tired of being told we have lousy parents, bad kids and we can’t do anything without the help of government ..."While I'd be the first one to dispute the effectiveness of government “help,” I have enough friends and colleagues who are public school educators to say with confidence that there are many, many good teachers out there, and they are struggling to teach children who do have lousy parents.
America has now produced at least two generations of post-WWII children who have grown up with a sense of entitlement to perpetual adolescence. There are vast wellsprings of immaturity, irresponsibility and selfishness in these generations, and their children are the proof.
My colleagues who are primary school educators tell me with chagrin that it is increasingly difficult for them to teach. Not only because their days are dominated by unhappy and unruly children. But also because in the face of larger numbers of children who arrive at school with emotional and psychological problems, teachers are saddled with regulations and bureaucracy intended to address the fact that parents aren't being parents. And so teachers are being forced to try to be parents.
When I say that "parents aren't being parents," I mean that in the most basic sense: children come to school not properly fed; their clothes aren't clean; no one makes them do their homework or go to bed at a decent hour each night; there is no discipline or organization (and children desperately need both).
Then there are the parents whose night lives (read what you want into that) send a very clear message to their children about insecurity and promiscuity - not to mention priorities. Oh, and did we mention the parents with substance abuse problems? Or those in and out of jail whose children have been passed from relative to relative or have been in and out of foster care?
And this is not a function of socioeconomic class. There are plenty of wealthy parents who indulge their children with expensive material items to attempt to compensate for the time they don't spend with them.
Neglected, rejected, ignored or abused, these children are needy, angry, resentful, depressed, enraged, aggressive and difficult if not impossible to control. They require extra time. Trips to the principal’s office. Reports. Meetings with parents and social workers and psychologists. Student aides. Conflict resolution training. They are often disrespectful, disruptive and even violent.
How are teachers supposed to do the job they are being paid to do? A teacher with 25 students in a class who has 45 minutes to teach geography, or arithmetic, or reading and who routinely has to contend with even a small handful of students whose antics eat up five or ten or fifteen minutes of that class time is hard pressed to meet his or her obligations to the students who are not causing problems. Add to that the pressures of “teaching to tests” (as teachers refer to the obligations imposed by “No Child Left Behind” and other well-intentioned legislation), and one can begin to understand the teachers’ plight.
Private and sectarian schools will go back to the parents and demand accountability, because they have a model that consists of standards and consequences. Public schools, on the other hand, have lost their way – and their will. Too few of them take a hard line with parents; a stand in which they say, these are OUR responsibilities – and those are YOURS. And if a school’s administration, or district, won’t take that position, individual teachers certainly won’t, either for fear of not getting tenure, or the threat of litigation.
For too long, public education has followed a top-down management model that operates on the principle - as Zoller intimates - that higher taxes and more regulations will enable government to parent - if not better than, then at least as well as - the parents themselves.
Teachers know better.
The combination of irresponsible parents, pie-in-the-sky theorists and Education Department bureaucrats has turned public schools into laboratories where problems fester, education decays, teachers are set up to fail, and all children – yes, even those without emotional, psychological or development problems - suffer.
Unfortunately, America does have lousy parents. But a substantial number of these parents could be – and should be -- held accountable for their children’s problems. This would enable teachers to be teachers again.
Yes, there are some ineffective teachers. It’s true that we will always have some children who need special help. And we will always need school lunches, social workers and other remedial and supplemental programs. Perhaps it’s even true that public schools will never be models of stellar education. But if more parents would grow up, step up to the plate, and be parents, schools would certainly be able to do a better job than they can now.
Don't take my word for it. Ask a teacher.
posted by Portia Sterling | 5:31 AM
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