I have this vision of a child sitting in the center of a circle of noisy parents, government officials, clergy and teachers, each of them in some way charged with her education. The adults, frequently ignorant about education, talk past each other. The child’s welfare seems secondary to their calculations. Too often, our education policies are subject to contentious, political gamesmanship.
If it takes a village to raise a child elsewhere, it seems to take a circle of contrarian adults to do the same in America. The result is a confused and unequal educational system: The rich get a Cadillac academic experience and the poor fail.
Even though it passed with fanfare and bipartisan support, the No Child Left Behind act is today under siege. Its objective – ensuring every public school pupil was proficient in reading and math by 2014 – was commendable. But forgetting what a good education entails, it’s been reduced to monitoring testing and declaring schools such as Cole Middle School failures without looking deeper for causes.
Educating children should be a symphony of good players, conductors, acoustics and instruments played in perfect pitch. For an education system to succeed, all must work in concert. The most important element, one that’s always left out in our education reforms, is the parent or guardian.
Indeed, NCLB should have been christened “No Child and No Parent Left Behind” since the key to a child’s education is not a law or a teacher. Rather, it’s a stable home and dedicated parents.
In a very long Early Childhood Longitudinal Study report conducted by the Center for Education Statistics, there’s a brief reference to society’s and parents’ roles in education. They deserved much more.
Legislation, many feel, solves our most intractable problems. How can you legislate good parenting or better learning habits? Because parental involvement in kids’ education is pivotal, we must somehow induce, cajole or coerce them into involvement.
I know that no amount of testing will change many children’s reality. Kids who can’t or don’t want to learn will not, no matter the number of tests given. To know why certain kids don’t excel, we have to comprehend their obstacles and then find a remedy.
Many families and children see no advantage in an education. Indeed, if schools are dilapidated and are cesspools of crime, society’s message to the kids going there is: “You don’t count. Your education and welfare are a low priority to us.”
Part of our effort must include motivating our children, assuring them we care, and showing them that there are alternatives to a life in prison.
Parents are the key to children’s lives; education the door to a meaningful life. Every teacher I have talked to wishes for more parents who are partners in their kids’ schooling. What many get are contrary, aggressive parents; critical but indifferent parents; or absent, “couldn’t be bothered” parents.
We refuse to replicate what works elsewhere, in other countries and other school districts. Our blind pride requires we reinvent everything. We know that school uniforms work. Having older kids help younger ones and enlisting retiree volunteers as readers and after-school minders have all worked elsewhere. So have colleges, universities, businesses and community groups “adopting” schools. Boarding schools are useful for a select, disruptive few. These schools have worked marvelously in Europe; it’s probably why we resist them.
Confronted with education, American innovation and ingenuity fail.
Since failure in school is coupled with failure in other aspects of kids’ lives, it calls for intensive intervention – at school and at home. Academic failure is no less a disease than asthma; it needs to be combatted with equal zeal. We must do all we can to salvage the educational potential of our children.
We need parents’ involvement.
Pius Kamau of Aurora is a thoracic and general surgeon. He was born and raised in Kenya and immigrated to the U.S. in 1971. His column appears on alternate Wednesdays.
