Are Parents Falling Down on the Job?
May 17th, 2012 § Leave a Comment
In yesterday’s Atlanta Journal-Constitution, college freshman and Gates Millennium Scholar, Coca-Cola Scholar, and Dell Scholar Mpaza S. Kapembwa writes that, when it comes to education, he believes American parents are falling down on the job. Overly concerned with self-esteem and happiness, he writes, American parents value “feeling good above true knowledge, wisdom and understanding.” Citing South Korean educational achievement as an example, he calls for American parents to be more Tiger Mother than best friend, and to be more concerned and involved with the success – the real success – of their children. Who do parents blame? Certainly not themselves. “Parents see their dreams not being realized in their children and they lash out at the dream snatcher — the teacher.”
Is there a grain of truth to this? Or more than a grain?
Having been both a public and private school parent, I have witnessed a few parents act terribly toward teachers and administration – the kinds of acts that centered only the well-being of their child, without taking into account the entire group (or the teacher’s feelings). But these are the rare and obvious mistakes, the ones where the parent insecurity and self-interest blare so loudly it can’t be ignored. The other kind of self-interest, though, is more insidious and more difficult to pin down. When Mr. Kapempwa writes, “I fear we may be expelling learning from our schools because it is not pain-free for all students,” it rings true. But the question is, it rings true for who?
Do you feel that we parents are too easy on our kids? Do you feel that you are too easy, or are there parents you know who consistently value empty good feelings over hard work? How responsible are your kids for their own learning? My father was a teacher, and I remember my parents coming down on the side of the teacher most times, but there were a few instances when they listened to our grievances, and sided with us. I remember my parents going to teachers to make alternate arrangements, and I remember my mother, in particular, fighting – and winning – to get me out of a classroom with a teacher she thought was cruel. Do these qualify as not being on the side of learning, of blaming the teacher? Or is this advocating for the student’s needs? And how do we know which is which?
Perhaps Mr. Kapembwa is young enough to say so blatantly what the grownups try to tiptoe around: the teachers come to school ready to teach, but many children are not ready to learn. Yet even this assumption – that all teachers are prepared and that students are not – can be complex. What about children experiencing instability at home, whether it be fighting or divorcing parents, poverty, abuse, or a combination? According to the Census Bureau, 36% of American children are living in poverty. What about students who are homeless, or very nearly so? And what about their parents’ ability to care? Studies show that parental involvement at school is connected to student success, but parent involvement is also related to parent income and education.
Maybe it’s been said one too many times, but it bears repeating: in countries where the culture supports the parents, the parents support the schools, and overall, the children do well. Kapembwa is right to note that education is a triangle between parents, teachers and students, and when one corner isn’t holding up their end of the bargain, the triangle collapses. But it’s much harder to dig deep to understand the root causes of why the triangle is falling down in the first place.
What Do Parents Know About Education?
April 17th, 2012 § Leave a Comment
Do you know if your child is getting a good education? Not the quality of the school, but the education? It’s not hard to get familiar with school reform issues as they are portrayed in the media, but I think it’s much harder for a parent to try and figure out what comprises a great education, especially without weighing in with some experts – ie teachers, researchers and school leaders. But a group of policy-heavy parent organizations insists that parents already know everything there is to know about education – and that local public schools don’t.
Several of the parent-led education groups I follow on social media have been circulating a hair-raising video called “Parents Know Best,” which was put together by policy PAC American Federation for Children, a charter school and ‘parent choice’ advocacy group. Even casting aside some of the more objectionable content so obviously taken out of context (TMZ-style rush cutaways of educators and NEA staffers saying that parents don’t always know what’s best for their children, while knowingly on camera), I still find the main message of the video at the very least counterproductive, and at the most disturbing: your public school is out to get you. It wants to tell you what’s good is bad, and what’s bad is good. Type made to look like child’s handwriting scrawls across the screen: “Parents are under attack,” then we are shown that public school officials aim to make a mockery of us. Silly parent, how can you be so gullible to trust your teachers?
Policy-heavy PAC’s posing as grassroots parents groups are popping up all over the country, encouraging parents not to dig in and understand what comprises a great education for their children, but to come to agree with them on education policy decisions having to do with how schools are managed – ones like the “Parent Trigger” laws that 20 states have either passed or considered. Groups like Parent Revolution and Parents Know Best, a part of the American Federation for Children, aim to sway parents toward a “freedom of choice” ideology, one in which every parent knows the school that will best fit their child, which are usually charter schools. The videos made by these groups, which are armed and ready to help parents choose the “freedom” of a charter and voucher system, present the public school system as a clear and dangerous enemy that has bad intentions for them and their children. The current public school system, they argue, wants to trap your child in failure because it means big money or big power for groups like the unions; inside this narrative, it is the parents’ job to rescue their children from becoming nothing more than a pawn in a dangerous, zero-sum educational game.
There is nothing wrong with charter schools, or any type of education where real learning takes place. But I have to stop and wonder in whose best interest it is to tell parents this is a war, and they should be outraged. I know that there is good and bad education taking place across a variety of settings right now – and that both can be hiding where you least expect them. I can’t help but question the motives of groups like Parents Know Best, who might prey on the fears of families who are searching for a good education for their kids. Instead of using their platform to inform parents of what to look for, what to help their kids do at home, and what kinds of schools might best suit their kids, these ‘parents groups’ only add to the acrimony by engaging parents’ darkest fears.
I wonder why more grassroots parents groups like these don’t focus on teaching parents about learning? Before I began researching learning and school reform as it pertained to my own children, I admit I didn’t know much about how kids learn, and how they need to learn. For example, until I consulted the early childhood experts, I was unaware, that my five-year-old should still be engaged in a play-based curriculum that caters to where his brain is at developmentally — and this is diametrically opposed to the current kindergarten standard, which is academics-based and only getting more so by the year. Using this as the only example, imagine what parents could do in their local schools armed with this information and how it might transform learning and achievement? Imagine what parents could do if they were presented with knowledge instead of fear? Imagine if it was a community working on a problem instead of a battle in a war?
The real parent revolution will come when parents come to an understanding about teaching and learning, and each is armed with tools to support teaching and learning both at home and at school, whatever that school might look like.
More Rescources:
How Much Parent Power is Too Much? by Sam Chaltain on CNN Schools of Thought
Parent Unions Seek to Join Policy Debate by Sean Cavanagh at Education Week
Kindergarten Redshirting
March 6th, 2012 § Leave a Comment
Does kindergarten redshirting lie at the crossroads of overly academic kindergarten and anxiety parenting?
First, I want to say that my rebuke of forcing summer birthday boys, or anyone who is within range of “average,” to be held back from kindergarten to wait until they mature, like I did last night in this piece on “60 Minutes,” is not a judgment on parents who choose to do so. I think we can all agree that many of us suffer from too much worrying and hand-wringing already: I see parents struggling at the grocery store over which snacks to buy, which toys are appropriate, which preschool is the best “fit,” and my own conversations every day over food and discipline and related items make me wonder if we’ve all gone completely insane. What I do not want to do is put oxygen on another fiery parenting debate. What I would like to do is start a conversation that eases, not stokes, anxieties about student achievement and the popular cultural phenomenon known as “boys are too immature for kindergarten.”
Is redshirting a way to engineer complete success, to make sure that all children are leaders, sports heroes, that all get straight A’s? In today’s hyperfocus on how success in life begins before preschool, are we taking the issue too far – while leaving parents who cannot afford to do so in the dust? What’s the right thing to do about kindergarten redshirting?
I do not claim to know the answer. But there are several points that speak to me, both intellectually and emotionally, that deserve a look.
- At its best, redshirting kindergartners is inequitable: for those who cannot afford to send their kids to another year of preschool (which in nearly all 50 states is private and must be paid for), on-time kindergarten entrance is a must that eases the financial burdens of poorer families. This puts the child who enters school on time sometimes a full 18 months behind the oldest children in class (this was pointed out nicely in the “60 Minutes” piece). Might the age and experience difference of the students skew test scores and exacerbate the achievement gap between rich and poor? As Gladwell points out, the kids who are being held back are actually the least at-risk for failure.
- Someone always has to be the youngest, the shortest, the least experienced. Even if everyone moved their child back to enter kindergarten at age six, there would still be the kids who turn six just days before kindergarten begins. There is no way to “protect” everyone from being at the young end of the spectrum, so why are we bothering to do it at all?
- I have heard from many parents about this issue over the last several years, since I wrote the original essay, and what distresses me most about the redshirting issue is the idea that boys are “immature.” I find this questionable, because 50 years ago boys were at the heads of all the classes, they got the most attention, they had better grades, more went to college, etc. So maybe it’s not that boys or girls are getting more or less mature, but we are viewing them through a different lens. Scholar Kathleen Cleveland thinks so, and she has written extensively on how to teach boys, especially those who struggle in school. She also debunks the myth, supported by her own research, that there is no boy crisis – that boys, when in a supportive environment, do well, as do girls. But, like the preschool my own son attended, there was an obvious prejudice against the way boys are – my son’s teacher cited thumb sucking and doing silly songs and dances (at four!) as logical reasons to hold him back from kindergarten, although he was fully reading – and a teacher who told me that girls are fine in kindergarten because they can “sit still.”
- I think that a lot of school problems can come back to testing, but this is yet another glitch in our all-accountability testing culture: the pressure to have children do well is immense. This flows backwards, to little or no recess, to kindergarten and preschool homework, to kindergarten redshirting. It’s difficult to blame parents for wanting their child to succeed, when the standards and expectations to do well are increasing at a rapid and sometimes silly rate.
What do you think? What do you think about being a part in helping eliminate the achievement gap? Or have more Montessori-style mixed age classrooms?
My Article for The New York Times Motherlode!
February 27th, 2012 § 1 Comment
On Thursday’s New York Times website, an article I wrote for the Motherlode blog, “Should Preschoolers Have Homework?” generated over 100 comments from parents! While I was so excited and appreciative to see so many parents weigh in on the topic, I was also a little surprised by how few parents responded to the main tenet of the article: that while nearly all parents agree that homework for the ‘barely potty-trained’ is silly, and while experts continue to weigh in that play-based education is most developmentally appropriate for the youngest children, why don’t more parents speak up? I admit many of the parents who commented said that they would speak up if their child did bring home the dreaded worksheets, but that doesn’t completely explain how preschool homework is allowed to exist in the first place. By speaking up, I guess I don’t mean just talking to a child’s teacher, but I was thinking more of parents banding together and going to all the preschools and having them come up with a policy that says “we will not give homework – at the very least the kind that requires a deadline and ‘turning in’ and receives some kind of reward for doing so.”
I wonder if this has to do with not knowing about all the research available on the value and immense benefits to preschool children of a play-based curriculum – I thought I’d include some of that info here, in the links below. Along with not wanting to rock the boat, as expert Alfie Kohn suggests, and the pressure of preschool testing to get access to coveted magnet/gifted and talented programs, another good reason preschool homework exists and persists is because parents don’t know that homework may not only not help their child, but may actually hurt the early-childhood learning process.
I didn’t know about play-based preschool education and how beneficial it was. I didn’t have any idea that play teaches young children skills they will need later on for academics, and that play nourishes their young, developing brains. As a matter of fact, as a college-educated mother of three, I thought exactly the opposite – get them into academics soon so they can learn the ropes and excel. Right? But, according to (all) the experts, young children a) don’t have the capacity to “work” at acquiring skills and b) need to learn important things about themselves and others, in essence about discovering the world, before they are ready for hard academics. This explains why many preschool children are frustrated and anxious about their homework – they are not ready for what it takes to complete it.
Yes, play is all well and good, I can hear you saying it right now, but play curriculum does not leave space for what today’s kindergarten has turned into – an almost entirely academic affair where children are involved in “work” for the majority of the day? My own son only had 15 minutes of recess all day in 7-hour kindergarten, and homework every single night. How will play-based “discovery” prepare them to enter a kindergarten where most the children have been vigorously prepped – from fine-motor skill development to the basics of math and reading? Will a child who is enveloped in play in preschool be able to catch up with those who haven’t been so enveloped?
According to psychologist Dr. Gordon Neufeld, in many cases, children are pushed into performing way too soon. “You can get incredible things out of them if you detach them from marks and rewards.” Dr. Neufeld recommends that preschool and kindergarten should be places with no emphasis on outcomes, just learning for the fun of it.
What do you think? Do you think we parents should speak up against the whole lot of it – academic preschool and academic kindergarten? And how to stem the tide?
Links
All Work and No Play: Why Your Children are More Anxious, Depressed
All work and no play… is not good for the developing brain
For Parents Who Are Thinking About Learning
February 15th, 2012 § Leave a Comment
After moving from Dallas to Nashville over the Christmas holidays, I had to – by sheer force of geography – give up my blog about Texas public education, Parents for Educating Texas. Although that chapter has ended, I’m excited to continue a conversation here that takes an inquisitive look at the parent perspective on education, school reform and learning issues more generally.
A tip-of-the-iceberg quality hovers over my education writing and thinking so far: it seems that the farther I fall down the rabbit hole, the more I want to know about the reasons we parents think and believe the things we do about our children, their teachers, and the schools that encapsulate the majority of their childhoods. From standardized testing to child consumerism to preschool homework, I’m interested in the culture that has brought us the schools we have today.
And I’m wondering: do we parents have the power – or maybe it’s the imagination – to turn this ship around?
There are more vexing questions that deserve a second look: Is the ‘Parent Trigger’ a good or a bad thing for parents? How much does poverty play into how a child gets educated? Can standing up to your school about a variety of complicated issues help or hinder your child’s chances at a great education? Does better education take place at a private school vs. a public one – or a public magnet vs. a neighborhood school? How can you tell? How can parents tell if their child is learning what they need? Who should parents ask?
Like Parents for Educating Texas, I will continue to read and review education books and try to connect parents with resources that I find valuable, and hope you will share the same with me. It’s with great pleasure and passion I bring you the best discussions I can muster on these topics and more. I hope you’ll join me.
Best,
Holly Korbey
