Stephen Stone
Who is responsible for educating society?
By Stephen Stone
"Education is primarily a local responsibility." We heard that comment many times throughout the 2002 election season.
Years ago, I encountered those very words "Education is primarily a local responsibility" in a quote by William T. Coleman, then co-chairman of a commission established to evaluate U.S. science education.
When I first read the words, I was struck with an irony. To most of us, "local" control of education means state or community--as opposed to national--control, and that is indeed what Mr. Coleman meant. Yet the idea that education is a local responsibility implies a further, too-often neglected level: parents. After all, it is parents who exert the greatest influence in the lives of their children, not local school districts or anyone else.
I once heard theologian Michael Novak assert that the home is the "best agency of health, education, and welfare." He was right, of course, but only to the extent that parents are willing to use their influence to full advantage.
Unfortunately, the rigors of raising children and the accessibility of tax-supported public schools have led too many parents to shrink from their responsibility to provide their children the basis of a good education. Parents have come to expect the schools to do what the parents--by virtue of their natural influence, as well as their God-given obligations--ought to do.
It is widely understood that a good teacher can only build on the teaching a child receives at home. He cannot substantially reverse or alter it (nor should he try, under normal circumstances). Without question, the greatest obstacle a teacher faces is the home environment from which his students come.
This does not mean, however, that the ideal is for parents to assume more of a role in helping the teacher succeed, as educators typically expect. The home should not reinforce the school; it should be the other way around. Parents need to assume more of a hands-on role in educating their children, and view teachers as professionals who serve to help the parents succeed.
Such an emphasis may require redefining the modern teaching profession. But the current arrangement, in which parents perceive themselves as subordinate to the schools, is not good for our children's education. It encourages parents to relinquish direct control over the education of their children, to the point that parents become incidental to--or even estranged from--the educational process.
Because too many parents are too willing to give up their educational responsibility, the results are predictable. At the height of public interest in education reform during the mid-1980's, Ernest Boyer, head of the Carnegie Institute, lambasted American parents for surrendering the responsibility for their children's education just about the same time that the Nation at Risk report pronounced our schools "mediocre." The cause and effect in the matter were self-evident.
Some educators and school officials resist the idea that parents should have more direct control over the essential aspects of a child's education. But the alternative--in which parents play a role that is too easily secondary to that of the professional teacher--has shown itself to be detrimental to our nation's social, economic, political, and moral stability.
Rather than discourage parents, our schools should encourage and allow conscientious parents to bear a larger burden for the actual instruction of their children--whether these children attend a public, private, or--as is becoming more commonplace--home school. Such parental involvement would not only lower the total cost of education, but strengthen the home and society.
It would also foster the individual growth of children--who want and need more than anything else their parents' time.
© Stephen Stone
"Education is primarily a local responsibility." We heard that comment many times throughout the 2002 election season.
Years ago, I encountered those very words "Education is primarily a local responsibility" in a quote by William T. Coleman, then co-chairman of a commission established to evaluate U.S. science education.
When I first read the words, I was struck with an irony. To most of us, "local" control of education means state or community--as opposed to national--control, and that is indeed what Mr. Coleman meant. Yet the idea that education is a local responsibility implies a further, too-often neglected level: parents. After all, it is parents who exert the greatest influence in the lives of their children, not local school districts or anyone else.
I once heard theologian Michael Novak assert that the home is the "best agency of health, education, and welfare." He was right, of course, but only to the extent that parents are willing to use their influence to full advantage.
Unfortunately, the rigors of raising children and the accessibility of tax-supported public schools have led too many parents to shrink from their responsibility to provide their children the basis of a good education. Parents have come to expect the schools to do what the parents--by virtue of their natural influence, as well as their God-given obligations--ought to do.
It is widely understood that a good teacher can only build on the teaching a child receives at home. He cannot substantially reverse or alter it (nor should he try, under normal circumstances). Without question, the greatest obstacle a teacher faces is the home environment from which his students come.
This does not mean, however, that the ideal is for parents to assume more of a role in helping the teacher succeed, as educators typically expect. The home should not reinforce the school; it should be the other way around. Parents need to assume more of a hands-on role in educating their children, and view teachers as professionals who serve to help the parents succeed.
Such an emphasis may require redefining the modern teaching profession. But the current arrangement, in which parents perceive themselves as subordinate to the schools, is not good for our children's education. It encourages parents to relinquish direct control over the education of their children, to the point that parents become incidental to--or even estranged from--the educational process.
Because too many parents are too willing to give up their educational responsibility, the results are predictable. At the height of public interest in education reform during the mid-1980's, Ernest Boyer, head of the Carnegie Institute, lambasted American parents for surrendering the responsibility for their children's education just about the same time that the Nation at Risk report pronounced our schools "mediocre." The cause and effect in the matter were self-evident.
Some educators and school officials resist the idea that parents should have more direct control over the essential aspects of a child's education. But the alternative--in which parents play a role that is too easily secondary to that of the professional teacher--has shown itself to be detrimental to our nation's social, economic, political, and moral stability.
Rather than discourage parents, our schools should encourage and allow conscientious parents to bear a larger burden for the actual instruction of their children--whether these children attend a public, private, or--as is becoming more commonplace--home school. Such parental involvement would not only lower the total cost of education, but strengthen the home and society.
It would also foster the individual growth of children--who want and need more than anything else their parents' time.
© Stephen Stone
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