SHOW ME a highly disciplined, academically successful student, and I will show you a home-school partnership that is positive and cooperative. There is no other relationship that ensures consistent student development than this.
I am so strong in my belief in success through a strong and functioning school and home partnership that I return to the importance of parenting today. Children, though intellectually guided by teachers, more often than not reflect their parents’ values.
We all accept that teachers are governed by rules and regulations. Although there may be good and bad teachers and teaching, I know of no genuine teacher who turns his or her back on a student in need. They respect and go beyond their statutory responsibilities.
Parents, on the other hand, though constrained by general laws, often disrespect areas important to student development. We may be able to dismiss a teacher, but parents are as permanent as life allows.
No priority
I often wonder how it is possible for students to go to school for an entire term and sometimes two, with no books. When this matter is addressed with parents, invariably they talk about how often the books are used at school and how many bills they have to pay. Where is the priority?
Children are involved in acts of indiscipline. Parents are called to the school to discuss the issues with the hope of correcting the behaviour. Often, they refuse to report for the scheduled meeting or turn up so inappropriately dressed that they are not allowed in. Where is the example?
It has now become commonplace for some parents to hotly dispute the identified weaknesses in their children. They blame the school, the child’s friends, the teachers and the principal. They then insist that the child is not to be punished and when that is not agreed to, the expletives and the false accusations fall like rain. This is all done in the presence of other children.
Complicity
All schools are expected to accept responsibility for the care and safety of children assigned to them. Unfortunately, in contemporary society, some children have taken to leaving home and following their own devices without making it to school. For each day absent a letter of excuse should come from a parent. When this is requested, the resistance is stark. Complicity.
I have previously spoken about the unacceptable deviations from the dress code. When these practices are addressed, some incredible responses are elicited. We often speak about the girls who seek to wear the skimpiest possible skirts and earrings that have their ears like centipedes, but the boys are just as bad.
One is left to marvel at how parents can allow their sons to leave home with pants doing what Chelsea Tuach does so well.
It gets worse with the outlandish belt buckles, the identifying haircuts and eyebrow marks as well as the manly earrings. Why are parents so quick to deny their children the beauty of growing from child to adult. Why the rush?
Parents, please understand that school is about developing children. Don’t make it more difficult on them by creating a scenario where teachers are teaching children who are led to believe that they are adults who have parents with a negative value system.
We must be better than that!
Jeff Broomes is an experienced educator, principal and community organiser, who also served as a vice-president of the BCA and director of the WICB. Email: [email protected]
