[Society for Quality Education has been posting excerpts from the book, The Teaching Gap, (Stigler, Hiebert) and below is my comment.]
Parents: The THIRD FORCE In Education
Every time some new eye-opener appears that claims some magic bullet to improve teaching, parents will sigh and exclaim: “Why don’t they just teach?” They may even say: “ Why, even Johnny asks why he should go to school because the teachers don’t teach!”
So much is already proven (evidence-based it’s called) about effective learning and teaching it becomes a huge puzzle why there is so much toying in the education industry. If styles do differ between cultures but the outcome is there — an “educated” student — why does it matter? The bottom line is that knowledge can be transferred and skills can be developed and positive social behaviors can be acquired — if the expectation is clear and enforced. By whom? By the client, the parents who are the primary pivot in this enterprise.
For too long, parents have been seen as the “enemy” of the system. Please, don’t say this is exaggeration! Just Google “parents enemy schools” and you’ll get 1,000s of entries.
An active third party is actively resisted by the two main forces in education today — the ruling government and the powerful teacher unions. Even while there may be appearances of disagreement between the two, let’s not for one moment think their behavior is not mutually beneficial. Each party benefits from labor peace. It’s the client — the parents and their children — who are left out of meaningful participation.
The book, Parents and Schools: The 150-Year Struggle for Control in American Education (Cutler) outlines the struggle parents have had, and always ending in their involvement in terms conducive to the system, not the other way around. Our democratic beliefs say otherwise, but the system contrives to make convenience for itself as the priority.
Parents should and must take a stand so that their children benefit from systems paid for by the public purse in the lifetime of their children — not some utopian distant future when all issues tossed at them (poverty, class size, class differences, racism, etc.) are solved. It’s the here and now that counts for this developing child. Don’t listen to system proclamations.
Read: Liberals, don’t homeschool your kids (wait several generations for the system to get better )http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2012/02/homeschooling_and_unschooling_among_liberals_and_progressives_.html
Some say there are no Parent Rights in Education. There always have been rights, and we codified them in the 70s — what’s known, what’s good practice. http://www.parentsteachingparents.net/2014/07/parent-rights-their-childrens-education/
Go to my site http://www.parentsteachingparents.net/ and Search — parent rights. Lots of articles.
Australia has just finished a Review of their education system. Big priority is improving relations with parents and services for parents. The suggestion is to provide easy guides to what the curriculum is expected to do at each stage.
New Zealand has had 20 years of self-governing schools, with majority of parents on each school board. This experience in self governance is a transferable skill to the rest of society. NZ is tops of the chart on the CPI, Corruption Perception Index — that is, LEAST corrupt.
See the Michigan story I posted in SQE on Ontario small communities. Here is it that parents, who have homeschooled for 20 years, are now able to have co-operative mutual arrangements with public schools.
It’s in the air. Parents want IN in their lifetimes and their children’s lifetimes.