Improving Parental Involvement in Children's Education

Janet, I agree that we have to take into consideration the experiences of some of our parents in order to begin to understand how they behave. Many parents, especially those from a lower socio-economic group, who do not communicate with the school, have had bad personal experiences as students or as parents and feel threatened by teachers. Teachers must be aware of this and adjust their attitude and tone to help parents to become less afraid and anxious about visiting the school. It should be required that every teacher be exposed to a few intensive parenting courses in-service and pre-service during their career. Parents should also do parenting courses for each stage of the education of their children

 I thought, on reading Courtney's post, about the struggle I have had with my own children to have them fit within schools that simply do not accommodate differences in learning styles.  My son, for example, still has problems being instructed from the chalkboard. However, if a teacher were to spend two minutes with him at his desk explaining clearly what he/she would like him to do, he would be able to proceed without further assistance for the entire day.  My daughter is incapable of sitting still in what one school called "the learning position". She could learn the same material in half the time with a bit of flexibility. Now, my advantage is that I am an educator and also a parent, which allows me a say if I approach in the right way. Had I not pointed out how my children learn, they would not have achieved passing grades.   There are scores of very talented children whose parents consider themselves incapable---and are made to feel incapable---of highlighting what they know in their guts about their children. At the core of the relationship between parents and schools is a society that is stratified in multiple ways. One byproduct is that some persons (for there are many accommodating teachers) develop little kingships in their positions and arrogantly exclude. Parents are not invited to help teachers know about the individuality of their children; rather, children are lumped as a package and their wonderful diversity is 'streamlined' before they come to the end of the grade. Of course, parents need to become more involved but it is imperative that schools recognize that there is a much broader and deeper scope for their involvement. Of course, there is the other side of the issue: there are parents who are unconcerned. More research is required here but I have certainly found, working across the least wealthy communities, that the majority of those who appear to leave both educating and parenting responsibility to the schools are normally very young, undereducated and  simply unprepared for parenting. A beating stick directed solely at the parents is hardly the right solution in this case (for this attitude denies the political and social histories that contributed to this outcome) but neither from my point of view is the ready solution that our experts are now contemplating: a plethora of quick fix parenting workshops, given by experts who have no/little knowledge of the contexts. Inadequate parental involvement among wealthier parents---and the serious consequences for their children---is a less topical issue since these parents do satisfy and many times exceed their financial obligations to the schools. Problematically, for some schools, as Courtney notes, this is the priority.