PARENTAL SCHOOL INVOLVEMENT: A DOUBLE EDGED SWORD

 

PARENTAL SCHOOL INVOLVEMENT: A DOUBLE EDGED SWORD

By Domenick J. Maglio PhD. Traditional Realist

A widely held belief in our culture is that more parent involvement in schools results in a better academic environment. Close teacher and parent contact should increase communication and trust. This bond between teacher and parent would supposedly facilitate the student's learning.

This idealized interaction between parents and teachers is based on too many assumptions that do not hold true in our current culture. Many parents today may have as much or more formal education than many teachers. Even those parents less formally educated have access to experts in education and child rearing in the media and on the Internet. This pop culture knowledge has fostered arrogance in many people in dealing with other professionals even if they are in a different field.

This easy information access has made everyone and anyone an educational "expert." It is a striking contrast to the less formally educated parent of a few generations ago. As a greater proportion of our population has graduated from college, the awe and respect once reserved for teachers has decreased accordingly. Teachers today are less involved in the community and they often do not share similar value systems with our more diverse population. 

Modern parents are more concerned and suspicious of trusting their child’s education to schools than in the past. The accessibility to teachers is being blocked by a maze of internal obstacles and administrative assistants to overcome before obtaining a direct meeting with the child’s teacher. An intimidating bureaucratic complex has replaced the friendly neighborhood school.  What happens in school stays in school with little transparency for the parents.  With every media report about chaos in the classroom and the lack of quality education in the schools parents’ paranoia has increased.

No wonder when their first child has to enter school they are armed with a long list of questions. These lists are written by educational/child development experts, which are found in women’s magazines and Internet sites to help them evaluate a school. The educational jargon satisfies most parents although the complexity and enormity of the schools leaves many of them with undefined apprehension.

In our upside down culture today’s parents are fearful for their child’s future experience in school. Unlike their parents who were more critical of their children’s actions modern parents are their child’s advocates. Most parents inform their interviewer that their child is brighter than the average child. They want the teacher to understand the child’s unique abilities and brilliance that he occasionally displays at home. In our materialistic/self promoting culture whenever parents have the opportunity to give their child a leg up or protect him they feel they need to do so regardless or the unfairness to others.

These parents fail to realize their child’s performance can be very different in a group as compared to a one-on-one situation with a loved one. These parents do not fully support the teacher in the daily complex position of dealing with the instruction of a group of children. Rather, the teacher is the one who is guilty until proven innocent.

Even in more innocuous settings such as volunteering in the child's classroom or on field trips, the parent's allegiance is quite clear and startling. Modern parents are not there to be objective assistants in the classroom or on trips but have a specific agenda to give their own child an advantage over their classmates, which was unheard of in the past.

These parents often take an aggressive role to advance their child's interest over other students. The parents more often than not fail to follow proper decorum. The volunteer wants her child to receive preferential treatment from the teacher. The benefits the child should receive vary from being chosen first on line, to being allowed to skip certain rules that the parent disagrees with. The parents believe the teacher owes them for their volunteering in the school by giving the child special consideration.

It is true these volunteers provide teachers with an extra set of eyes and hands in the classroom. They can be assigned simple clerical duties such as marking papers and monitoring different areas for behavior management concerns. Although parent volunteers can come with a significant price tag not only with favoritism towards one’s child but dependability, consistency and judgment issues. Many schools should reevaluate the benefit/cost aspects of volunteerism of having parents in the school.

Schools should be open for parents to know the child’s progress and level of performance, what and how their child is being taught. Insuring communication with parents is essential for quality education. No parent, like no child, should receive preferential treatment regardless of their power or friendship with school personnel.

School districts and their administrators should make it quite clear that parental favoritism will not be tolerated. All American students deserve a level playing field to fairly earn their grades to compete in a meritocracy society.

When a parent volunteer believes her time in school should entitle her child to special treatment, it is time for the school to provide clear policy guidelines. It should state it is never the case to treat one child better than others even if it is their own child.

Domenick Maglio, PhD. is a columnist carried by various newspapers, an author of several books and owner/director of Wider Horizons School, a college prep program. You can visit Dr. Maglio at www.drmaglio.blogspot.com.