Almost Done--For Now

Earlier I referred to what was presented as the primary focus at our recent parent-teacher's meeting--the shared responsibility all adults have to nurture and disciple children.  The responsibility always, first and foremost, however, belongs to parents.  When parents fail to take this seriously enough, their children will not function well in a classroom school.  In my "ideal world,"  it would be possible to send such children back home to stay there until the job is far enough along to make their presence in the schoolroom work well again.

I fear that the reverse happens sometimes--the job is not getting done at home so the child is sent to school to see if it can be finished up there.  (I'm sure this is not usually a conscious decision-making process.)  This sets up a cascade of frustrating and fruitless events.  Parents erupt with criticism of what the teacher is failing to accomplish or the methods he/she is using to try to accomplish it.  Teachers feel no support or cooperation from the critical parents and can't find a way to solve the problem without the parents' cooperation.  The children flaunt their selfish and independent ways.  The only satisfactory way to solve this problem is for the parents to change and then to train their children differently.  Tweaking classroom procedures or changing personnel there will not solve the basic problem.  Is that stating it too strongly?

I would like to see school personnel immediately take such matters to church leaders.  If the problem is in the home, it's unlikely that it can be solved in the school anyway.  What is needed is discipling for the parents, and that, too, is not a role teachers should be saddled with--no more than any member to member expectations outside of school.  In the church, parents and teachers are on level ground, and both of them answering to a third party could often bring a lot of clarity to the real issues.

It would be wonderful if such interventions could be implemented before experienced and capable teachers resign in exhaustion and disillusionment.  Why are we willing to go to great lengths to save parents from having to carry out what is their primary parental responsibility?

Several decades ago I first realized that no educational approach can be strong without a solid sense of parental responsibility in the matter.  Along with this awareness came the realization that seeing classroom schooling as the default schooling choice was a mistaken focus.  That approach involves delegation, and ideally delegation is what should happen when the default (parents-as-educators/disciplers) can't happen for a legitimate reason--and I believe there are such.

When classroom schooling becomes the default, parents can very easily send their children away with a sense of entitlement intact for everyone in the family, and they may all share an accompanying sense of invincibility. (I/my children have a right to be here on our terms.) That is a recipe for disaster, and no teacher, method, or environment is likely to effect a change.  This is a case of wrongfully claiming rights and abdicating necessary responsibilities.

If parents have truly considered what they are able to do and have already followed through on what they were able to do, if the need arises for help outside the family, they will receive help humbly and gratefully.  Parents will be thoroughly familiar with their children's tendencies toward mischief and will not find it hard to believe if a teacher notices the same tendency. Teachers can add to the parents' teaching and discipling efforts fairly seamlessly in such cases.  Certainly, it's part of a teacher's responsibility toward his/her students, and it will likely be unencumbered with deep-seated reluctance on the students' part.

I know for a fact that our children did not always make their high school teachers' hearts glad.  In one such case, I suggested that our child (and perhaps others) do their work at home for a while.  It didn't happen.  I think the teachers thought it was their responsibility to make things work out at school without our help, and probably a good number of parents thought so too.  Maybe this was a case of teachers taking on too much responsibility, and failing to recognize parents' responsibility in the matter.  

This brings up the need for everyone on the classroom school side of the education scene to willingly relinquish responsibility that is not legitimately theirs.   A classroom is no place to build a fiefdom or kingdom, and a false sense of importance in any of those who serve there is a detriment to the learning process.  This kind of dis-order could well also be a matter benefiting from third-party mediation.

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Quotes from emails I once sent to a "wounded warrior" from a classroom teaching situation.

"Once you have made the decision to delegate your children's education, you have no right to complain about how it's done.  You have only brother to brother rights with the teacher, exactly as is true for any two members of the same Christian body."  [You can always do it yourself if it needs to be done your way.]

I think part of clearing up this issue is to give attention to what parents are responsible for.  When they're not doing what they are responsible for, their efforts to control things at school end up being destructive all around, and in such circumstances, giving them more control at school is obviously not the answer.

The bottom line of what is becoming clearer to  me is that the classroom school model has some significant inherent flaws, and until we recognize that, we will always be looking for something that is out of reach.  However, it's true also that not all the problems that occur at school originate there.  I believe that the proper response often would be to address the home/parenting issues, but the mechanisms for doing so require a lot of maturity, and school personnel usually can  not effectively address that because of their role otherwise--and possibly no one else sees [the need].