When the Government Becomes the Parent
Posted in Politics and tagged with Barack Obama, Education, Parenting, president on September 28, 2009
It’s been a while since we’ve tackled a controversial topic here at the Ignorant Historian, hasn’t it? Well, let’s dive right in!
You may have heard already, but President Obama has said this weekend that he wants schools to be open longer: longer school days and longer school years.
In some ways, I agree with him. It bugs me that the local school district here is open for the minimum numbers of minutes and the minimum number of days. To me, that just screams, “We’re only doing this if we have to…if we could get by with it, we’d be open even less.”
I DO think that we’re not doing a great job educating our children. That’s why what he’s saying resonates with me. But I think that it just might be the wrong approach; the federal government once again stepping into the role that the parents have abdicated.
To be honest, it really bugs me that the federal government is involved in education at all. As a citizen, of course the President and other elected officials (on the federal, state, and local levels) have a right to voice their opinions on the matter. But the decisions should be made on the state and local levels. More importantly, parents need to make those decisions for their children and remember that it is their responsibility to educated and train up their children.
Of course, at this point, you might be thinking, “Well, that’s all well and good, but she doesn’t have children! She doesn’t know how it is!” And of course, you’d be right. Though I haven’t had the privilege of having children to call my own, this is still a passionate subject to me since I regularly work with children myself. I do know it’s possible, because that example was set for me.
I went to a public school growing up, but my mom didn’t leave my education to that. She read to my brother and I nightly from chapter books (I believe this is the number 1 best thing she did to encourage us to love reading, a vital skill of a lifelong learner). She reviewed our textbooks at the beginning of the year so she’d know what we’d be learning. She took us to the library. She required us to keep up and continue to develop our skills in the summer by spending about an hour a day on workbooks, flashcards, educational computer games, and other activities. She took us on fun field trips where we could learn while having fun. Both my mom and my dad took many opportunities to teach us through everyday situations.
So, while children do need more than 7 hours of education 180 days of the year, that just might be enough time in school if the students weren’t receiving all their education during that time. Sadly, that’s often not the case.
Parents, please step up. You have been given a blessing, but with that blessing comes incredible responsibilities.
Photo by digicla
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September 28th, 2009 at 11:26 am
Oh my gosh, Peter and I were just talking about this while we were eating breakfast! Yes, the poor guy has to listen to me discuss politics and 7:30am.
I am pretty sure the target demographic for this initiative is the poor, underprivileged children of all races. And unfortunately, many times those children do not have what you described in your post…parents who care about them. How is a child expected to do well in school when they do not have anyone at home encouraging them to even go to school, let alone do well? Many times the only caring adults they see each day are their teachers.
And I totally agree with you that decisions about schools should be made at state and local level, rather than federal. Because, to be honest, what works at some schools will not work at others. I mean, Emma goes to a predominantly upper-middle class school where both teachers and parents are committed to providing a well-rounded quality education. Many of the kids, like Emma, went to private preschools, so they had a great start. Keeping them in school 9 hours a day, 250 days a year is not going to do much.
However, something like that might work well in inner-city and rural schools, where the children have no where else to go, and did not have the opportunity to go to a $1200/month preschool. Those are the children that need the extra attention because they may not get it at home. I am not saying all inner city children have deadbeat parents, but it is a majority. Many are being raised by grandparents. Those people can hardly afford food, let alone books to read.
Like Peter said, it is the typical American way of looking at things….quantity vs. quality. Just because you work 40 hours a week doesn’t mean you are being productive, just like if a student is in school 9 hours a day doesn’t mean that they are going to be smart. Giving these underprivileged children a quality education goes beyond just keeping them in school longer.
September 28th, 2009 at 11:30 am
PS – And our school systems need to quit teaching tests! There is too much emphasis on getting kids prepared to ace exams rather than actually learning the material, and that irritates me.
Children today are not taught quantitative reasoning and analysis skills needed to actually solve problems. The curriculum is designed to teach by memorization. Memorize spelling words, memorize historical dates, blah, blah, blah.
September 28th, 2009 at 12:19 pm
No. I do NOT agree that kids need longer school days. I DO agree that the government is way too involved in education.
September 28th, 2009 at 12:36 pm
I couldn’t agree with you more. However (you knew there’d have to be one of those, right?), the government truly has a limited amount of choices in this. If the government doesn’t step up to educate the future of America, who in heaven’s name will? The parents (and thus, their children) that I have encountered at the school system in which I work could not care less about their children, let alone the education of them.
It would be lovely if the government could back out of education entirely, leaving it up to states and local bodies…but that’s unrealistic. Unless parents step up to the plate, and teachers and schools get to abdicate their roles as parent, entertainer, warden, police, nurse, chef, AND educator, look for even more involvement from the government…aka The Parent in Chief.
I truly don’t know how to get away from that, unless the entire concept of Family in America Today changes…and that would be soooo nice (see how studying education has changed this Democrat??? Family values!). A mother AND a father in one home? WOW! Parents who get away from the idea of “it’s all about me” to “it’s all about my family”? AMAZING! Parents who instill some semblance of values/religion in their children? UNHEARD OF! A parent who actually wants to stay at home with their children and is actually able to do so financially and emotionally? CRAZY TALK! Parents who actually raise their child instead of letting the systems around them do it all for them? PRICELESS.
For everything else, there’s the government.
September 28th, 2009 at 12:50 pm
I FLAT OUT DISAGREE with this. IN TOTAL!
Yes, parents have the ultimate responsibility. Educating children in teh current system for more hours and more days is the most nonsensical idea. It isn’t the amount of time that children are spending in the classroom that is at issue. It is the quality of the education. Adding more hours isn’t do anything more than adding more hours for parents to work and be occupied elsewhere.
Parents already see their children, on average, a very short period of time every day. Add more hours and more days, they will see them less. What Obama wants to do here is seperate the children from their parents for an additionl period of time – more hours in the day and *even on weekends* WHAT?!
How is this a solution to society’s problem? Teachers already complain that that the student/teacher ratio makes for ineffective teaching. One on one time is nil and that’s the most effective means there is!
Children aren’t meant to be cooped up all day every day, sitting at desks memorizing facts. Children must be children in so much as adults and parents need to be adults and parents.
We can’t talk about rebuilding American families at the same time we’re talking about seperating them for longer periods of time. This is not about math scores. This is about control.
If children are “welcome” and “encoruaged” to be in school 7 days a week, then bye-bye church/faith/roles of the fathers/nurturing of the mothers/outdoor play and exersize/creative thought/freedom.
September 28th, 2009 at 3:50 pm
so many local decisions have been taken out of towns and communities and are being made at a federal level. which is the exact OPPOSITE of the founding fathers. small government was their goal. not big government that seems to have happened.
September 28th, 2009 at 4:43 pm
Interesting. I thought this would be far less controversial than you expected, proving once again I’m so far off-center.
Okay, here’s my issues: parents being involved in children’s education should be a separate issue. To me, the problem is the regression children experience during the very long summer vacation. Kids forget stuff, and to be honest, the kids who are being ignored by parents continue to be ignored over the summer when they go to daycare/camps/etc. So it’s not like having the kids in school less increases the time kids spend with parents, at least not for those “at risk” kids.
Now, I don’t agree with longer school days, simply because as a teacher I’ve seen that kids (especially the younger ones) only have so much in them…they can’t be expected to work and focus for that long each day. They get burned out, stressed, tired. And I don’t think school days should be extended for older kids, either, because it cuts into what I consider to be very important time for sports, extracurricular activities, work, etc. But when you consider that most kids go to school for only about half the days in a year, I can’t help but wonder if kids wouldn’t be better served with a longer school year.
And I also don’t have a problem with general guidance being given at a federal level*. The problem with everything being handled at a local level is that things become exceedingly classist. Good schools somewhere? Well, people with money move in, pushing up housing prices, building a higher tax base, making it easier to further improve schools, etc. And what happens to the people who make less money, whose kids might already be at risk because parents work long hours to make ends meet, or they’re in single parent homes, etc? They’re forced into the lesser school districts and get an inferior education, setting up yet another hurdle for these children to overcome. You see this now…it happens all the time. In fact, we just bought a house in one of the better school districts, and we certainly paid a premium to do it. We’re very lucky that we could afford that decision. I don’t have a solution, but I think it’s important to recognize it’s a problem and that handling everything on a local level would only further exacerbate the problem.
*As a side note, I don’t think the federal gov’t is a cure-all, either, nor should they have too much a say. No Child Left Behind is a complete failure in my opinion, though I appreciate the reasoning behind the effort…
And one final note, on this the longest comment, by far, I’ve ever left on any blog…if you haven’t read it yet, you might want to check out Savage Inequalities by Jonathan Kozol. It’s certainly out of date (written in the early 90’s I believe), and you may not agree with his assessments of what the problems or solutions are, but the descriptions of the schools are chilling.
September 28th, 2009 at 5:46 pm
Amen. I’m going to be so bold to say that the reason the school system is failing our students right now is because the government is involved. I think a year-round school schedule makes sense. In fact, I’m contemplating implementing it into our homeschool. I don’t think, however, that a longer day is necessary. I can get schooling done in a lot less time each day because I’m tailoring my teaching style to my student and we’re not having to spend superfluous time on things like class changes, locker breaks, homeroom, etc. I do have the benefit of only teaching one student though (soon to be two). Unfortunately, I don’t think longer days would fix the problems that are plaguing our children.
September 28th, 2009 at 7:31 pm
I tentatively agree with the sentiment of your post. I am, generally, more of a federalist, states’ rights person. However, there are instances where the federal government needs to be involved. Here’s where I play devil’s advocate (given the tenor of previous comments). Has education traditionally been a state issue? Yes. However, our education system is so defunct that our students are not able to hold their own against their peers globally. When American students (future workers and leaders) continue to fall behind in core subjects compared to other students it ceases to be a solely local issue because it’s now effecting the national economy and infrastructure.
Do I think that the curriculum and education policy of our country should be contingent upon who is in the Oval Office at any given time? No. Do I think that, in general, locals know what “works for them” better than those in DC? Yes.
But when the states and localities have let education drop from their priority lists, decreasing funding and opportunities for students, what are we supposed to do? I think previous commenters hit an important point – it’s all well and good to advocate for local rights and supremacy in education, but while school districts are largely funded by property taxes this will be a very classist argument. Suburban schools with a high profit pool have the ability to “complain” about federal intrusion when they do a relatively good job of educating their students (whether private or public). But what about districts where the schools can’t afford books, paper, heat, or meals for their students? And the localities do nothing (out of either ambivalence or inability)? What then?
September 28th, 2009 at 7:43 pm
Ummmm… I’m not sure how to respond to this. I DO agree with you, that it has to be more up to the parents to help their children. As a teacher, I shouldn’t have to tell you every little thing you could be doing… and it’s just wrong to have a student that you can tell has never been worked with at home, has never been shown how to hold a pencil, who has no idea how to draw because no one took the time to show him.
And on that note, I don’t want to be a babysitter, which is how this feels. I mean, I get that parents work year round but that doesn’t mean that the kids don’t deserve a break. Just because mom and dad (or just one of them, since I’m guessing Obama is thinking of single parent homes) work til late doesn’t mean that Junior should have to be at school 11 hours a day… that’s overkill. And yes, I had some students last year that were there that long, and at 5 years old, that’s ridiculous.
I also agree that the government shouldn’t be involved in schooling. I mean look at No Child Left Behind. I have yet to meet one teacher that loves it. Maybe they like the concept, but the execution sucks.
September 28th, 2009 at 9:29 pm
Oh man! I couldn’t agree more! I constantly, like on a daily basis, feel like I am parenting 210 children. It’s as if parents have come to rely solely on the teacher to not only educate their children, but also to teach them how to be a human being.
Another thing? What’s with parents not backing up the teacher?! Not only are we expected to do everything, but students have been indoctrinated with this air of entitlement that is just bulls**t. Kids need to fail. They need to understand hard work. How will they ever know what it takes to succeed if everything is easy and handed to them?
Plain and simple- parents need to parent, and teachers need to teach.
Let’s give parents the time to parent. Teachers work hard enough without adding to the school day.
Preach on sister, preach on!
September 28th, 2009 at 11:37 pm
Wow, this topic really gets people talking (or typing I suppose). This is a really touchy issue as there are benifits to having federal government involved in education and benifits to having state government involved in education. In Canada, education is the responsibility of the provinces (with a few exceptions, such as aboriginal education). Strangely enough, we have people advocating to move this responsiblity to the federal level. Moving the responsibliity to the federal level means that the cirriculum would be standardized across the country which will make it easier for students moving from one province to another adjust. The problem is that each province is unique and it would be difficult for the federal govenerment to create and education system that works for the entire country…
September 29th, 2009 at 8:29 am
Well, FGD, you certainly opened a can of worms today…lots of thought. I, too, am thankful you had parents who read, encouraged you daily. I was so shocked when I volunteered at a school to help with the reading program. Why do fifth graders not know how to read??? This really saddens me, and then asking a student about school, reading, favorite things to do…the answer was “sit in front of the tv”. I am thankful I am the age I am…my heart achess for all these children. QUALITY, NOT QUANTITY…both at school…and at home.
September 29th, 2009 at 9:47 am
Jacki (and others): Exactly. Quantity is not quality. And teaching the test is what our schools have been improving it, yet our students aren’t really doing better.
Amanda: I don’t think it’s unrealistic for the federal government to step out of the education business. They haven’t even been in it very long. It wouldn’t be fast process, sure, but it could be done. They can reverse the trend and re-localize it, but I don’t think they will.
Carrie: That interested me as well. I get the idea of a longer school year and that’s something to be considered, but I was very surprised at the mention of a longer school day. Kids have a hard enough time getting in homework, time with the family, and extracurricular activities now…they’d be exhausted if they lengthen their day! Though I know this is a false, slippery slope argument, I can’t help but imagining a Giver-like society (or another, worse one) where kids are entirely controlled/brain-washed by the government.
Valentine: Definitely. Though I think a longer/non-traditional school calendar should be up for discussion, it should be done in the local communities.
WhatACard: I agree that a longer school year should be discussed. Or at least a non-traditional schedule. We have a lot of year-round schools around here, and by and large, the children/parents who go there like the schedule. I think that when we unreasonably marry ourselves to an antiquated system, we prove ourselves fools. (That’s not to say that there aren’t legitimate reasons why someone might prefer a traditional calendar, but the argument that this is the way it’s supposed to be just don’t cut it.)
Vicki: I agree. And I love the year-round format! If/when I become a teacher, I hope I get a year-round schedule!
Amanda: Something that might address the issue you raised that hasn’t been brought up so far is school choice. While I don’t think it’s THE answer, I think something can be said for allowing parents to have a choice in what school their school goes to (via vouchers), so that it forces public schools to compete to earn the money they get. Certainly not an easy solution, but it should be on the table, at least.
Ari: I find it interesting how quickly those who were against No Child Left Behind forget it when advocating for further government involvement. I don’t care if it’s a Republican or a Democrat in the Oval Office, federal government shouldn’t stick their nose into local/state issues other than to provide encouragement.
Camile: I’ll never forget the first time a parent said to me, “Thanks for letting me know that Suzie was misbehaving, if it happens again she’ll receive punishment.” I felt like the parents didn’t trust me to tell them the truth about their child’s utter misbehavior! I know that the parents I deal with are much more strict on this issue than the average, so I can’t imagine how many times you’ve had to fight both the student and the parent!
September 29th, 2009 at 12:08 pm
School has a role and responsibility to play.. but so do parents. All too many parents want school to do stuff that parents should do – whether it is disciplining, stimulating kids, educating. Parents have the ultimate responsibility for their kids.
Very interesting post!
September 29th, 2009 at 2:23 pm
I agree with most of what was said already, but I will add one additional thing. I think a lot of our educational difficulties could be resolved not by longer days/more education, but by reinstating different forms of discipline into the schools. If the parents aren’t going to discipline their children, they should at least know that their kids will be disciplined at school. Seriously, I think it’s a HUGE problem. My mom spends much of her time attending to discipline problems. I think children would get more out of what they are presented at school if they a)weren’t distracted by other children acting out b)weren’t acting out themselves and c)were aware that there would be consequences (consequences that would really affect them) for their actions. Right now, kids no that the teachers can’t really do much to them. When I was in school we got spanked as discipline. Honestly? I’m all for it now as well…but that’s another controversial topic.
September 29th, 2009 at 4:45 pm
Wow, great post. I think your mother set a wonderful example! I hope to do similar things with my children one day.
September 29th, 2009 at 5:46 pm
Your parents did a great job providing you with more than just school offered. More parents should be like that. If all parents realized that kids need more than just what the education system provides, then perhaps it wouldn’t lead to the possiblity of longer school days or years. However, and unfortunately, many – dare I say most? – parents don’t step up that way. They leave the education of their children solely to the schools. So as children grow up, if the government believes kids are not receiving all of the knowledge they should by graduation, I believe it’s perfectly in their right to amend the system.
It’s a public school system. It receives government money, tax money, etc. And my opinion is that if parents have such an issue with their children remaining in school longer – be it days or just hours – then they can home school or enroll their child in private education. I realize some parents may not have the means to do that. But if people are going to complain about the public school system, they should do whatever possible to remove their children from those environments. Or, simply put, they should deal with the stipulations set by the government who, in essence, runs the entire public school system.
September 29th, 2009 at 11:56 pm
I didn’t get to read all of the reply’s, but I can say that I agree with Carrie 100%. And this is why I homeschool my three youngest boys. I enjoy them. I enjoy being with them and learning with them and playing with them. I can’t even imagine having them gone from me for 7-9 hours a day. NO WAY. And the Government needs to butt out. It shouldn’t have another speck of control over us no matter who the president is.
September 30th, 2009 at 9:29 am
No way. It already breaks my heart that in 3 years I’ll be sending my child away from me for hours during the day. I couldn’t add more hours to that.
October 3rd, 2009 at 7:53 pm
When Hubby and I had a long conversation with the local Primary School principal, we got the same thing–we were shown a book of how many hours the school should have classes and then a table of how every minute was accounted for. Of course, that didn’t address our concerns that the classed went swimming three or four days a week in the summer (apparently, it ‘teaches’ them to get along–yeah, right) or that we had to teach both kids their times-tables so they could get their math done. Or make them look up the definitions of spelling words so they could actually use them at some point.
I don’t know what the answer is, but I’ll know it when I see it.