It took me by surprise seeing children in crisp uniforms at play in the schoolyard the other day, their high-pitched voices at recess carrying over the noise of traffic. Just that quickly, summer is slipping away. Students are heading back to school. The stores are crawling with parents, kids in tow, doing the back-to-school rounds. I have the luxury now of being a mere observer of the ritual, my own days of monitoring the selection of book bags and such long gone, mercifully. Watch families on one of these outings, and you might be peering through a window at family dynamics — and, I imagine, hints of the troubles that await some poor classroom teacher.
It is easy enough to pick out which shopping trip has turned into an agonizing contest of wills: Child wants one thing; mother insists on something entirely different (“You are not going to wear that to school, period.”). An argument ensues on the shop floor. Mother has the purse and the car keys; the child has the sulks, marching stiffly ahead or following several paces behind, the distance between them a measure of mutual indignation. Communication, if it occurs, is in monosyllables.
You can’t miss, either, the families where the children appear to run the show. They are out in front, throwing stuff in the cart faster than mother can say, “Honey, we can’t afford all that.” A tantrum here and a tantrum there, and mother has to decide whether to give in or scoop a child off the floor.
(Shopping for school is women’s work, as far as I can tell. Hardly ever have I seen dads in the aisles, weighing in on the aesthetics of neon green over purple folders. Maybe, they save their participatory energies for the stuff that goes inside the folders.)
The dramas that often accompany back-to-school choices are temporary and often entertaining — at least, to a disinterested observer. What is interesting in all that is the glimpse of private family lives captured in a public setting, the revealing ways of how different parents (and their children) cope with one of the responsibilities of getting ready for a new year of school.
If there is one point of agreement in the all-seasons debate about how to fix America’s school systems, it is acknowledging that parents play a critical role — uninterrupted — in preparing children for school. The rub lies in making sure that all parents not only understand the full scope of their roles but also follow through with it. Who deserves the credit or the blame when students do well or fail at school? The teachers in the classroom and the administrators? The family? It’s a tricky balance to strike.
A teacher in the classroom who is adept at inspiring learning is the single most important contributor to success in the school setting, research studies indicate. That understanding is the basis of many of the current efforts at school reform, such as raising certification and tenure requirements for teachers, replacing teachers and administrators en masse in low-performing schools, shutting down such schools altogether and expanding public-funded options for private and charter schools.
To many critics such reforms simply perpetuate a broken social partnership. They contend that such reforms place too much of the burden for success on teachers and schools and not enough on the obligation parents owe to their children to get them ready for school. Fire a teacher who can’t manage a class, but what do you do with a parent who keeps a child up all night with the blare of a TV show?
There is justification in the criticism. It is infinitely easier to lower the boom on teachers than on parents. For some students, unfortunately, the back-to-school shopping may well be the extent of parental contribution to school. In some cases, the least of a teacher’s problems is the notice that goes unanswered or a sparsely attended parent-teacher conference. A student who cares nothing about yelling obscenities at a parent in a store certainly isn’t going to accord a teacher any more respect. And in a very fundamental way, learning has much to do with respect for the person guiding the process.
Talk about school success, and one of the phrases that slips smoothly into the discussion is “parental involvement.” The question is how to achieve it and sustain it. Public schools have woefully short leverage. A parent might honor a contract with a private school, knowing, for instance, that the school can choose whom to accept. But what are the options for a public school — haul a parent before a judge because there is no quiet spot at home for homework or to sleep? In the flurry of back-to-school activity, I wonder sometimes which parents look inside the book bags before the year is out.
Ofobike is the Beacon Journal chief editorial writer. She can be reached at 330-996-3513 or by email at lofobike@thebeaconjournal.com.
