It takes a village to earn an F

By Steve Gillespie / managing editor

July 05, 2009 12:48 am

— A newspaper article published in April highlighted teachers accusing parents of failing in their assignments as guardians and undermining the effort schools put forth to educate their children.
Students were said to be socially undeveloped, unable to dress themselves, increasingly violent and equipped with bad manners in general.
"We are in danger of becoming a nation of isolates, of families living separate lives under one roof. The bedroom, once a place to sleep, has become the living space for the young, spending hours in front of computer screens, on social networking sites or immersed in computer games. Children and young people often spend little time with their parents and siblings," said Mary Bousted with the Association of Teachers and Lecturers.
The article wasn't published in Mississippi or anywhere else in the United States. It ran April 5 in the oldest Sunday newspaper in the world — The Observer in the United Kingdom.
Parents also have complaints that can be found all over the world. Money worries are everywhere. It's harder to support a family. Parents often work multiple jobs while struggling to keep their children involved with extra-curricular activities.
And some of those educators who point fingers at the home life of their students and blame parents for not being involved enough when kids aren't doing their best, are defensive and arrogant when anyone other than an academic tries to be involved with education.
School districts often implement things without input from the parents, then make them follow a chain of command afterward that only sends their complaints to deaf ears. Parents are also seeing their taxes continually increase, only to watch their government cut funding for the thing that's most important to them — education.
Students have a life, too, and it's not an easy one. Every generation faces more grownup issues at an earlier age than the one before it. And, many of these students are also working citizens. But our youth sometimes are treated and discussed as a commodity rather than individuals and that's frustrating to them.
They're told to do obey authority, keep their mouth shut and their pants zipped, and to just say "no," unless we need them to go to war.
The things kids do are the things adults are doing around them, and there is always someone somewhere eager to abuse and exploit these young people. The saddest thing of all is that sometimes it's parents and educators who are doing the exploiting.
Educators, parents and students all have an enormous amount of baggage and pressure on them, if ever life really was as black and white and goofy as a "Leave It To Beaver" episode, those days are long gone.
Schools, parents and students have got to find a way to have meaningful exchanges about what they need, want, and expect from each other in terms of education, and it needs to happen together on a regular basis. Everyone needs to be at the table and the table needs to be round — not a triangle.
Having each of these three groups point fingers and blame each other for our combined failure hasn't gotten us anywhere yet.

Steve Gillespie is managing editor of The Meridian Star. E-mail him at sgillespie@themeridianstar.com.