ChildrenKeeping School in Perspective
It's September and that means children return to school. Unfortunately this means the re-emergence of one of the primary stresses in family life: parental anxiety about their child's performance in school. In part, this occurs because parents continue to believe that there is a significant relationship between grades and success in life. There isn't! Not in elementary school or high school or even graduate school. The only modest correlation is some impact on the level of your child's first job after graduating college. After that the skills required for success at work and at home are very different than those required to obtain high grades.
This is not to say learning isn't important. However, educational philosophy and parental concerns tend to focus on test scores and grades, i.e., outcomes, rather than process, individual strengths, style, confidence, relationship skills: all factors which play a greater role in determining success in the real world. A high energy child who only does well when studying topics that interest him frustrates parents and teachers with his inconsistent performance. He is often labeled as an underachiever and receives more criticism than praise for his "failures". Yet, as adults, work success requires finding something that has high interest and matches our skills.
School is still designed in ancient ways. Probably no major "industry" in our country still operates so similarly to the model that existed at the beginning of the Century. Children are required to shift from one subject matter to another, usually with no relationship between the courses. It's like going to five or six different jobs in one day, for about forty-five minutes each. It reduces most learning to rote , isolated tasks, making it boring and exceptionally difficult to a majority of children. The constant transitions speak to the incredible malleability of children. Most adults couldn't do it. Given the natural immaturity of children, the expectation that they should be able to keep all this in order, not lose materials or forget assignments, is an unreasonable expectation for many children.
Homework. One of the worst inventions in education. It overburdens teachers with correcting papers. It forces parents to try to be a surrogate educators in the home, to oversee a contract between teacher and student, to create a constant source of tension and conflict between parent and child when quality time is so much more important to that relationship. As for the children, too often it only serves to reinforce errors and misunderstandings because of the lack of immediate feedback and correction. It would be much more appropriate to design school so each class is long enough for assignments to be worked on in school. Then teachers could help the children who need it and the children would be finished with their school responsibilities when they leave at the end of the day.
Parents start worrying early, trying to get their children into the best programs and pushing for quality performance. "We just want you to try your hardest; the grades aren't important". How often do I hear parents tell me that this is their philosophy. But how do they really measure effort. Look at report cards. Nearly always, higher grades receive the higher effort scores. The two are linked in everyone's minds, whether acknowledged or not.
Parents and teachers need to be more supportive of children's individual differences, recognize that the system is not designed to fit children's developmental needs (more use of play as a way of learning, more physical activity, more concrete learning that is related to the everyday lives of children) and, therefore, be more tolerant of the variability in performance, regardless of perceived intelligence. Parents need to keep in mind that the CEOs of Fortune Five Hundred companies are as likely to come from an ordinary college as a "top" school, that many entrepreneurs were terrible students as were many top sales and marketing people and most people in highly creative careers. The list of outstanding achievers who have learning disabilities is quite long.
The key points are quite simple. Be interested in encouraging your child to enjoy learning, even if it's in a narrow range of topics. Focus less on grades and policing homework, more on discussing content of courses. Don't be afraid for your child's future if she is an inconsistent performer in school. Convey confidence in your child, reinforce her strengths, enjoy her - and she's more likely to develop the skills she really needs to be successful once school days are over.
Back to Children | Back to ParenTalk
Top | Home | My
Practice | Parenting & Marriage Advice | Resources
| Contact
