Parents and Failure
By Bruce J. Gevirtzman,
Author of An Intimate Understanding of America's Teenagers: Shaking Hands With
Aliens
As September approaches, almost every schoolteacher in America fills with
excitement and trepidation. It is, after all, a new year. Like baseball in
spring, anything seems possible for a teacher in the fall when it comes to a
renewal of spirit: new students, new gimmicks, new courses--and hope does spring
eternal. Most good teachers take a mental inventory of what needs to be done to
become more successful in their classrooms; unfortunately, however, that usually
means having to dwell temporarily on the downside of education.
One major obstacle in a teacher’s quest for instilling academic superiority in
her students is parents; after all, every educator knows that the school is a
partnership among students, teachers, and parents. This is an unspoken--and
sometimes formal--contract. But when parents fail to do their part, the
institution breaks down. Students learn less,
teachers percolate with frustration, and precious monetary resources jut into
ineffectual directions.
Clearly, most parents meet almost insurmountable challenges and provide laudable
support for their kids in their schooling; but too many parents have broken the
contracts with their kids and the teachers, thereby aiding and abetting a free
fall of the education system in the United States:
1. When Parents Have Been Sitting On Their Tushes
Any subsequent ramifications of an individual’s slothfulness depend on the place
of responsibility that person hoists in the first place. Sadly, many American
parents--men and women in supreme positions of awesome responsibility--are
simply lazy. Not to diminish the sacrifice, hard work, compromise, and
exhausting dedication of millions of Americans in their pursuit of parenting,
but some mothers and fathers don’t exert themselves too strenuously while
tending to the needs of their own children.
2. When Parents Have Children As Children Themselves
Not that younger parents are always the worst parents; this would be an unfair
generalization. However, when teenagers bring babies into the world, conditions
are not ripe for success. Babies breeding babies reminds us of the amazing speed
at which the female body develops and becomes capable of growing life inside; it
also reminds us of the blooming immaturity that ensues in adolescence, even if
the child has engaged in sexual intercourse and is equipped with fertile eggs.
In short, babies having babies sounds ridiculous--and it is.
3. When Parents Put Themselves Before The Needs Of Their Children
An oft-uttered and insanely ludicrous comment of self-reflection, one that has
turned out to be nothing short of a narcissistic rationalization for depression
and misery, is the following: “Hey, if I’m happy, my kids will be happy! How can
my kids be happy, if I’m not happy?”
Parenting requires compromise, sacrifice, and selflessness; furthermore, it
mandates the recognition that these qualities are essential. Self-denial,
self-absorption, and selfishness have no place in a home where the children’s
education has become a top priority. Mom and Dad don’t always get what they
want, and sometimes the pain of this realization becomes unbearable. Some kids
live in homes inhabited by adults whose names they do not know. Mothers stream
in and out new boyfriends and studs faster than their kids learn new letters of
the alphabet. When Dad gets a weekend custody visit, he farms off the kids to
babysitters or daycare, so he may spend alone time with his new honey (of the
week). Sometimes men and women sternly demand that their own kids take a liking
to their new love interest and even their new love interest’s siblings! Children
whose lives have been torn asunder by death or divorce must now share any
remaining love and affection from the remaining parent with a strange
adult--whom the children may not even like.
4. When Parents Forsake Good Role-Modeling
Kids watch their parents. If mom and dad have absolutely no self-control,
respect for authority, reverence for honesty, or desire for goodness, neither
will their children. If mom and dad devalue, ignore, chastise, and deemphasize
their children’s schooling, so will their children.
Guaranteed.
5. When Parents Give Up On Their Children
More than once a parent has trusted their child’s teacher with these emotionally
charged words: “I have tried so hard with Johnny! I just don’t know what to do
with him anymore!” Translated: I’ve done my best; now, I give up!
In the education arena parents become downtrodden and frustrated all the
time--perhaps here more than anywhere else in their children’s lives. How many
parents finally surrendered, after looking at that last report card? How many
parents finally called it quits, after that last nagging phone call from the
teacher or the school’s vice-principal? How many parents threw in the towel,
after that last warning from the city police department about their kid’s
ditching school? It has become so much less taxing and stressful, so much easier
for parents to officially “give up” on school than to continuously bash their
heads against a brick wall on the little red schoolhouse.
6. When Parents Don’t Spend Enough Time
Columnist John Leo wrote in U.S. News and World Report, on September 3, 1997,
about the critical nature of parenting when it came to a child’s learning. Leo
argues that it is not so-called “quality time” that matters most with parents
and their children; it is quantity time with his parents that could determine a
child’s adult life. In many American homes today we find children as lodgers,
filling space, going almost privately about their daily business, sometimes--but
sometimes not--under the watchful eyes of a nanny, babysitter, or daycare
worker. In these homes kids are not special, growing human beings, small souls
who must be loved, nurtured, attended to, and raised appropriately; after all,
it requires time for all that singing, storytelling, cuddling, cooing, ball
playing, disciplining, and molding. What, with parents both busily off to work
or happily tending to their own social lives or stressfully managing the
conflicts and tribulations of a mixed-and-matched extended family, just how do
they find time to do things with their own kids? The truth, of course, is that
these days numerous American children have only one parent due to death,
divorce, or a mother never bothering to get married in the first place. The
truth, of course, is when it comes to time--actual quantity time--our children
wind up with the proverbial short end of the stick.
7. When Parents Don’t Enforce Rules
Kids want rules and boundaries, and they find themselves a lot more comfortable
with parents and teachers who paint clear borders and enforce them. Children
whose parents compel them to finish their homework and then set a reasonable,
consistent bedtime do better in school than kids whose parents deflect these
decisions to the kids themselves. Parents who set curfews and punish for
violations of those curfews actually do their children a huge favor. Clarity of
law, explanation of (occasional) conformity, and enforcement of discipline go a
long way toward maintaining a home that will help to foster education excellence
in the children.
8. When Parents Don’t Provide Stability and Security
Parental factors that precipitate childhood insecurity--and the ability of
children to perform to their potential in school--abound. They are…
* parents who have affairs; adultery, infidelity; dating after divorce or the
death of one parent
* alcohol or drug abuse
* domestic violence
* financial woes (to which the children have become privy)
* ill health of one or both parents
* extended visitors (family or acquaintances)
* domestic conflict (constant arguing, use of profanity, verbal threats of
divorce)
* frequent changing of residences
* absentee parents
* criminal behavior or imprisonment of one of both parents
Now that so many American homes are headed by men and women who indulge in one
or more of the above behaviors, many American school children are feeling
unnoticed, unloved, and--what may be worst of all--unprotected. When we mix
these with school, the ensuing chemistry is awful.
9. When Parents Aren’t Feeding Their Kids
Parents have the responsibility of making sure their kids are properly
nourished. Sometimes students complain they didn’t have time to eat or grab a
glass of juice in the morning. But that doesn’t let their parents off the hook.
When kids don’t eat right, they don’t do well in school. Every bit of evidence
gathered in recent years--as though we really needed any--proclaims the
importance of adequate food in a child’s diet and its relationship to student
excellence in almost every facet of the education process.
10. When Parents Refuse to Stress The Value Of Getting An Education
Cultural and racial discrepancies in standardized testing and SAT scores have so
much less to do with institutionalized racism and so much more to do with
blatantly inept parenting; the culture or race is totally irrelevant. My own
father, a short, dumpy-looking, white guy from Europe, had been kicked out of
school for helping to throw the principal down a flight of stairs; he never
finished the 8th grade. But he always refused to allow this failure to block his
reverence for the schools and his constant encouragement of my sister and me to
do our best in school. Just before I entered high school (the 9th grade), he sat
me down, his hairless head shining in the lamplight, and he sternly said,
“Listen, Bruce; I want you to remember one thing--something I forgot to do when
I was in school. Here it is: When your teacher tells you to do something--and
he’s wrong--just remember that the teacher is right.”
My father did not have to convince me of the veracity of his wisdom; he showed
it to me almost every day in the glow of his own parenting. Parents who bring
education to the forefront in their children’s lives also bring with this
emphasis a reverence for dignity, discipline, humility, and integrity. Clearly,
these are values that should never be compromised. And when parents reinforce
the worth of these ideals by role-modeling them at home and by demonstrating
behaviors that support and respect their kids’ institutions of learning, their
childre--and our nation--become a whole lot better.
As we get ready for another school year, most parents will remain an asse--not a
liability--to their children’s education, but often the students who do the best
in school are not, coincidentally, also the winners of the parent lottery.
©2008 Bruce J. Gevirtzman
About The Author
Bruce J. Gevirtzman is a high school English teacher who has also, for 34 years,
served simultaneously as a sports and debate coach. Also chief playwright for
Phantom Projects, an acclaimed youth theatre group that has performed across
several western states, Gevirtzman has authored and directed more than 30 stage
productions. He has been featured on NBC and PBS, and in the Los Angeles Times.
Gevirtzman runs educator workshops focused on teen issues.
