Lyndon Furst's
A Different Perspective
"What Parents Can Do To Help Their Children Learn"
POSTED 7/1/09
What Parents Can Do To Help Their Children Learn
In a recent discussion with school principals, it was pointed out to me that we have an attendance problem in American schools. Kids miss a lot of class time. Yes, even in our own educationally oriented community, kids miss many days of school. And it is not just high school kids that cut class. In our own lower elementary school 124 students missed at least 10 days of school during the past year. That is nearly one third of the student body. Thirty-two of these children missed at least 20 days of school. That’s a lot of school to miss.
What’s wrong with these kids that they are skipping school so much? Why aren’t they more attentive to their opportunities to learn? Don’t they know a good education is necessary for success in life? Well, when you think about it these are little children who cannot drive themselves to school yet. It is their parents who have the responsibility of getting them to school. So, one better ask ,what is wrong with parents? Don’t they want their children to have a good education? Don’t they know that teachers cannot teach their children if they are not present?
There is plenty of research to show that the more time children spend in learning the more they learn. Children who miss 20 days of school lose a whole month’s worth of educational opportunity during the school year. This adds up after a while and they cannot expect to get as good an education as if they attended every day. Further, when a student misses part of a sequence of instruction, it becomes very disruptive to the learning process. True, teachers can go back and re-teach the material, but it’s not the same as if it were a continuous instructional procedure. There is just no substitute for being present in class when the teaching/learning sequence is going on.
So, what’s the solution to this absenteeism problem? Of course, there are good reasons why children might miss class at times. If they are sick, they should stay home until they get well. If there is an emergency or a death in the family, that is a legitimate reason why a child might miss school. But, I doubt that accounts for all the absent children in our local schools. Parents need to take responsibility for seeing that their children get a chance at the best our schools can give them. That is the least they can do to see that their children get a good education.
It has always been hard for me to understand parents’ casual attitude towards having their children attend school on a regular basis. Many years ago when I was principal of a private elementary school in Northern California, I periodically had a parent who called the school and asked if we were doing anything important on Friday. It seem that they wanted to take their family on a shopping trip to San Francisco and thought that might be more important than anything we would be doing in school. They had the mistaken impression that we didn’t do much on the last day of the school week
I was tempted to respond that "no, we are not doing anything important. We are just teaching your children the things that they need to know for success in life." But, since some of these people were members of the board which reviewed my employment contract, I took the easy way out. I simply said, "yes, we are doing important things on Friday just like any other day." Usually that didn’t carry much weight and the kids were absent on the day in question.
We have wonderful schools in our little village, both public and private.. These schools can only be successful if they engage in this important educational venture in cooperation with parents. Parents are the most important teachers of children. The schools can only supplement what parents teach at home. If parents teach their children that school is relatively unimportant and that attendance is optional, children will not only get robbed of important cognitive development but they will also acquire negative attitudes towards an ethic of responsibility in the workplace when they become adults.
From my perspective, one of the most important things that parents and schools can teach children is responsibility towards the duties of life. That lesson is best learned early in life. Hopefully, parents in our community can find it within their hearts to do the best for their children by seeing that they get to school on time and on a regular basis. That doesn’t cost much money and is certainly worth the effort.