Old Timer - dont blame parents

[willvo]

The State Scool System from 1870 to around
40 years ago did not require parental support
for children at home. I had a mere 10 years
education entirely at school, just like
previous generations, and have had 26 years
in I.T. Something has gone horribly wrong
with all these differing methodologies and
political initiatives. The parents just had
to get their kids to school, thats it.
Recently saw Charles Clarke MP, former
secretary of State for Education, on TV
saying that teachers are not wholly
responsible for kids education, that
amazes and frightens me for the future.
This turnaround in the State System from
not depending on parents to depending on
them needs national debate. NUT Bumper
Stickers are what provoked Charles Clarke.,
"If you can read this thank a teacher".
The NUT must have an accurate folk memory
of how things used to be. The politicians
are to blame, not parents or teachers.

Parents have always had a lot to do with the education of their child-it doesn't start and stop at the school gate. Children have always done better with parental support an they always will. It is much better now that parents are allowed into schools.
I would agree that politicians are to blame-they should stop tinkering with education and leave schools to get on with it.One size doesn't suit all.

If you look at kids in care, they get the
worst education, however when the state system started and until several decades ago,
this would not have been the case. ITs only
with the advent of 'parents must help' that
kids in care get the worst deal of all.
I never got parental help, nor did my Mum
who surfs the internet at 77 and reads a lot
and does crosswords, all from a state system
that did not used to depend on parents.
We have lost something very precious over
last 40 years or so. From 1870 to about
1970 it worked, although it could obviously
have been improved, but many of those
'improvements' have detracted from the
state system and put the onus in parents
hands, great if you have supportive parents,
not so great for families under pressure or
orphans.

The problem here is that 40 years ago, a nuclear family was the norm, divorce wasn't as common, the mums I knew stayed at home and there were boundaries and consistency in parenting. Much of that has now gone.

The teachers need the parents to send their kids in properly equipped, having had breakfast, and preferably having been taught some manners and common courtesy before they get to school. I teach my child that, and give him rocks if I hear that he has been rude or misbehaved at school. Sadly, many parents don't - but support their child against every complaint levelled at them.

IMO we hear far too much about the rights of the children, but the kids (and their adults in some cases) aren't willing to accept that responsibilities go hand in hand with rights.
I am responsible for much of my child's education if you use that word in the broadest sense, and not just within the confines of school.

I can't see how SAHMs could have managed to do their homework every night when they had to cook, clean, wash everything by hand, iron, look after a load of children, etc...my parents say that their parents never had time for them as they were really rushed off their feet all the time. Typically it was the older siblings that helped a bit. I think there is an awful lot of pressure on mums these days to be the b all and end all - work, be yummy mummy, cook meals fresh, do stuff with their kids...the list is endless, but is it realistic? Not sure.

I don't think that parents need to input into their children's education as much as they do....(as evidenced by lots of posters, mums now treat parenting as a profession).

However, parents need to love their children , show interest in them and support them.

This enables children to be happy to learn, behave well at school and have confidence.

The Kumon maths, violin lessons and extra french is just the icing on the cake and sometimes could be detrimental.

Friends who teach at private schools say that their pupils are so over educated that when they get to university they struggle. (they have no independence of learning)

emy, whilst I'm sure mothers in the past DID have plenty to do, there's no doubt about the fact they were way less 'child centric' than we are expected, as parents, to be. It was called benign neglect! AND though this is blasphemy to say: 30 years ago, people didn't bath every day (cue mum supervising bath time, washing mountains of towels, cleaning scum-ringed bath); wear freshly laundered entire outfits every day. Despite it being done in an old top loader, there was A wash day every week. It was washed, mangled, rinsed, mangled, dried and ironed. End of. I have my machine on at least 3 times a week and iron that often too! I recall a BLOKE saying that though his mum was busy, she had time to get her hair done at the hairdressers, half a day every week!

Also, back then, of course, there was a future for the less academic child. There were labouring jobs, apprenticeships, manual traineeships etc. Now it's university or bust. Or so it seems! When you 'need' a degree to teach surfing, you know you have to put way more effort into your less academic child these days!

Back then the role of the mother in the house was, for better of worse, narrowly defined. This brought benefits as well as claustrophobia! Now, and this is the biggie- most mums are also significant bread winners in the household. This brings benefits AND guilt which we are taught to channel into spending far more one on one time with our DCs to 'compensate'. I realise this has drifted off OP (sorry!) but there are so many factors at work!

ampere I agree with everything you said there !

I agree with ampere's post. I am a much older mum and DCs still did better with parental support in the 'old days'. We had a children's home in the village and the children attended my school-they still did much worse then, for example not one passed the 11+. Homes were not 'child centric' but parents had time to talk, teach nursery rhymes etc. Nowadays you regularly get someone posting on G&T because their 3 yr old can count to 100, knows their letters, asks intelligent questions, has an advanced vocabulary etc and they wonder how the reception class can cope! All it means is that the child is reasonably bright and has spent a lot of time with adults-something that was always done, but it never occurred to anyone that it was out of the ordinary.(It wasn't then and it isn't now).

The problem is that once you start to help your child with academic work you realise that you can accelerate your child's learning very quickly just with a few one to one sessions - and you realise that your child's potential is not being reached because they are being left to drift most of the day among the chaos of a class of 30. I'm sure if my children had a better level of concentration, the improvement wouldn't be as marked, and they wouldn't need so much input at home - I look forward to that day!

The problem is, that some mothers have a lot of time to spend on their children, so they do, and then they raise the bar for the rest of us, who don't have time.

My childrens school seems to assume that there will be 1 SAHP to help the child every day with homework. Joke - I have 3 in the school, and work full time. I have to pay someone else to help them with homework, test preparation etc.
It is ridiculous, and I wish we were back in the old days when parents did nothing, and the school took the responsibility for the child's academic education.
I dont believe that people coming out of Oxford now, with all the parental input they've had, are better in the job market, or know more, than we did coming out having studied without all the homework and parental cramming.

They would be much better if they did their homework on their own. The big problem these days is that they are so used to being spoon fed that they don't think for themselves.

I'm quite sure graduates coming out of Oxford now have fairly similar chances of making it as graduates coming out of Oxford 30 years ago - but I'm also sure there's more people now think they want to have a go at winning the golden ticket that is Oxbridge. You can leave the learning of you dcs to the school - a lottery really. If their learning style and concentration levels coincide with the school's you're on to a winner - otherwise you're heading elsewhere.

I'm not referring to homework as unless you have a shit hot teacher it's not really tailored to a child's learning needs, so IME it makes very little impact on their progress.

The only boy in my comp (25 odd years ago) to go to Oxbridge had two teachers as parents! Thinking about it now - he wasn't often out playing with me and my mates after school!

Johnny- the whole point of homework is that it's to advance the child's learning. Things h/w should never be are:

1. finishing off something that there wasn't time for time for in class (unless the child was messing around and didn't get their work finished because of it)
2. something entirely new that the parent then has to teach from scratch
3. too difficult to be done without parental help if need be (because this stigmatises children whose parents who have literacy or language problems)

What it should do is:

1. reinforce what's learned at school- some subjects such as maths require a lot of repetition to acquire a skill, which is not a suitable use of class time once the first few have been done. 2)show the parent what the child is doing at school and involve them in a good way in their learning. A corollary of this is the parent gets the chance to see where and whether the child is struggling with particular aspects and can either help them or report to the teacher where the problems lie.
2. further develop independent learning skills- eg homeworks that involve finding something out, carrying out a longer project, or learning something for a test.

The more input a child has, both in and out of school, the more likely that child is to do well both in and out of school. You cannot hand over the entire job of learning societal skills (which includes basic literacy and numeracy) to teachers- anyone who does is disadvantaging their children.

The homework imo is just a vector for parents to channel their help through.

johnny - Oxbridge is NOT a golden ticket. Generally, there is a very high average IQ there, and most people there would succeed the same whichever university they went to.
There are loads of Oxbridge graduates who are teachers, engineers, doctors, and other normal jobs. We arent all rich and working in the City.

I have had people say to me, when I said I went to Oxford "you mean Oxford Brookes??" They simply cant believe that I (a normal looking person) went to Oxford. Ridiculous stereotyping.

That argument "You can leave the learning of you dcs to the school - a lottery really. " is the insidious pressure that has brought the current situation about.

It is not just the school, it is what the children do on their own that should count.

I don't want to leave my dd's education just to school and I say that as a teacher who works full time.

I don't help my daughter with her homework in a direct sense. She does it on her own but I do provide her with a stimulating environnment which is my job. So we read with her every night, we know what she is good at and we extend it and we support her in her weaker areas. We take her to museums, castles places of interest. If she is doing a project at school if we can make that real with a visit somewhere we do. She has a house full of books and we regularly go to the library to do research. I ensure she goes to bed on time, gets up on time, has somewhere quiet to do her homework. I support the school with discipline, am on the PTA and my partner goes in to help with school.

We are not doing the school work for her but providing an environment that says learning matters. IMO that is how parents support a school.

When I said an Oxbridge Golden Ticket - I was drawing on the experience of my OH who is a Cambridge graduate and who's company only employ graduates from Oxbridge - they see them as the cream of the crop. And yes he is incredibly hard working but he does feel the extra glitter of an Oxbridge education on his CV has opened doors which would otherwise have been shut in his face. This is of course only his experience and his opinion, maybe someone has details of a more objective study.

Meant to say - only employ Oxbridge graduates for their main business functions - admin and cleaning staff would be exempt from the requirement. An Oxbridge education is seen as a signal of quality - a bit like branding.

nicely said wastwinset....

Duchese - I completely agree with your points about what a good homework is - but I have my doubts that many of our dc's receive homework which meets your criteria - I know mine certainly don't!

JohnnylovesJazz if that is the case you need to be on contact with the school so it can be changed.

Oh I have asked repeatedly (as have others) and got nowhere - eventually you give up on trying to change the school and re-direct your energies to just going your own way.

Which is probably the reason why so many parents at our school choose to use Kumon, tutors and give their kids extra work to do at home and why the school continue to get exellent results and appear to be successful despite pretty average teaching.