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Unquestionably, kids can get a good education in School District 51. Many people, including myself, are living proof of this.
I graduated from Palisade High School in 2000 and received my bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the University of Colorado in 2005. I felt that I was adequately prepared for the rigorous scholastics required by my degree. But my success was a result of my own desire.
Personal desire and willingness are the keys to anyone’s success. Each student’s personal desire to excel compels or dispels their ability to overcome discomfort for the purpose of learning. This sort of aggressive attitude cannot be learned in school alone; it is learned in each of our personal environments. And for children, the home is the most dominating environment.
Parents are culpable in passing an attitude of self-discipline on by their own example. The problem is that we have been looking to external sources, such as the government, to solve our personal problems. On a personal, local and national level, the way each of us thinks and behaves determines the health of ourselves, our families, our local community and our nation as a whole. We must recognize this as a society by putting responsibility back on the individual.
Parents need to be able to choose what kind of schools are good for their children. Some kids need boot camps, others will succeed in far more loosely defined surroundings. Parents know this sort of thing.
Transferring responsibility of performance from the district, state and national administrations to the parents certainly emphasizes personal responsibility of parents. If we maintained a system of public funding but gave parents the opportunity to decide to which schools the funding would go to, we could improve our education problems.
DAVID L COX
Grand Junction
9 Responses to “Responsibility for education falls on child and parents”
Posted May 13th, 2008 at 11:19 am Login to Send PM Report this comment
well said, but i believe it goes further….kids have the same opportunities for success, but that success can only be determined by their own desires….parents ultimately shoulder the responsibility of showing their children that all decisions are followed by consequences, both penalties and rewards.
Posted May 13th, 2008 at 11:49 am Login to Send PM Report this comment
AGREED!!
And I disagree with the concept of the government the only entity endowed with the skills and knowledge to educate our children.
The Tenth Amendment to the Constitution forbids that which is nor specifically enumerated to the federal government.
But, even an indepth study of that document reveals no such enumeration.
Posted May 13th, 2008 at 12:35 pm Login to Send PM Report this comment
Educators have fallen in love with the “blame the parent” line. It simply is another way to avoid accountability on the part of the educational system. Locally about 70% of all kids are proficient/advanced in reading, about 55% prof/adv in writing, while in math scores start at about 70% prof/adv in 3rd grade and drop to less than 30% in tenth grade. So if we are goig to blame the parents is it the parents of the 30% who can’t read, the 45% who can’t write, or the 70% who can’t do math. How can they be bad parents for one subject but not the other? Are they bad parents in tenth grade after being good parents in third?
As far as kids go, every kid showing up for the first day of kindergarten wants to be something - a fireman, a nurse, a doctor, a teacher, a mom or a dad. In this district, 12 years later, 30% are dropouts. They came wanting to learn, the system turned them into dropouts.
If it had not been proven by other districts that they can change, can reform, and can improve, then maybe it could be blamed on the parents or kids. But schools and school districts have shown marked improvement without finding new parents, new kids or new demographics. It can be done, just not locally at this point.
Posted May 13th, 2008 at 2:11 pm Login to Send PM Report this comment
A bad Carpenter always blames his tools, and I suppose that applies to teachers too. Those that can, do; those that can’t, teach.
Posted May 13th, 2008 at 3:29 pm Login to Send PM Report this comment
oneperson, i agree that accountability by the education system needs to be addressed, but it won’t do any good without parental participation…a teachers’ job is to put forth the curriculum to the students….if said students haven’t the drive to absorb the information, who’s at fault?…parents are mostly absentee nowadays for a variety of reasons including the fact that it’s almost not possible to have a single-income family…both parents need to work in order to survive in today’s economy…a great many parents today are so wrapped up in their own b.s. that their children get little attention unless they act up in a negative manner…kids nowadays get sat down in front of the tv or computer instead of sending them out to play….i won’t say that the system doesn’t need to be held for their responsibilities, but if we’re going to fix what’s wrong, we need to look at all the angles.
Posted May 13th, 2008 at 5:24 pm Login to Send PM Report this comment
hiteredneck, imo a teacher’s job is tremendously more than to put forth the curriculum. Teaching is a professional blending science (curriculum, programs, standards and assessments) with art (a relationship with each kid, knowing which item was learned and which one needs to be represented in another way). It is not easy, nor is it helped by current district administrators who are more interested in completing checks in a box than in building a cooperative learning community — sort of an educational hospital where the needs of each child result in changes in what the adults do in the building.
Schools and districts that have improved view bad parenting as an obstacle to be gone around, over, under or through, but not a roadblock to learning. They simply adopt the attitude: We know what the goal is and it is our job to make sure it happens for each child. We cannot afford to lose a single child. Indeed, it embodies the definition of excellence: To do whatever is needed to fulfill the job’s responsibilities.
The educational system has mastered putting forth the curriculum. Good teachers go far beyond that to providing the conditions needed for each child to learn. Too many administrators simply create more obstacles: one stupid example: Local high school principal pulls students out of class for an assembly to teach them how to shake hands with the Superintendent.
I have far more complaints with the local system’s administrative decisions than with the teachers. For instance, all the millions of dollars spent on professional development in the last ten years have resulted in no change in student outcomes at the district level. How about spending that money to develop a video instructional library? We already know whom the excellent teachers are. (One administrator was going to give them lapel pins until higher up buried the idea). Use our technology and professional development dollars to film the teacher with the best skills at teaching multiplication of threes and fours. Then provide that tape online for study by a teacher who has less successful results. I strongly feel teachers and administrators who are not being successful would love to see how it can be done better. Then they will adapt that to their classroom or office. The return for ther dollar spent would beat the current return on professional development dollars. It would also make staff development days far more productive.
Blaming the parents/kids simply allows the aducational system to say: “Oh, woe is us. There just isn’t anything else we can do. We are working as hard as we can.” It is a cop-out to justify not making real change.
Posted May 13th, 2008 at 5:53 pm Login to Send PM Report this comment
oneperson, i’m not disputing that our local education system is in dire need of an overhaul…what i’m trying to point out is that we, the parents, are ultimately responsible and must be the ones to effect this change in the system…unfortunately, i don’t see it happening…another problem i see is the sore lack of information (i.e. history and records) on the candidates we elect to the school board…i myself must use the mailed ballot due to work, and they have absolutely nothing on the candidates…another problem is that people tend to look at elections past that level…they see more of the governmental candidates than anything else…until the parents and concerned family members can get together to effect a change, it will unfortunately be “status quo”
Posted May 13th, 2008 at 7:32 pm Login to Send PM Report this comment
Actually in the final analysis we are all mostly self-taught. Much depends upon the drive and the desire for education of the individual. Abe Lincoln somehow managed to get a broad classical education without the benefit of teachers at all and no parental guidance. In my own case, I come from a family in which no one on either side had ever gone to college, much less graduated or gone to graduate school. My parents were unable to give me any advice or educational push, but that did not stop me from pursuing my own self directed agenda.
Posted May 14th, 2008 at 8:14 am Login to Send PM Report this comment
ooohhh, please do not ever leave me a line like this again…
” but that did not stop me from pursuing my own self directed agenda. ”
All by itsself, it is a target rich environment…….
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