I recommend reading the article directly, but if you don't have the time, the gist of the article is a teacher's view of how so many parents today are overly protective of their kids, shielding them from natural consequences, and thus preventing them from growing up. The author uses a powerful example of a student she gave an F for plagiarism. When the mother came to her defense, the mother said that the girl didn't write the paper, she did. Apparently, the mother was not only an enabler, but a plagiarist as well. The article referred to a survey of teachers and professionals on how high-responsiveness and low-demandingness parents today overparent their children. The author of this article felt that this overparenting leads to irresponsible and unproductive young adults. This teacher saw herself as playing a small part in counterbalancing this trend by giving out Fs to lazy and coddled students. Indeed, the teacher who wrote this article seemed to think that her most important lessons were not English, but moral lessons. She made the following statement about her role as teacher:
You see, teachers don't just teach reading, writing, and arithmetic. We teach responsibility, organization, manners, restraint, and foresight. These skills may not get assessed on standardized testing, but as children plot their journey into adulthood, they are, by far, the most important life skills I teach.
First of all, why is it this teacher's place to teach anybody's children values (i.e. "responsibility, organization, manners, restraint, and foresight)? It seems I've read somewhere, several times, that most people believe it's the parents' job to teach values, not the teachers'. Even if you allow that values are, to a certain extent, unavoidable for teachers to address, most people do not want teachers to consider values to be "the most important skills" that they teach. Furthermore, this teacher had no evidence to confirm that the children actually learned to accept responsibility. This teacher merely had faith that, through her consequences, some of the students might learn responsibility at some point in the future.
Another friend of mine (a former teacher--until she had enough!) recently told me some similar war stories from the classroom. She had been an Art teacher for about eight years in two separate school districts--one largely minority and poor, the other mostly white and affluent. Despite the poverty, chaos, and funerals, she liked teaching the poor, minority students more than the rich, white students. The difference? The rich kids had an attitude of entitlement. The poor minority students, when they came to school, would show up in Art class and put forth at least some minimal effort. If they couldn't draw, no one made a big deal of it. For the most part, they just tried to have fun. If their efforts were lackluster and she gave them a B or a C, they didn't complain much. It wasn't like they were trying to get into Vassar. If my friend did give a D or an F, it was mostly due to poor attendance or extreme defiance. At that point, the administration often picked up the responsibility of discipline and handling the parents. By contrast, with the affluent kids, there was a sense that her class was "only Art class" and the students expected an A for just showing up. My friend had enough when she caught one of her affluent students cheating on an Art project. She thought something was fishy when a cheerleader who couldn't draw a stick figure turned in beautiful drawings. It didn't take much detective work to find out that the girl had someone else do the work for her outside of class. My friend tried to give this pretty white cheerleader an F, but the mother fought her, and the administration buckled. My friend's only consolation was that, from then on, the girl did her Art projects in class.
Now, with apologies to my friend, I don't wish to advocate plagiarism. Nor do I promote cheating. But I have to ask myself, "What does it really matter?" The girl was popular, pretty, affluent, and her artwork was embarrassingly bad. So, to save herself the humiliation, she had someone else do her assignment. Was this cheating? In high school, yes. In real life, no. In adulthood and in the workforce, people have other people do their work for them all the time. It's called "management." In fact, in most places of employment, the management makes more money than the regular employees. In the real world, convincing other people to do work for you is a highly valued skill. Drawing? Painting? Sculpting? Not so much. Realistically, same for plagiarizing. Now, I'm not talking about copyrighted work. I'm referring to things like policies and procedures, various form letters, and so on. These types of writings are stolen all the time. And why not? Saves time. Generally the borrowed versions are better than anything most people could come up with on their own. And besides, most of business writing is fluff anyways.
My recollection of public high school is that I had two excellent teachers, a handful of surprisingly good teachers, and the vast majority were split between coasters and petty bureaucrats. I don't wish to accuse my friend of being a petty bureaucrat--I'm sure she wasn't--but I also think there's something in the linoleum of public high schools that brings out the pettiness of even the most well-meaning teachers. First of all, it seems to me that the vast majority of school teachers have had only one real job, teaching school. I'm not counting the job flipping burgers, the ideal training ground for petty bureaucrats. Nor am I counting the summers as a lifeguard at the pool, the perfect job for future coasters. I'm talking about real adult jobs that require skill and intelligence. For a teacher who goes from high school to college and onto teaching, his or her experience of reality doesn't extend much beyond the public school system. As a result, simply through lack of exposure and inexperience, many modern teachers have a warped perception of how the real-world works. They live in a vindictive world of "fairness" that only occurs in the oxygen-rich atmosphere of the public school system. They can easily become Czars of their own classrooms, and they punish any student who fails to conform.
For the most part, I agree with William Glasser, MD, who has written prolifically on this subject, starting with "Schools without Failure." With rare exceptions, children do not learn responsibility from receiving an F. Instead, they learn that they are no good at that subject, and they learn to never apply themselves to that subject again. This phenomenon is shockingly common. Today, the majority of Americans would agree with at least three if not four of the following statements: "I'm no good at Math. I can't draw. I'm terrible at spelling. I'd rather die than speak in public." A society that confesses incompetence at these most essential skills is educationally impoverished. But the truth need not be so pessimistic.
In truth, most people are capable of developing minimal competence at all of these skills. The problem is they have learned (mostly in public school) to give up trying. Each of these skills requires a certain degree of determination and perseverance, but the school system has taught them that Math requires intelligence, Art takes talent, Spelling is innate, and Public Speaking is only for outgoing personalities. Nonsense! Talent is only 10% of the equation. 90% of what it takes to learn Math, Art, Spelling, or Public Speaking is practice. From a young age, educators should give students ample opportunities to practice each of these skills, without humiliation. Instead, they should meet their students where they are and build from there by recognizing effort.
This is where homeschooling can easily outshine public education. By allowing a child to work on each skill at his or her own pace until the child achieves mastery, homeschooling walks a child through a pyramid of skills without breezing past skills that will be necessary at later. This is advantageous to both fast-learners and slow-learners. A quick student can move onto the next skill and avoid the drudgery of stagnation. A slow-learner can proceed at a more deliberate pace, actually mastering skills and dodging the frustration of never really understanding the material.
In his engaging book, Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell describes what it really takes to learn, the patience to work on a problem until you can solve it. The thing that separates successful students from failing students is not raw intelligence, but the willingness to stay longer on a problem until it makes sense. When students stop trying, they invite failure. Gladwell makes a compelling case for how intelligence is really a small part of what makes a student--or an adult--successful. Beyond endurance, students learn a whole set of skills that support their educational efforts. Gladwell explains that social class is actually a bigger predictor of success in adulthood than intelligence, and this is not just because these folks are given better opportunities. Middle and upper-middle class students learn assertiveness. If they have been genuinely wronged by a teacher, middle-class parents are more apt to call for a parent-teacher conference. Lower-class students, by contrast, tend to be more passive. In this context, what the previously mentioned article called "overparenting" might actually be considered modeling useful social skills. According to Gladwell, the responsiveness of middle and upper-middle class parents is actually what makes for better outcomes. These students of responsive parents learn how to assert themselves with teachers and administrators. Rather than avoid conflict, these parents model and the students learn problem-solving. They learn not to be intimidated by authority figures. If kept in proportion, these assertive parents and students might be pains in the neck, but they demonstrate the types of skills that people need to succeed in the real world. But perhaps there's another factor that hasn't been considered.
Ever since the Child Abuse and Protection Act of 1974, there has been a paradigm shift in how people raise children. Previously, it was the parents' job to prepare their children to become adults, and the teachers' job was to support the parents in this role. Nowadays, the parents' role is merely to protect the children from harm, and the school system (starting with daycare and ending with college) takes on the task of preparing them for adulthood. Often, this has led to a hostile relationship between parents and educators. Under this new paradigm, it's only natural for parents to protect children from hostile educators, who no longer view themselves as serving the parents. Indeed, if harm comes to the children, the teachers blame the parents. And if the students are unprepared for adulthood, the parents blame the teachers. A once harmonious relationship between parents and educators has become acrimonious as teachers no longer respect the sovereignty of parental rights and parents no longer trust teachers.
Prior to the Child Protection Act, parents expected children to be independent and resourceful. Today, parents are paranoid that their children will be abducted by a serial killer. Today's parents are prone to either hover over their children as they engage in structured activities, or parents plant their children in front of the television or game system. The result is children who don't know how to explore, amuse themselves, improvise games, or resolve conflicts on their own. As these same children enter middle-school and high-school, just when they need more autonomy, the school systems become larger, more competitive, and develop zero-tolerance policies. Many students just don't have the social skills to traverse the gauntlet of secondary school. As a result, many bright students fail. No wonder the parents don't trust this process. Habitually in the role of protectors, they merely try to protect their children from the mean principal and vindictive teachers.
The solution to this dilemma is twofold: parental bonding and higher expectations. If parents can regain their role as the most important influence in their children's lives, then they can have a positive influence on their values and behavior. Yes, even in adolescence, it is possible (and used to be normal) for young men and women to value their parents' opinions most. Today, however, young people value their peers' opinions much more than their parents'. The same goes for all authority figures, including teachers. Add just a little bit of stress--divorce, military deployment, poverty, disruption--and young people become indifferent to their parents and authority figures' admonishments. Sure, students will feign lukewarm attachment to their parents and teachers, but in truth they only comply with requests so long as the parents or teachers provide for the student's perceived needs. Buy them some new clothes, a cellphone, and a laptop, and they will comply for a while, until they have further demands. In truth, today's adolescents have an one-sided relationship with their parents. Young people take advantage of parents who are afraid to take charge for fear of being accused of abuse or neglect. Parenting a defiant teen today is essentially slavery for the parents, who may feel no recourse but to respond to the teen's demands.
So, in response to this article, the problem is not overparenting, but underparenting. Generally speaking, highly responsive parenting is good. But responsive parenting is not so good if the demands or expectations upon the child are low. The trouble is that many parents today have relinquished their authority. It starts at six weeks when they put their child in daycare. By preschool, their children are institutionalized and compliant with the routine of rote education. By fourth grade, however, most of their peers no longer consider learning to be cool. So progressively from fifth grade through high school, students' main goal in school is to prevent their teachers from educating them. As they grow, they become remarkably adept and subtle at thwarting the educational process. By high school, the students are in charge. Like inmates in a state correctional institution, they allow the guards/teachers to run the prison/school.
The reality of this scenario is too much for some students and parents to bare. These students and families often opt for homeschooling rather than live the lie of public education. I suspect this occurs mostly at either the top or bottom of the bell curve in terms of educational achievement or expectations. Some low-motivation students coerce their parents into giving up on public education and sign up for homeschooling, unschooling, or cyberschooling. These changes to homeschooling typically occur in junior or senior high, just as the student had disciplinary or academic problems. Other high-motivation students tend to start homeschooling earlier, before the public schools can do much damage. This often occurs at the behest of the parents.
Outside of homeschooling, the only other way to avoid this phenomenon is to start education much later, after the children have strongly bonded with their parents who are stable and reliable figures at home. Daycare, preschool, and even kindergarten can actually hinder this process. On the other end, schools need to expect higher standards of educational achievement. Schools need to move away from mainstreaming and expect smart students to learn. If students have stronger bonds with their parents, they will have more respect for their teachers. In turn, the schools can demand higher competence from these students. But this approach can only work if the vast majority of the families in the school buy into this high attachment and high expectation approach. Until then, for high responsiveness and high demandingness parents, homeschooling remains the best option.
