Non-fiction / American Education: Parents Who Fail to Teach and the Zombies in the Classroom

When inspiration does not come to me, I go half way to meet it
                                                                      —Sigmund Freud
Change is certain: The notion of change can trigger paralysis to cloak our secular paradise and unleash Pandora’s Box.  American Education is an unavoidable change that has always been a disorderly barrier -- one of many -- aroused from Pandora’s Box in which we have cuddled recyclable patterns of pedagogy and neglected progressing methodology.  This problem has been blooming for numerous decades with no valid resolutions.  Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act isn’t working and it won’t if we continue to have ignorant people in Washington manipulating the show, most of whom have never stepped inside a classroom in decades, let alone taught in one.  However, it’s natural to criticize our government or schools on this matter even though we are blind to see the problem.  And this problem isn’t a result of mediocre test scores or teaching methods, the problem challenging today’s students’ is their parents’ failure to be effective teachers.
The joys of parents are secret, and so are their griefs and fears
– Sir Francis Bacon
The parents of the 21st century are nowhere near the parents of my generation.  In fact, the parents today have this lackadaisical outlook toward life.  These lackaquacks (parents) overlook their responsibilities as parents.  Most of them perceive parenting and teaching as independent occupations; they believe parenting should be left at home and teaching should be left at school.  Additionally, these lackaquacks see both responsibilities as work, so they routinely want the one that demands the bare minimum or at least demands fewer opponents between the two as Urie Bronfenbreriner claims in The Parent and Child Relationship and Our Changing Society, “making parents out of teachers and teachers out of parents – doesn’t work < . . .> we seem to be building a world in which parents and teachers are being defined as adversaries” (48).
        I don’t altogether sponsor Bronfenbreriner’s assertion that parents and teachers are adversaries. If anything teachers and students are the ones being labeled as adversaries these days.  The lackaquacks are just sitting on the sidelines because they feel the educational institutions owe them; they further feel the educators should be liable for teaching their children all they need to know.  From this standpoint, the parents are becoming adversaries toward their children, for their lack of interaction and enthusiasm in their children’s education.
        Nonetheless, their philosophy is illogical because it turns exceptional parents into mediocre ones when they concentrate on one facet of being a parent.  I do concur with Bronfenbreriner’s remarks about generating teachers into parents in the classroom.  It’s grueling enough for an educator to instruct in the classroom, let alone become a surrogate parent.  For example, the caliber of education I received in the ‘80s and ‘90s compared with the education students are receiving now is merely the difference between quality and quantity and the parents who nurtured them.  I know I can’t speak for everybody concerning the State of American Education, nor do I try too.  I modestly rely on my experience as a pupil and as an educator.  My educational career originated in 1985 (as a student) where the aphorism of the day was “Greed is good!”  That assertion continues to thrive today.  Yet, as an educator today, I don’t recall many people declaring “Education is good!” or “It [Education] works.”  And we may never hear that statement unless we smarten up and realize the problem of American Education begins at home not at school.
        Children need encouragement like plants need water
                                                                —Rudolf Dreckars
The parents of my generation had a systematic attitude toward life unlike the lackaquacks of this generation.  Most of them recognized their responsibilities as parents.  And they inculcated permanent lessons to their children: something today’s parents’ fail to do.  I believe the education I received in the ‘80s to early ‘90s was based on quality.  For instance, parents of my generation supported their children’s schooling.  They responded to school obligations and attended school events.  Also, they furnished encouragement and became engrossed in helping their children enhance their schoolwork by supervising homework and actively tutoring their children at home.  But most of all the parents of my generation (again, I can’t speak for everyone) taught us morals, discipline, and respect.
As the ‘80s turned into the ‘90s and ‘90s into today, something began to happen.  Parents’ today no longer feel that they should teach their children noble qualities; furthermore, “parents [are] so convinced that educators know what is best for their children that they forget that they < . . .> are really the experts” (Sclafani 83).  I don’t think parents of this generation have forgotten how to be effective teachers or parents for that matter.  I believe they choose not to be effective teachers because that means they will have to live outside their Post-Jerry Springer world and enter into a world filled with reality and responsibility: “Parents must take back their responsibility in the role of educating their children, [and] they must keep a loud voice and a forceful say in the decisions made by school boards” (Sclafani 92).

Children begin by loving their parents; after a time they judge them; rarely, if ever, do they forgive them
                                                                                        —Oscar Wilde
        This generation of parents needs to decide whether they want their children to become jubilant in life, or to become lackaquacks to impending generations.  I’ll tell you: the world today is a hazardous place to live; our classrooms aren’t much safer either.  According to Michael Popkin, parents need to develop a “democratic method” rather than a “permissive or autocratic method” to parenting and teaching their children (9-12).  Popkin’s is right!  For too long, parents have let their children “do their own thing” (Popkin 12).  Moreover, parents have let their own conceit and ignorance affect them as parents and teachers.  In fact, the first five years of a child’s life is the most crucial.  If a child doesn’t ascertain noble traits or nominal Pre-school lessons by the time he or she has turned five, then the parents have failed not only as parents, but also as effective teachers.  Nothing breaks an educator’s heart more than seeing a room full of students, who are in their teens, incapable of knowing the difference between right and wrong and not knowing how to read, write, or do simple math problems.
        Looking back at Oscar Wilde’s quote, I know I was one of those children who judged my parents.  Still, I wake each morning knowing that I never once thought of forgiving my parents for how they educated me.  Although as I drive to work, I often speculate if today’s students will ever forgive their parents, and then I remember what Alfred Adler said, “In our children rests the future of the people!”  Indeed, the students of today will mold how our future will be shaped.  So far, however, we have zombies entering the classrooms who are as lackluster and apathetic toward education as the corpses who gave birth to them.  Parents, it’s simple: don’t regret tomorrow what you can change today.  A parent may only have one chance to educate his or her child; a child has a lifetime to endure from the ignorance of a parent.  Let’s walk in color, not in the obscurity of zombies.

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