A Contrast is Style: Parenting and Education

We were having some repair work done on our motor home in San Antonio a while back, and had to take our meals out.  As a result, we had both breakfast and lunch at two separate diners.  Nothing fancy, just food.  In both cases we ended up sitting at a booth next to a young mother, her toddler and two older women who could have been siblings or friends.  One child was a boy, the other a girl.  Both were clean and well cared for.  Both were about the same age and both were Hispanic.  In both cases, we were eating in blue collar neighborhoods where money was not missing, but dear. 

            As both meals progressed, it became evident that the two children were surrounded by two entirely different types of parents.  The baby girl (at breakfast) was talked to and played with by the women with her.  She smiled and interacted with all of them.  The boy (at lunch) received food and minimal attention, but the women were busy talking among themselves in some of the coarsest, rudest, most common language I have heard.  The, “f” word seemed to be used as a regular mark of punctuation.  The women had no regard for the people around them, or the impression they were making on the young mind at the table.   

            Being a member of a minority or being poor had nothing to do with how these women behaved, or how their children were being raised.  It was simply a matter of choice.  One parent was choosing to be an attentive and well-behaved role model; the other parent was choosing to behave like a slut.  What will be the effect of both styles of parenting when these children start their first year at pre-school?

 As a retired teacher/principal/college educator, I have never voted against a tax increase for education, and I never will.  But, I wish the people wanting more money for schools would be equally as willing to tell voters the truth about education.  Schools can’t put in what parents have left out—at least not in a timely fashion.  Too many liberals want to blame lack of funds for lack of educational success and stop the discussion there.  They refuse to tell parents that what they do with their children during the first 5 years of life make school success or failure almost a given.

There is now a new study of old research that points out that how much and how often a mother talks with her children in the first seven months of their life has a direct relationship to that child’s success in the early years of school.  I wrote about the original research of this phenomenon in the first edition of my book, Beating the Bell Curve, in 1999. 

In too many homes the conditions of a rich learning environment are not available.  People blame this problem on lack of money, lack of education, lack of social will, and all the rest of the usual suspects.  But the problem is that when all of the reasons are rounded up and the appropriate blame placed on each of their shoulders the prime suspect is still standing, surrounded by a polite politically correct silence. The key part of the equation is the child’s parents.  No matter how tired, how pressed for time and weighed down by stress, it is the responsibility of every parent to raise their child.

            We have an obligation to support good schools.  Why don’t we also have an obligation to tell mothers the truth about how they are raising their children? 

            Speak up for education and keep the faith.