Better Parents?
On my various nerdy listservs, I saw a lot of snickering over the weekend about Tom Friedman's "Better Parents" column, which explained international research findings linking higher student achievement to parenting practices like reading aloud, checking homework, and asking kids about their school day.
The reaction was a collective "duh," followed by "so what?" After all, schools and governments can't possibly do anything about bad parents, right? Over at Flypaper, Peter Meyer has a much more thoughtful version of the critique:
What does a teacher – or a school – do in the face of the reality that parents make a difference? The answer: teach the kids. Schools can’t fix parents. They can — and should — educate (fix) kids.
I agree with Meyer that all too often, schools are expected to "fix" problems that aren't their fault and that they aren't well enough resourced or equipped to solve. This is a big problem with the entire poverty conversation in America. That said, some of the most dedicated school reformers have concluded that if they want to