What Really Goes Into an Education

You don’t see it all the time, but it is there.

Beneath the loud public debates about gay marriage, spending, immigration, abortion, etc, it is there, always present, only coming to the forefront when one side or the other wants to score some political points: education.

The education system in the US is a mess. We rank behind many other industrialized nations in reading, math and science though we spend more than them per student.

Much like anything else, people are quick to point fingers. Ask the left and the problem is lack of funding and lack of proper support for teachers. Ask the right and the problem is the unions and too much federal oversight.

Compounding the problem, we have many “leaders” that will not even admit there is much of a problem. Having grown up with a decent education and now being privileged enough to send their children to good schools, they put up blinders and fail to see that in many rural and inner city schools a quality education is hard to come by, if not downright impossible.

We have blamed teachers, we have blamed admin. The finger has been pointed at school boards and local governments, state funding and federal policies. All of these have been blamed and made to be the bad guy; but we hardly ever talk about the parents.

Great schools go to waste when students can’t be bothered to show up. Exceptional educators are handicapped when their students haven’t been taught respect and responsibility, to say nothing of empathy. Having all the building blocks for success means nothing when the students can’ see the point in constructing something.

Certainly this is not all parents. One need only look around to see countless examples of parents going all in to help their children receive a quality education, sometimes dragging them towards it kicking and screaming. However, in our most vulnerable communities we often see a culture of apathy. We have parents that are too busy, too selfish, too high, too drunk, too proud, too stoned, too whatever to be bothered to help their son or daughter. They abdicate responsibility and then seem shocked when their child struggles.

Despite how this may sound, this isn't a problem restricted to any particular socioeconomic class, each displays different symptoms of the same ailment. We see far too many kids placed on medication for simply being young, treating energy as an automatic case of ADD or ADHD because we can’t be bothered to deal with them as they are. Deciding that, if we can afford it, shipping our kids off to be raised and taught by someone else is the best parenting path. Barring that, we let the soft glow of a TV screen or computer monitor raise them, then wonder why they have modeled themselves on the worst our society has to offer.

Hopefully we see education become a more important issue. With any luck we will wake up and realize that this is our future and we need to start taking it seriously. When that day comes, we need to remember that a parent’s role in education needs to be scrutinized just as closely as all the other usual suspects.