The Parent Blockade

So I've started, and re-started this blog for the third time now. You would think, after having my first week of practicum, I would have boatloads of stories to share with you. However, I don't know if I'm yet able to describe my practicum well enough for the rest of the blogosphere to understand. It would probably amount to a bunch of cliches and sentence after sentence ending in exclaimation points. However, between practicum classes and other education classes I have realized that there is someone in particular in the educational system that I have a huge beef with: the parent.

No, this is not a blog does not stem from a fight I had with my mom over the mailing of my cardigans (although the happened to some extent). What it IS, is a frustration about the gaps between the parents desires for thier children, reality, and the effort they themselves are willing to put forth for thier child's education.

What the Parent wants: their children to be well-educated so that they are able succeed in school and move on to post-secondary education and prosper in whatever future career they chose. At a minimun they should be performing on par with the majority of thier peers. If there is any new technology or teaching method on the market thier child should have it, or at least have access to it.

Unfortuneatly, the reality is that a lot of school districts don't have the money to impliment new technologies, or the time to teach their teachers how to use them properly. Some schools don't even have money to buy thier students new, or at least up-to-date text books (then teachers are yelled at about how they are not doing a good job).

Aside from budget concerns, the thing that bothers me the most is the parents attitude towards school. It is hard for us as teachers to make a kid who doesn't want to read, read. Yes we can tell and show them how important literature is, even punish them with a bad grade if we think they are not understanding the importance of turning in homework. However, if the child goes home at the end of the day and is given the hint that literature written a hundred years ago by some dead dude isn't of any importance, how are we supposed to combat that?

Maybe this just sounds like hopeless ranting, and maybe I'm just trying to hard to get something down on my cyberpad, but how are we supposed to counterbalance the attitude or a child's family, or possibly thier community? How can we hope to educate the student, if the moment they enter thier living room all our work is labeled as "unnecessary?"