I think the idea of getting parents involved in school is a good idea. Have the child interview his father about what he thinks of the Franz Kafka piece. And the child write a paper. I AM involved, incredibly involved, in supplementing my child's education. I would be involved by saying, "What are you reading? Oh...what did you think? Why do you think that? Would you like to hear what I think?" That is how my brothers and I got into deep discussions about things like religion, history, even sleep disorders, and ways in which classical music is or is not related to modern rap.
To assume that a parent is not involved in the child's education just because they do not have the the ability to do literary analysis is a little uppity, isn't it?
It assumes that everyone has access to a computer. In theory, they do, but what of the disabled mother without a car who can not get to the public library? Or the father working two or three blue-collar jobs to support the kids because the mom died and he can't get to the hardware store to fix the hole in the wall, let alone to a computer?
What about the "have-nots?" We could not afford a computer back then. I did not own one until I bought one second-hand for $200 when I was 21 years old. I was scared of MS Word still. My mother still is. I type and format her resume. She still will not make purchases on the Internet, and barely uses or understands e-mail. I taught her how to do an Internet search less than 2 years ago.
My father had a sixth grade education. I wrote my own notes for school, and he signed them, with the home phone number, so teachers could call (which they usually did at the beginning of every year) to confirm that he was aware of the notes. At my high school, they were more sensitive and understanding about it than at the elitist middle school I had attended. Why?
Because their was a multicultural population. And the highest number of homes with parental illiteracy and/or without computers are those of racial and ethnic minorities. And those teachers were extremely understanding when I said, "He has me write everything for him. He can't spell or read very well." Most would just nod and accept the note when I was at that school.
Yet that high school has consistently been ranked one of the top 100 in the nation. Some of us had not lived with parents since age 13, 14, or 15. There were emancipated students.
My father worked 12 to 16 hours a day at manual labor. And MY grade would have suffered in this school in New York when (not if, when) he didn't weigh in on Franz Kafka, et al? MY grade??
Do you know what my dad would have said? "Franz Kafka? Who the he** is that? Frank Kahfa? What? I'm going to bed. I have to be up in 4 hours." And he had worked for years to support our family. He was involved in my education by making sure my report card looked good and giving me money at the end of each term to go shopping. He was involved by giving me a curfew, and not letting me accept calls after a certain time, and not allowing me to talk on the phone to more than three people a night for more than fifteen minutes at a stretch. I thought he was awful for it for years, but he was teaching me self-discipline, which makes all the difference in college. He was preparing me for some of the basics of adult life -- commitment, finding balance. THAT was his job as a parent. It was not his job to be on par with me intellectually. He was not called to be a scholar or a scribe. He was called to be a father, a husband, a laborer.
Many kids at my high school were fortunate to have lunch every day. A computer at home was still (and is still) a luxury and a novelty in many racio-ethnic circles. Because of finances.
I went to a magnet high school. Many of our assignments were very high brow because we were being groomed, many of us, for Ivy League education. I was reading above my parents' heads by third grade. But no one ever assumed that my parents' education was on par with my own. Or that our parents had the same resources for learning disabilities, or even choices between picking berries or manual labor or a waitressing job or a chicken coop, by 12 years old.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/04/education/04homework.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1191772889-MPlMV7v3r+XO75BbypPLsQ&oref=slogin
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I do not feel that a teacher has the right to penalize a child for the parents lack of invovlement in their education. When my children were in high school, I was
1)very ill during the older children's high school years and did not have access to a computer
2)Was a full-time college student when my younger children were attending high school.
This does not mean I would not have done whatever I could to participate, it only means that there were ligitimate reasons if I had not been able to do this. I believe everyone has circumstances that would excuse them from this and while this instructor says that in three years only one students grade was affected, that is one to many students to have been affected by this teachers demands on the parent.
It is a great idea, but I just don't feel it is really something that should be required.
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