WASHINGTON - The statistics tell a sorry tale about the public schools in America's capital. A majority of fourth- and eighth-graders are failing to read or do math at basic levels.
source.
When I read this story, this passage annoyed me.
How is it that some parents allow their children to go all the way to the fourth grade without learning to read at proper level.
Some people blame the schools-- and I agree there might be some part of responsibility there.
But what about the parents?
If I had a kid in the 4th grade who couldn't read at level, I'd move heaven and Earth and require him to learn. Make his daily life contigent on his ability to read. Haven't learned those spelling words yet? You can't play hockey. Can't tell me the meaning of those ten suffixes you have to learn? You don't go to the movies.
And so on.
How do parents allow this state of affair to happen? The schools are there to put kids through the process of learning, but the buck stops at the parents.
Is it the parents don't know their kids can't read properly?
Is that they don't care?
Is that they know, but are unequipped to teach them?
I know what some people will say: the parents are probably all poor, and can't bother with the children, blah blah blah.
That is a load of bull.
I cannot believe that parents do not have 30 minutes a night, three nights a week, to devote to teaching reading. I'm sure it wouldn't take more than that to teach a child to read at level.
I suspect that there are a lot of parents who are not taking care of business. We have this mentality of expecting everyone else to take care of it.
For basic things like reading at a fourth-grade level, it's not too much to expect parents to keep on top of things. Maybe the failure of American (and to a degree Canadian) public schools speaks more to a failure of parenting.
