UNICEF, THE United Nations Children's agency, has come out against insufficient parental involvement in their children's education. The issue was discussed at some length in the recently released 2004 State of the World's Children Report. According to the children's agency, too many parents have distanced themselves from the education of their children resulting in poor performance in school.
Better results, UNICEF noted, were far more likely if parents are strongly involved in supporting the work of the school through parent-teachers associations and in providing a better learning environment for their children at home.
The matter really comes down to who bears primary responsibility for the nurture and education of children. The state, over the years, has assumed large responsibilities for nurture and education but this cannot replace the primary responsibility of the parents of children. The shakiness of family life in our own country poses severe challenges for the proper growth and development of the nation's children through the education process.
Bermuda has mounted a serious, perhaps even drastic response by our lax standards, to enforcing parental responsibility. In this British colony, parents now run the risk of facing the courts for their children's misdemeanours and for failing to take an active interest in their children's education. Principals of state schools have been given the power to order delinquent parents to attend parenting classes or counselling. Should the parents refuse to do so they could be prosecuted in a magistrate's court and fined up to US$200.
While we must remain careful and cautious about the intrusion of the state into family life and must seek our own way in building greater parental engagement with their children's education, perhaps there are things we could learn from the Bermuda initiative.
A great deal of the public investment in education is going to fail to yield intended results without stronger support by more parents for their children's education. We have noted several local initiatives for strengthening parenting. An appropriate mix of carrot and stick must be devised to help correct our extraordinarily weak family arrangements which leave so many children far less than adequately supported in their growth, development and education by their own parents.
There are large negative consequences to both individuals and society. The engagement of UNICEF with the issue speaks to the international magnitude of a problem that we here know all too well.
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