Apparently, parents have grown so smart that children no longer need schooling by teachers. Perhaps that is an exaggeration and not completely correct. The most vocal parents are okay with teachers as long as they teach their students to think exactly like their parents. The teachers should also do this while not wearing masks and certainly without asking students to be vaccinated or wear masks.
Considering how much time most parents spend on their smartphones where I am pretty sure they are not reading books, there must be another miraculous way of absorbing knowledge. I am sure it is not Facebook or Fox News. Based on the precipitous fall in newspaper subscriptions, it is certainly not from reading the daily paper.
I feel very sorry for teachers. First, they are not paid well enough to be psychics which would be a job requirement if teachers had to make sure that each student learned to think exactly like their parents. Imagine the added complication if the student came from a home where the parents were separated and perhaps disagreed over things even more fundamental than their marriage. It is obviously hard enough to teach a class of varying abilities a common lesson plan much less one which takes into account the minority of students whose parents have been drinking right-wing Kool Aide for years.
Fortunately, I had parents who believed in the value of real education. My mother went to a school that had one room. She never finished high school but she was smarter than all these parents who want their children to never have a thought beyond what their parents have had. My single mother read to me even when she was exhausted. She bought me books even when we had little money. She made sure I went to Sunday school, church, and Boy Scouts. I don’t think she ever missed a parent teacher meeting. She trusted all the teachers that I had even when there was one or two that were not high on my list. Skipping school or not graduating from college were not options.
We watched the news together every night even when she had to go back to work afterwards. We talked about the news and we had disagreements over politics and baseball. She always told me that she would never pay me for the As that I got on my report card. It was her close-held theory that those grades were my grades to own and treasure for the doors they opened for me.
Mother brought my father back into my life when she felt it would benefit my education. He finished high school in night school. Mother in consultation with my father sent me off to military school over six hours from home. They wanted me to have a rigorous education. I guess studying with a flashlight in a hallway alcove at 5AM counts as good preparation for college. The only expectation that she ever had of me was that I would be the best that I could be at whatever I chose to be.
She was proud that I was the first from her family to go to college but I doubt that my going to Harvard meant as much to her as just the fact that I went to college. I certainly do not have all the same beliefs that my mother held and she would be proud of that.
However, we both believed education, hard work and thinking for yourself are the only ways to have a better future. If you never learn more than your parents, we are all doomed.
