Their first teachers

by Sandra Feldman

Teachers spend a lot of time thinking and talking about how to give their students the boost they need to do well at the next level. And conversations get particularly intense if they teach disadvantaged youngsters. They talk about special high-quality curriculums and materials, extra time and coaching for kids who are having a hard time, and additional training for teachers so they have the latest knowledge about how to teach reading or math.

They also talk about one of the biggest and most important factors in whether kids succeed in school: parents. If parents don’t show any interest in how their kids are doing—if they ignore messages teachers send home or fail to come in for conferences—teachers are likely to feel pretty helpless. And they may fear that talking about the role parents need to play in their children’s education will sound like passing the buck.

But the fact is parents’ contribution to the education of their children is essential. Parents are their children’s first and, in many ways, their most important teachers. Certainly that is true for infants, and even after children start school, they spend many more hours away from school and in the care of their parents than they spend in the classroom.

Getting students to work up to their capacity can be an uphill battle unless the kids have absorbed a positive attitude toward school and learning at home and unless parents offer day-to-day support for what teachers ask—things like good behavior in school and getting homework done correctly and on time. This commonsense observation is confirmed by solid research indicating that good parenting can make an enormous difference.

For example, one very large study found that the school readiness of advantaged children came mainly from the vocabulary and skills their parents had given them simply by reading to and talking with them from the time they were infants. And advantaged children didn’t have a monopoly on the benefits conferred by this kind of parental attention. The study showed that, to the degree low-income parents read to their children and talked with them, their youngsters also acquired the skills and vocabulary. And once they were in school, their teachers were able to bring them up to the levels attained by more-advantaged children.

So it’s particularly important for poor parents to read to and talk with their kids. Now, it’s true that most poor parents are already struggling to do the best for their children. Nevertheless, we need these hardworking, overburdened parents to pay more attention to their kids, and we have to try to help them understand why and how. This is not just a message for poor parents. There are middle-class parents, buried in work and other responsibilities, who also need to pay more attention to their kids. But the truth is, middle-class children will probably make it anyway. The same, unfortunately, cannot be said of far too many disadvantaged children.

Schools, of course, can compensate with quality early-childhood education, extended-day kindergarten, smaller classes, proven programs and well-prepared teachers. We see children who enter school behind their peers make extraordinary gains when these things are in place. No matter what, though, children will always do better with parents involved.

Schools must do a lot more, too. They need to reach out and be a lot friendlier to parents, especially to poor parents, who are often intimidated or overwhelmed by responsibilities or unable to speak English—or all of the above and more. But the fact remains that schools alone cannot do the work of educating youngsters—especially at a time when so much more is being asked of students and teachers. If ever there was a time for shared responsibility, it is now.

We need quality child care; we need Head Start and preschool. But kids still need their parents—at every age, and especially early on, when there are no schoolteachers there to help them and they are completely dependent on their parents for everything. Kids need their parents to speak to them and speak up for them and read to them from a very early age. And when children go to school, they need parents to have high academic and behavioral expectations. They need their parents to talk regularly with their teachers, check their homework, attend their athletic events and performances, and keep a close watch on their social lives.

Parental involvement is essential. When we say this, we are not, as some cynics or know-nothings like to imply, making excuses or shifting responsibility. We are acknowledging a basic truth about educating children. When parents are not involved, there is a gaping hole in the education—in the very character, lives and future—of children.