Honour the Parents

All parents know that moment when they realize just how fragile and vulnerable their little new baby is. At that moment they want to do everything to protect the child. We spend an enormous amount of time and energy keeping our babies and children safe. But it is more than this. We also want them to be happy and to avoid the growing pains that we went through ourselves.

But we also have to acknowledge the reality - that, if we want them to thrive in this less than perfect world, we cannot completely shelter them. No matter how much we wish to. Our job as parents, and as teachers, and as role models, is to teach them how to deal with the real world. It is no good to prepare them for an utopia that not only doesn't, but also in all likelihood can't, exist.

No matter when a child is first introduced to the larger society - daycare, playgroup, kindergarten, camp - the parent brings one critically important factor to the experience: the knowledge of the child. No one knows a child better than his parent. To anyone working with that child, that knowledge is priceless. The first insight into the makeup of the child comes from the parent. I have always felt that the first parent-teacher interview of the year should involve the teacher asking questions and the parents revealing their intimate knowledge of the students. Any teacher would benefit from this viewpoint.

Parents are always partners with the other people who help their children learn and grow. Parents should be respected for this and their role acknowledged. Just like we no longer just take the pill that the doctor gives us and stay ignorant about our own health, neither should we completely turn control of our child's education over to teachers and administrators. Yes, they know what is best for the average child, but your child is never average. In fact, the average child does not exist. It is a manifestation created from large amounts of data to provide a program that will suit most children most of the time. I would argue that that is not good enough, nor is it the way to run an education system.

Given the training and experience that good teachers have, they should be able to individually work with the parents for each child. Whenever I carefully express this opinion in the presence of teachers they always reply that there are too many children to do this. And yet, each teacher at the elementary level is only responsible for 30 children. This does not mean that the teacher needs to teach each child individually but that they first learn each child from the parent and from their own testing methods. Then they group the children for each skill at the appropriate level. They supply the tasks and the tools and let the children work it out in their own best way at their own time. With properly expressed expectations and responsibilities, this is not chaos but engaged learning - the only kind of learning that is meaningful.

Ask yourself this question: what lessons do you remember from high school? Why do you remember them? How much do you now consider useless? The curriculum has been put together by professionals who realize all the skills and knowledge that children should have to succeed in the real world. The fact that some of that you found useless is not the fault of the curriculum itself but the manner of the delivery. An unengaged student may learn enough to pass the test but will not learn what they will need to go forward in life. Many of us had to relearn what we were taught because we did not learn it the first time.

I can hear some of you now saying, "But I never needed to know the date of Confederation! I never used trigonometry!" But that is not what you were supposed to learn. Canadian history is not about the date of Confederation but an appreciation of where our country came from and how that affects decisions that are made today. Without this awareness we have no hope of understanding the factors behind the issues of today's politics - Aboriginal claims, French rights, social services, health care. And trigonometry is not about triangles and angles but about precision and multi-step procedures that require intense focus and accuracy. These are valuable skills and are the underlying reason for the curriculum.

So I repeat in conclusion that students must be engaged to learn. Teachers must know their students in order to engage them. And parents are the best source for this information. If teachers wonder why so many parents are not involved in their children's education, the system does not respect the knowledge and value of the parents. Embrace any teacher who does. They are the ones who will best teach your precious child the skills needed to thrive in this world of opportunity. 

Vision or insanity?

One man's vision may be another man's insanity.  Recently I finished Irving Stone's biography of Vincent Van Gogh, Lust for Life.  I also saw "Secretariat", the Disney movie starring Diane Lane
 and John Malkovich.  Each piece speaks directly to the theme of a personal intense passion.  In these two cases the passion produced a monumental masterpiece, or masterpieces.  In each case we have a person obsessed with one idea and that obsession eventually leads to greatness.  It is easy to see the value of following one's passion by looking at these great historic events.  As they say, hindsight is 20x20.

But what about when the past was still the future?  Van Gogh's family considered him a monumental failure, the son who could never hold down a job, never learn any business, kept bouncing from passion to passion.  His society considered him a madman and a danger.  And the other artists generally considered him to have no technique or skill.  Penny Chenery, the owner of Secretariat, arguably the best race horse ever, risked the financial future of her entire family, her own children, and her marriage for the sake of an unproven colt.  She was considered crazy by her brother, her husband, and most of the racing industry.  History has proven them to have been right.

But what about all those passions that never worked out?  Never had books written about them or movies made about them because they didn't work out?  What about the Vincents and Pennys of this generation?  How can you tell the difference?  The truth is that you can't.  The problem is not that we can't tell the difference between passion and obsessive madness.  We are asking the wrong question.  The question that we should be asking is - Does it matter?  Van Gogh's society judged him and found him wanting.  Only future generations appreciated what he did.  I wonder if he had been living now if he would have ever painted what he did.

We are so quick to analyze and label that which is different.  We want everyone to be happy.  On the surface, a lovely sentiment, but underneath it reeks of Brave New World.  Just give everyone a happiness pill and humanity is dead.  Humans need to feel passion.  They need to be allowed to pursue their passion no matter how crazy it may seem, no matter how little "success" they may achieve.  Because success is relative.  Success is socially determined and is not the same for all or for all times.  Van Gogh and Chenery succeeded because they didn't care what others thought.  They followed their own inner voice and they risked greatly in order to achieve greatness.  They did not strive for greatness.  They merely went where their passion took them.  The rest followed.

(Just an aside, I, of course, am not condoning any obsessions which lead to the damage or destruction of others.  That should go without saying.)

Just think carefully about the world that you want.  A world of "happiness" for all or a world full of passion.  And then think about our children.  Do we want them to be happy or do we want them to be all they can be?  Passion is not about happiness or success.  Passion is about strong feelings, immense energy, and a roller coaster ride of a life.  With pain, failure, stress, anger, but what a high!  We would no longer need drugs or extreme adventures to feel truly alive.  When you follow your passion you are complete.  That is a world of which I would like to be a part.