The Role of Parents in Education

Recently while keeping some students late for detention, my host teacher and I were surprised by a visit from a student’s mother. This student is a regular at detention. His homework is never completed, and if miraculously he finishes it, it is an unreadable mess. He spends his time in class doing almost anything possible but working. His planner is filled with complaints from all of his teachers about unfinished work, poor attitude, and generally, not being a model student. Really, not being a student at all. I had wondered previously “Do his parents not care? Why don’t they see that he never does any work?” Well, a visit from his mother sure set me straight.

While serving detention with three other students, this student was supposed to be copying six questions from the black board. He had missed the last social studies class, so Mr. Walcott (the host teacher) wrote them again for Abdul’s benefit. He had a full period (50 minutes) to write them out, plus about 15 minutes of his detention time. In the hour, he had managed to write down only four questions.

When his mother came in, I was at first concerned. I was afraid that she might initially be upset that we were keeping Abdul late after class. She spoke briefly with my co-teacher, and then had an extended, angry conversation with her son. Although they were speaking Somali, I was pretty sure I could translate the conversation almost word for word, and it was not going well for this student. His mother was furious at his progress in school so far. When she was shown his unfinished work, she promised to come to school every day and work with him until everything was finished. I was shocked at how much Abdul tried to lie to make the situation seem like it was not his fault, but when presented with page after page of unfinished work, his mother just silenced him, siding with the teachers at every turn. At one point she got me involved, stating “Here you have TWO teachers, and still you cannot get the work done!” They left that day, his mother promising to keep Abdul on task and focused. Never again, she said, would he not finish his homework.

Reaction

This situation made me consider strongly several notions of Critical Pedagogy. I was interested in the dialectic that was presented in this situation, the pull between the student and the parent, and the student and the teacher. This situation was based on the struggle between power (teacher and parent) and weakness (the student). The student had a belief, that he was in the right, that the teacher was wrong. The power base of teacher and parent had the opposite belief, and worked in harmony to silence the child. Although it is true that he is disruptive, and not a focused student, it is possible that there are mitigating factors that were not listened to, not heard, as the yin of the powerful silenced the yang of the weak. I was also aware of the idea of Cultural Capital, as applied to this situation. I wondered how this woman’s culture and experience made her immediately defer to the teachers’ opinion. Would the situation have been different had it been his father? What if, instead of being lower income newcomers to Canada they had been rich 4th generation Canadians? How would these differences affect this situation, and who would have the Cultural Capital as these situations changed?

The most important part of this situation, for me, was the fact that initially I wondered why his parents did not seem to care about their child’r progress in school. Now I wonder why I thought that. It is apparent to me that this mother wants nothing but success for her son, and she is willing to work hard to help him achieve that. This situation made me ask questions about knowledge, cultural differences and similarities, and my role as the teacher of a diverse classroom.