Academics and Education
Dana wrote a bit ago about an article on how Americans are “not as interested in academic standards as some might suppose”. She feels that we don’t take academics are seriously as some might think we should because “Academics does not equal education.” While academics are important to education, they are not the whole of it. There is much more than just learning how to multiply and divide in a solid education.
Education is a method whereby one acquires a higher grade of prejudices.
- Laurence J. Peter
To me it seems that many people must feel the same way. It certainly explains the constant “what about socialization?” questions thrown at homschooling families. It is obvious that most have the academics down, but there is more than just test scores to a child’s education. Yet I wonder if some parents feel that academics are at the bottom rung of the ladder, from not as important to not important at all.
Maybe it is my own bias, as I hold academics to be very important. Not that I think it should be drilled into a child’s head by mountains of homework then extracted by test after test. But I do think that reading, writing and arithmetic are the nuts and bolts of a good education. They help hold together all the other parts. So I would assume that even parents who feel academics are not the highest priority would still choose a school that did well in academics. The ideal would be a school that does well in academics but also teaches more than just the books.
Today I found an article discussing a survey taken in Canada on how parents feel about their children’s education and the schools. (Article at bottom of this post) One part of it clearly stuck out to me.
Still, the Canadian Education Association’s Public Attitudes Toward Education study showed that even though fewer than half of Canadians (45 percent) now express confidence in their schools, more Canadians (60 percent) feel satisfied with the school system in general
To me it is interesting because there is clearly an overlapping group that both has no confidence in their schools and yet feels satisfied with their school system. I wonder if this ties in with what Dana was talking about. They feel satisfied because more than just academics is being taught. I’m not familiar with the Canadian school system so I can’t say for certain how they teach. I’d love to hear from any Canadians what the school sytem is like up North.
academics, education, school, public school
November 25th, 2007 at 9:45 am
Summer,
What you are saying, and what Dana said in her post, mirrors my experience with the public school system. You may remember my post about when The Butterfly was ready to start school. The school was much more concerned with social development than with academic achievement.
http://lifeontheplanet.typepad.com/my_weblog/2007/11/a-nation-deceiv.html
I personally feel that one of the reasons that U.S. parents are not that concerned with academics is because the public school system has moved it down several rungs of the education ladder.
November 25th, 2007 at 10:13 am
It is difficult, because there are multiple issues. The original article I read seemed to be saying that good parental involvement involved doing what the school district thought was best and not challenging it. Fighting for a playground or whichever specific anecdote the author shared does not mean that a parent is uninterested in academics.
Academics are very important, and I am guessing that most of the same parents who are active in the PTA and protesting test dates would also be the first to hire their children a tutor if s/he weren’t on grade level. It is just a guess, but that has been my experience.
The children really struggling tend to have parents that cannot be reached.
Academics are very important, but I think the author of the article I was citing was barking up the wrong tree, or at least didn’t defend his point very well in providing largely anecdotes of situations where I, as an involved parent, might also easily find myself in were my children in public school.
November 26th, 2007 at 6:41 am
[...] can go back to yesterday’s post for something semi-intelligent. Or wait til tomorrow when I’ll be hosting the Carnival of [...]
November 27th, 2007 at 2:44 pm
[...] own post Academics and Education posted here at Mom Is Teaching shares some of my thoughts on how parents view academics in [...]