Parenting for effective schooling

In one of his breakfast programs lately a local tv anchor man asked his viewers who was to blame for the poor quality of Philippine education. The consensus: All the stakeholders - the parents, the teachers, the students, and the politicians - not necessarily in that order.

The respondents were right. Each of these groups, involved as they are in the teaching-learning process, have their own shortcomings that contributed to the substandard outputs of our schools. Let's start with the parents.

Most parents think educating their children is the exclusive concern of the school. They believe their role does not go beyond giving their kids the logistics for studying - paper, pencil, notebooks, pocket money, "baon" and others. But the art of studying is influenced by many factors, one of which is motivation. That's why teachers jumpstart their lessons with motivation. Without it the students' interest in the lesson at hand is lackadaisical. Parents are natural-born motivators. By their role as such they are in a better position to influence the mindset and "heart set" of their children towards studying and learning.

This is so because the stronger the emotional ties between the motivator and the child the more powerful is the motivation. Love, a dominant emotional compulsion, drives the individual to do something he dislikes to do if only to please the object of his love. A child may be tempted to neglect his lessons, but knowing this would displease his ma or pa, he is likely to go strong in his school work. Studies have shown that the closer the child is to his parents the more likely he will succeed in school.

Parents who are keen about the success of their child in school should therefore strive to provide the latter with a wholesome emotional atmosphere at home, assuring him at all times that everything is all right therein. Daniel Goleman, an expert in emotional intelligence, says: "The ways a couple handles the feelings between them - in addition to their direct dealings with a child - impact powerful lessons to their children, who are astute learners, attuned to the subtlest emotional exchanges in the family".

What has been said is equivalent to saying that peace of mind is important in the learning process. Like a placid water, a placid mind is receptive to the intrusion of light, the light of learning.

That light, however, should not be left to chance. It has to be induced to the learner and the best person to do this is his father or mother or others whom he loves and respects. For a very young learner it is important that the parents themselves personally arrange for the child's study period and guide and coach him on his lessons. This requires parents to be familiar with their child's learning areas, the skills to be developed and the emotional contents of what is to be learned. This explains why in some exclusive schools parents attend regular orientations on the study programs of their children both academic and extra-scholastic. The idea is to capacitate these parents as learning "coaches" of their children in the interest of effective schooling.

In some public schools a number of parenting classes are also being conducted. But considering shortage of personnel and logistics such classes have not been institutionalized as regular fixtures in these schools.

Effective parenting, which makes for effective studying, is of course possible only for families that do not have to scratch and dig for their next meal. In this country where more than 30 percent of families have poverty-level incomes parents are so tied up with eking a living that academic concerns are simply forgotten. Poverty is indeed such a debilitating thing for the learner not only because it deprives him of the basic necessities for schooling but also because it denies him of parental support mechanism.

In a study by UP professor Milagros Ebe on the relationship between income and schools performance she found that the higher the income of a student's family, the higher was his score in a high school multi-dimensional test. The causative factors were varied and many but it was found that the most significant one was parental support.

Better living and better learning clearly go hand in hand. The first concern of education stakeholders, therefore, particularly the decision makers, is improving the quality of life of Filipino families. With better food, better home environment and better informed parents, the ultimate impact would be better learners and better quality of schools finishers. (To be continued)