Is there a difference between doing well at school and actually learning?

Source: Pixabay/Geralt

I’ve heard rumors of a time in the past when parents sent their children to school for an education. They expected their children to come out of school knowing more than they did when they went in. At the very least, they expected their children to be able to read, write, and do arithmetic, the so-called “Three Rs.”

At best, parents expected their children to be prepared to go on to college. Perhaps not Duke, or Harvard, or Princeton, but certainly to the local community college down the road and maybe even to a four-year public university.

Parents in this golden age knew it was their responsibility to teach their children to behave appropriately, to be respectful of others, to show good manners and courtesy, and to make sure their children did their homework and studied. These parents also supported the teachers and understood that if their children weren’t doing their work, they weren’t going to get good grades.

These wonderful parents of that by-gone age understood deadlines and did not run to the school board with complaints when their children received zeros for not getting their work turned in on time. The children of these parents learned to be responsible, and learned the consequences of failing to do what they were supposed to do.

Parents like those from days of yore expected their children to actually learn, and knew that self-respect and self-esteem were earned through hard work and success. Their children learned that, along with learning history, math, science, geography, music, art, spelling, grammar, writing, and reading. Those parents sent their children to school expecting them to actually learn.

Ah, but was there ever such a golden age of education. Maybe not for everyone. There was for me. I learned those lessons, often the hard way.

Now that I’m on the other side of the desk, I can tell you things are not like that anymore. There are a few parents left who stick to the old paradigm of education, and I treasure each of them. I can pick their children out within the first week of the start of the school year. Those students become my go-to students because I know they will reliably get their work done, will have studied the material, and can be counted on to give, if not the correct answer, at least a well thought out answer.

On the rare occasion when one of these students gets a bad grade on an assignment, I rarely hear from the parent. The student will come to me and ask me to go over why they missed a problem or an answer to a question. Sometimes the student is even able to convince me that their answer is just as valid as the one I deemed correct. This doesn’t happen often in math or science, but in reading and social studies it does happen.

This first group of students are still in school to learn. Then there is the second group.

In the second group we have the children of parents who send their children to school to do well. Doing well is defined as getting all “A”s on their report cards, tests, assignments, homework, whatever. These parents believe it is the teacher's responsibility to scale the work so as to enable their children to be able to achieve the highest grade possible.

They do not want their children to be challenged, they want their children to believe they are succeeding so the children feel good about themselves. If their children do poorly on an assignment, these parents go straight to the Principal and demand to know what the teacher is doing wrong. These parents are totally unwilling to acknowledge their children’s responsibility for their own learning. If their children do well, the children deserve all the credit. If their children do poorly, it is all the teacher’s fault.

Oftentimes, these are the parents who do the children’s homework for them and get very upset when the homework comes back with mistakes. Then they get even more upset when the child fails the quiz related to the homework. I’ve even had parents like this demand I allow the student to take home their quizzes and turn them in the next day.

When children of parents of this second group of students start missing a lot of homework assignments, the parents have all kinds of excuses. I am not making these up.

“He had ball practice. He’s playing on two teams, you know.”

“Do you know how busy she is after school? She has piano, dance, and gymnastics. When is she supposed to get her homework done?”

“If you can’t get it done in class, you got no business sending it home. It’s your fault, not his.”

“I don’t believe in homework, so I’m not going to make her do it.”

I smile, tell them it is their choice as to what is more important, but their children are still going to get zeros if they don’t do their work.

I, personally, don’t believe homework below the high school level is effective anyway, and the research backs me up on this, so I don’t assign much. My colleagues, who do assign homework, fight this fight every year.

This second group of students aren’t sent to school to learn. They are sent to school to do well. In other words, to get good grades without having to put in much effort or take up too much time outside of school.

There is a third group of students whose parents send them to school because their children get free breakfast and lunch, and are supervised for eight hours a day Monday through Friday. Otherwise, we’d probably never see these students. Their parents see public school as a free day care service and couldn’t care less whether or not their children are learning anything. They don’t care if their children are disrupting class, preventing learning by other students, getting in fights, or failing their grade. All they care about is that five days a week for eight hours a day, their children are someone else’s problem.

I know some of my readers may get up in arms and try to tell me there are no such parents. You will insist all parents care more about their children than that. I wish with all my heart it were true. Sadly, I have seen and heard for myself what I’ve described above.

“I don’t know why you keep calling me. During school, he’s your problem.”

“I’m just her momma. She's gonna do what she wants. Don’t bother me no more about her.”

“I can’t do nothing about him. Look at him. Look at me. You think he's gonna listen to me. When he's at school he's your problem.”

“I don’t wanna keep coming out here to this school, so stop calling me. If she acts up and makes trouble, call the police on her.”

This is just a sample of the things I’ve heard from parents over the years. The heartbreaking part is every one of the children of these parents could, in the right environment, flourish and succeed. I do everything in my power to make my classroom that environment. Most of my colleagues do the same. It can be exhausting, emotionally draining, frustrating, and at times futile, but we keep on trying, day-in-day-out, because each child is worth our best effort, even if their parent doesn’t think so.

Of course, there are children and parents who fall somewhere in between these three groups. And each child has their own unique story, family situation, and history. But when I look out over my classroom, I see the faces of MY KIDS, and I will do everything I can to help MY KIDS learn and succeed.

As always, I remain,

The Exhausted Educator