Speaker Raps School Accountability Claims Therapist Says Education Only Part of How Children Learn; Parenting More Important
Posted on: Friday, 12 August 2005, 18:00 CDT
LAFAYETTE - The national focus on accountability in schools is a skewed one, ignoring the bulk of experience that drives the lives of children and teenagers, in the view of an author who has worked both as a teacher and a family therapist.
Robert Evans, who makes his home in Boston, but travels nationally speaking about schools and families, spoke to a gathering of parents and educators Thursday at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette as part of a lecture series sponsored by Iberia Bank and The Independent, a Lafayette weekly news magazine.
Evans said the talk of accountability leads people to believe schools where students don't score well on accountability tests are bad schools.
He said the consideration should not be how children are schooled, but how they grow up.
When students graduate high school, they have spent less than 20 percent of their waking hours at school, Evans said. "Schools are a much-smaller slice of a child's life than we imagine," he said.
Schools depend on families and communities to produce children who are ready for school, Evans said.
"Schools are much less influential than we imagine, even in academic learning," he said.
Evans said schools need to be empowered to focus on the essentials, and not be beholden to parents who want to make the educational calls.
Parents and different levels of government don't want to face the disparity between the goals set for schools and the resources available to the education systems, though much money is directed toward education, he said.
"Most schools don't have the money required to do what is being asked of them," Evans said.
As to the parenting work that goes in when children aren't in school, Evans said, the basics of nurturing, providing structure and allowing latitude to learn from experience are not new ideas.
He recommended that parents not go to child-advice books for miracle answers on their weakest parenting skills, but instead focus on bolstering the skills that they are best at, while being aware of their weak points.
"You can't integrate something into your personality that is fundamentally not you," Evans said.
Parents generally already have most of the tools of good parenting available to them, he said.
"Your kids don't need you to be perfect, they need you to be good enough," Evans said.
Source: Advocate; Baton Rouge, La.
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