Homes before schools: Parental influence ‘often ignored’ yet key to children’s education, report finds

What’s two times more predictive than socioeconomic status of a child’s academic success?

The “alterable curriculum of the home” – a fancy research term for parental influence, the…

What’s two times more predictive than socioeconomic status of a child’s academic success?

The “alterable curriculum of the home” – a fancy research term for parental influence, the left-leaning Hechinger Report explains in a recent opinion piece.

“Key to this were parent-child conversations about everyday events,” researchers Jenny Anderson and Rebecca Winthrop write. “So too were encouragement and discussion of books that parents or children were reading for fun as well as monitoring and joint critical analysis of TV shows. …

“Thirty years later, evidence for the positive effects of these types of parent-child interactions has accumulated. Findings from almost 450 studies demonstrate U.S. parents’ influence on student engagement, well-being and learning.” 

Unfortunately, such data is “often ignored in education” to everyone’s detriment – both families attending and those disparaging parents as pesky interferers who “can be tricky for teachers and administrators to manage.”

Let’s explore how the United States has historically recognized homes and parents as the primary force for a well-educated citizenry – with schools and teachers a distant, optional second. 

From ‘mainly home educated’ to compulsory schooling 

In colonial times, most American children learned “instruction in reading, writing, and arithmetic and faith, morals, and interpersonal relationships or social skills” at home from their parents, according to historians.

“The colonists were heir to Renaissance traditions stressing the centrality of the household as the primary agency of human association and education,” noted Lawrence Cremlin, author of “American education: The colonial experience, 1607-1783.”

The one-room schoolhouse grew organically out of this model, with parents working together to outsource teaching roles to trusted individuals within their community.

“The school was a voluntary and incidental institution: attendance varied enormously from day to day and season to season,” David Tyack explained in his book, “The One Best System.”

“The major vocational curriculum was work on the farm or in the craftsman’s shop or the corner store; civic and moral instruction came mostly in church or home or around the village where people met to gossip or talk politics. 

“A child growing up in such a community could see work-family-religion-recreation-school as an organically related system of human relationships.” 

However, educational history took a sharp turn under Horace Mann’s push for common schools in the 1830s.

“The objective of this state-controlled system of popular education had little to do with economic or egalitarian goals; it was to shape future citizens to a common pattern,” wrote historian Charles Glenn. 

Modern families today may be unfamiliar with the historical turmoil surrounding government-regulated education, which the late award-winning teacher John Taylor Gatto outlined in sobering detail.

“Our form of compulsory schooling is an invention of the state of Massachusetts around 1850. It was resisted – sometimes with guns – by an estimated 80% of the Massachusetts population, the last outpost in Barnstable on Cape Cod not surrendering its children until the 1880s when the area was seized by militia and children marched to school under guard.” 

Fast forward to the 2020s where the National School Boards Association notoriously labeled parents as “domestic terrorists” in a now-retracted letter.

The problem with removing parents from the education equation 

Meanwhile, how have our children fared after this introduction of compulsory education?

Immeasurably worse, Gatto concludes – ironically, while he was accepting the 1990 New York City Teacher of the Year award.

“If we’re going to change what is rapidly becoming a disaster of ignorance, we need to realize that the school institution ‘schools’ very well, but it does not ‘educate’ – that’s inherent in the design of the thing,” he argued, noting the Massachusetts literacy rate was highest before, not after, education became compulsory. 

“Schools are intended to produce through the application of formulae, formulaic human beings whose behavior can be predicted and controlled. 

“To a very great extent, schools succeed in doing this. But our society is disintegrating, and in such a society, the only successful people are self-reliant, confident, and individualistic – because the community life which protects the dependent and the weak is dead.” 

By removing parents from the education equation, the “common school” runs the risk of undermining the very community its proponents once boasted of forming. 

After all, even public-school proponents admit schools fare better when including parents as willing partners in children’s education. 

“Teachers who are struggling with disengaged students don’t have to try and turn things around all on their own,” Anderson and Winthrop advise. “Partnering with parents can help.” 

These commentators provide data-backed tips on the different ways parents help reinforce learning.  

In preschool, this involves “playing with blocks, singing songs and reading bedtime stories … everything else that helps young kids start to make sense of the world.” 

As children mature, parental influence changes more to “discussion and encouragement” with ongoing events, challenges and experiences. 

“This, much more than direct homework assistance, helps teens grow and plays a crucial role in shaping their relationship with learning.” 

Equipped to ‘know what’s best for our children’ 

All this takes time, including one-on-one conversations between child and mentor – hardly conducive to a crowded classroom setting where teachers (and students) must limit discussion to 45 minutes or less. 

While this may feel daunting for teachers restricted to 8-hour workdays, it should encourage parents who have already spent thousands of hours with their children before they even start school. 

Furthermore, “discussion and encouragement” will not require expensive accreditations, work hours or lengthy training courses. It’s well within the reach of every parent who loves their child and is committed to their well-being. 

A former public-school schoolteacher perhaps said it best: “God has equipped all of us as parents to know what’s best for our children.” 

Instead of focusing primarily on socioeconomic status or less important factors for academic success, consider giving the “alterable curriculum of the home” the credit it deserves in effectively raising the next generation.