Parents should be held accountable for
their children's lives, but they aren't
accountable for much in their lives now.
Around here, parents mistakenly leave their
children in cars to bake, and there is no
penalty except for the loss of their
child. So, I can't imagine that anything
substantial will change regarding a
parent's responsibility for the education
of their child if they aren't even held
responsible for their life. In the end, a
child will ultimately be responsibile for
their own education. They will be the ones
that will be in charge of their own lives
after school. So, I believe that social
promotion, at least the way it's done now,
should stop. Right now, students have very
few expectations--unless their parents are
involved. We do give grades, but
ultimately, those become meaningless since
A or F's are passed on to the next grade--
regardless of the amount of learning that's
taken place. More remediation efforts
should be offered for those kids that
haven't learned the skills to proceed on to
the next grade. Passing kids through the
grade levels does nothing for their self
esteem because they will eventually come to
a stop & realize that they didn't get much
out of their education. To sum it all up,
end social promotion, yet offer remediation
to offer kids hope. It will be pointless
to expect parents to step up to the plate
since children's services are usually
overly burdened as it is & there couldn't
be any other consequences that could
possibly be kept up with by any entity.
Expect that every child can learn the
required curriculum & provide them the
resources to do so. Provide
consequences/rewards once the curriculum is
mastered. Social promotion isn't much of a
motivation for an uninvolved parent & a
child that would rather play video games
all day. Right now, public education
doesn't expect much out of kids unless they
have responsible parents. Personal
responsibility will ultimately decide which
children become educated.

another 5th grade teacher
1/05/02

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