This news story describes a new effort by Denver Public Schools to get parents more involved with their children:
A new effort is focusing on the role parents must play in their children’s lives to make them better students. It asks parents to spend 5,280 minutes every school year with their kids doing some sort of intentional activity, such as reading, attending sporting events or going to a museum.
So parents should really stretch themselves, really get into the whole parenting thing by spending a whopping half-hour with their kids every day. Wow. If you spend 35 or 40 minutes per day with your children, I guess you get the gold star.
Then there is this detail:
Parents are being asked to enroll in the Mile High Parents program at their children’s school or on the Internet. They will track the minutes they spend with their kids and be eligible for prizes, such as gas cards, money for college and tickets to cultural events.
Sweet! Now you can get prizes for occasionally acting like a parent!
But who’s paying for all this stuff? The article doesn’t say, and I found no information at Mile High Parents. May we presume it’s donated?
The irony here is that Denver Public Schools are tax funded, and the tax funding of schools reduces parental involvement with their children’s education. Tax funding largely severs the link between customers and providers, and it trains parents to depend on government bureaucrats to raise their children for them. The solution to that problem is obvious, which is why most people will continue to ignore it.
Absolutely. Government schools attempt to sever the education of children from parental responsibilites not only by subtly encouraging parents to think that the teachers know better, but even further as the parent who tries to get involved and is told, literally, to “back off and let us do our job” becomes the pariah.
When I was told this by my fourth grader’s principal, we pulled her out two weeks later.