Children, Education and Parent Participation

Children,
Education
and Parent Participation

Originally prepared for:
The Ontario Federation
of Teaching Parents

To: Everyone it may concern

All over Canada and the United States, thousands of parents
are teaching their children at home.
These thousands of parents are teaching their children at home legally,
under the law as it stands now!
They are teaching their children at home out of personal preference.
They are teaching their children at home at their own expense
(and still paying taxes for everyone else to have their children taught at public expense).

Concern
All over the world, there is major concern
over the breakdown of the family unit.
There is concern over the increasing use of drugs and alcohol by children.
There is concern over the increasing rate of suicides by children.

Children Are the Future
All parents must be concerned for the lives of their children.
If we fail in this concern, they will have no future, nor will we.

Every Vital Decision About Our Children’s Well-being
Whether our children are in school or learning at home,
we cannot leave it to others to make every decision
about our children’s well-being from 9:00 A.M. to 3:30 P.M.,
from Monday through Friday for twelve or thirteen years
of our children’s lives.
We cannot leave it to educators alone, or to a Ministry of Education,
to make every vital decision.

Often these administrators and officials are appointed
by a changing government.

This means that with a change in government there are changes
in policy that may forfeit new policies or principles of education
recently discovered and incorporated, but equally,
some new principles may be overlooked or neglected –
by a failure to change government.
These administrators and officials may indeed do their best to understand
the ever increasing and more rapidly increasing mass
of conflicting information about education and learning,
but the consequences are so great we must all be using our alertness
and awareness to help find, sift, sort and evaluate.

Just consider the recent article about the language learning process
reported in the September ’87 edition of Scientific American.
There are issues raised by the findings of these researchers
into the learning process.
Children learn more than they are taught.
Children learn more rapidly than they are taught!
These researchers have discovered how important it is
to make information available when it is needed by the child –
by the context of experience, even guided experience.

Some of us, as our way of concerning ourselves
with our children’s learning and growing,
have chosen to teach our children at home.
Some of us have chosen to deal with certain problems directly.
We have chosen to provide a more relaxed atmosphere for learning
away from the standardized tests and the pressure
to achieve before our children are ready.

Readiness to achieve or to learn is discussed
in the research reported in Scientific American, as well as elsewhere.
The findings of this research indicate that learning takes place
most effectively and efficiently when there is natural motivation,
when the student feels the need to know.

This need to know is sometimes determined
by unusual or unique biological or emotional kinds of development
or rates of development.
Recent research shows that emotions and the limbic systems of the brain
play an essential role in learning (MacLean).

Some of us do not wish our children to be graded on a “Bell Curve”
or any other such dehumanizing standardization
of limited measurement of the human psyche,
in spite of how high on that test comparison they may rank.

If your choice is to have your children learn in a public or private school,
then it should be your right to enquire about the means employed
to evaluate your child’s progress.
Our belief is that you, as a parent, should have a say
in how your children are marked and labelled.
You should have a say in what values and purposes are behind
what your children are taught.
You should have open access to teachers, principals,
Board of Education and Ministry officials who are involved
in decision making where your children are concerned.
These public servants should welcome your interest and suggestions.
They should welcome ours
(those of us who choose alternative education for our children).

If these administrators, these officials, these public servants
are not to bear the responsibility, the brunt of the blame
for contributing to the breakdown of the family unit,
they should welcome yours and our interest and suggestions.
It is the family unit which is held responsible
and bears the most direct and extensive consequences.
It is the family unit which has the greatest incentive
to provide for the well-being of the children in that family.

If these administrators, these officials, these public servants
are not to bear the responsibility, the brunt of the blame
for the increasing depression and hopelessness in many children,
they should welcome yours and our interest and suggestions.
The alternative is a repeat, as in many countries, of goose-stepping tyranny,
which comes with the suppression of individual choices
which are harmless to others.
These individual choices are not just harmless to others,
but in the case of many individual choices of the past,
intended for the good of all.

We urge you, as concerned parents,
to participate in your own children’s education.
We urge this participation whether your children are at school
or learning at home.
We ask your support in maintaining the freedom
for parents to choose the type and the means of education
for their own children.

copyright 2011, 2014, ECOhealth / Eve Revere