Why Parents Must Get Involved in the Child’s Education

Parents should be actively involved in the education of a child despite the fact that there are already several teachers, administrators and other school personnel to provide them the guidance they need through the school’s rules and regulations, the curriculum, and the learning.

Although it has been shown from studies that the children whose parents are involved in their education by helping them review lessons and study for exams exhibited higher scores in exams and performed better in the overall aspect, this is not how and why they should get involved. If being involved meant teaching and the reason for getting involved was for better grades, then all parents had to be well-educated and good at instruction. Furthermore, it such was the reasoning, then parents will fail to clearly express what the purpose of the education of a child is.

No, being involved could include but is not limited to teaching the child and reviewing him prior to exams. Parents must get involved in the education of a child, NOT his classroom. Also, the reason why parents must involve themselves is not for the child to develop a better academic performance, but to make sure that they are getting the proper learning and experience they would need once they are out in the real world. Remember that teaching your child the day’s lessons, attending parent-teacher meetings, or baking pineapple upside-down cake for their Christmas party are not the things that will determine your progress as an adult, and your success as an individual.

The following are some ways by which parents can get involved in their child’s education. Some of these ways need not even require parents to visit the child’s classroom.

- Regularly talk with the teacher of your child. Check on your child’s progress and ask if there are certain problems your child is experiencing in particular. The teacher can tell you what subjects are difficult for him, so you can teach your child at home or hire a tutor for him.
- At least discuss with your child his homework (if not help him with it).
- Obtain a copy of the school curriculum and get supplementary materials in advance for your child.
- Do not just depend on your child’s teachers; monitor his progress yourself!
- Set up a quiet study area for your child at home. This need not be an entire room. A table and a chair with a desk lamp at the corner of your child’s room would do. See to it that a specific time is set aside for doing homework.
- Always motivate your child! Let him feel how much you support him and that you want to help him get the best education of a child possible.

The Integral Role That Parents Play In the Education of Their Children

Parents, not teachers, should direct their children’s education. No buts, no exceptions. Every once in a while, this direction may mean the involvement of teachers, school administrators, or other professionals as somewhat “advisors” for the children’s educational plan, but they will not be the ones to decide what to and not to do, and determine what should and should not be. It if should have been the other way around, then parents should have been dubbed “second teachers”, and not teachers being dubbed as “second parents”.

It is the parents’ responsibility to make their children learn and understand the most important things and lessons in life; lessons that cannot be explained by the scribbles on a blackboard or the typewritten letters on the pages of a textbook. Some parents enroll their children in prestigious schools and leave it at that, thinking that everything will be taken care of and everything needed to be learned will be taught. Sure, they will learn everything they need to; everything except preparing themselves to become adults. It is very sad to see many parents forgetting that experience is one’s best education. In fact, education without experience is not education at all.

Imagine this; the eldest of your children grows up and only a short while after graduating from high school, he gets married. A year goes by, and you learn that he and his wife decided to get separated. You ask him why and he tells you that you that they always fight about money and work, and that the marriage was not going to work. Now, did the knowledge on husband-wife relationships that he acquired in this school that you entrusted your children’s education to, save their marriage? Were the steps in problem solving helpful? So what if they have the ability to make any desired program function if they cannot make a marriage work?

Any responsible and mature parent would agree that marrying that early was not a very wise decision in the first place. This is not to say it is wrong to marry early, since we all have our own views of what is right and what is wrong. What I am indeed saying is that marrying early is not practical for one who has just graduated, has not saved up much, and has no experience whatsoever on making big decisions. In fact, quarrels over money and work are very shallow reasons for a separation. If both the man and woman are truly mature enough to start a family, then they would not have fought over money and work issues in the first place. Did they not exchange vows to be together “for better or for worse”, “in sickness and in health”, promising that only death will part them? As you can see from this example, school cannot take the place of experience as the vital part of your children’s education. As parents, it is your responsibility to take care that your children grows up exposed to the truths in life and guided by your experience, in order for them to make it on their own once they assume their independence.

Music Education for Children: Why Should Parents Bother?

As parents, you would want to provide only the best education for your child. This is why parents work so hard; they do not mind getting tired everyday as they look forward to that paycheck to provide for their children’s educational needs. In fact, a star stamped on the child’s hand for being “very good” in school today is enough to put a smile the parents’ faces and make them forget how stressful work can be.

Now, what if someone told you that there was a way to improve your child’s learning for free, would you not be interested to listen? You would, probably. And even if it does not come for free, perhaps you still would, as long as it will benefit your child’s education. Fortunately for parents like you, it does come for free!

So what is “it”? Well, it here means music. Singing, playing, and listening to music, all these activities have long been proven to produce positive effects on a child’s academic performance. In fact, even children as young as newborns benefit from music.

Many different studies on music education has shown that it has a lot of benefits, from calming down a child in a bad mood, to helping the child solve mathematical problems easier and faster. On the whole, music education for your child helps him move forward to achieving success as a student.

Many researchers, in fact, believe that music has many other positive effects that are yet to be discovered, which is why studies on music are still being conducted today. To convince you of the importance of music education for your child, here are some of the findings of the studies conducted on the relationship of music education and children’s academic performance.

One of the studies showed that a group of students who had piano training scored higher in math by 27%. Another one showed that the young students who either play or sing in school bands are have less tendency to drink or smoke. It was also proven that exposure to music has a soft of soothing effect as it can change the mood of a child. The schools that implement music education which involves the students constantly being exposed to music reported that the number of cases involving fights and arguments between students was reduced considerably.

Countless surveys have come up with one and the same conclusion that most students find it easier to study when a music class is incorporated in their curriculum. Playing music also serves as the outlet of students, as it becomes their form of self-expression, helping them control their emotions better. Likewise, if your child learns to study music, he can produce the same effects while he is in class, such as the ability to listen and understand lessons easier. Bottomline here is that providing music education for your child will improve his performance and behavior, both in school and at home. Who knows, maybe the next time you see your child when you get home, there will be more than one star stamped on the back of his hand.