Do we need a school for parents?

People, institute, and overall society contribute to the process of child development. Child development is not an isolated process. The child is being developed with help of his surrounding environment, thoughts receive from different people, the social-economic status of the family as well as the entire society, and so on.  In the same process parents and schools are the most important factors in children’s lives because they spent most of the time with them. School education is the foundation for all children to lead the life meaningfully. There is no doubt about the importance of schooling for children. In the case of school education, it is said that there are not bad students but there are bad teachers. But in the case of home education, there are not bad children but there are bad parents. Confused?

PC: United Nation website

Ownership vs Trusteeship

Last week I got a call from one of the parents of my students. She is the mother of that child. She told me “Sir, my daughter is not at all studying, I scold her, beat her but she is not at all understanding me. She is always busy with her drawing books. Sir, tell me what shall I do?”. Same things one can find with other parents too. If any child is not performing well in the school what would be the possible reaction of parents in general.  They will scold their child or they will blame the school teacher or they will change the school or they will change the tuition or they will abuse or beat the child.  Why does it happen? Why is that the story of most of the home?  A.S. Neil, the founder of Summerhill School, used to say that “….as we train our dogs to suit our own purposes, so we train our children…….There is never a problem child. There are only problem parents.”

I am speaking with 4-5 parents, daily. They have a concern about their child’s future. Because of that concern, they become owners of the child unknowingly. This attitude can come out pf a societal understanding of child development. Parents always have expectations from their children. It is not a wrong thing to have expectations from the children. But it is wrong when parents are forgetting their own childhood and they expect something which they could not do in their childhood. Parents should be in the role of trustee of their children.

The prestige of parents vs freedom of the child

Child should be free from birth but as A S Neil said unfreedom start from birth itself, even, he said, it started before birth. If a repressed woman with a rigid body bears a child, who can say what effect the maternity rigidity has on the new born baby. (p. 83, Summerhills).

Parents are taking care of their prestige rather than the freedom of choice of children. The family with weaker economic backgrounds enrolled students in the English medium. Students' home language and school language is different. How would students get an education?

A friend’s child gets 90% why not my child… that another prestigious dilemma of parents.  One of the parents called me and started complaining about the child,…. “my child is always playing and he is too much lazy, he is not at all opening books” It is not laziness, but it is a lack of interest that parents could not understand. In the name of prestige, parents are denying freedom to children. They want that their child should be an engineer or doctor irrespective of choice. They want their child should be trained to survive in the rat race irrespective of freedom of life. want to give a standard life to children at the cost of quality life.

School is not only important for the child but it also important for the parents. There is a need for schools for parents where all parents should be shaped to free the child not to arrest them in the shackles of prestige, concern about the future, rat race, and so on.