Do parents get a fair deal ?
By Ravina Gandhi

A TEACHER from Vasant Valley, Delhi, described herself as responsible for "two children at home and 30 at school" Psychologists stress that the importance for a child’s development depends on the influence of his parents and home background. Educationists comment on the difficulty of the teacher’s task if she is trying to do something that runs counter to the inclinations of a child’s parents. All this makes one wonder whether parents’ views and wishes are taken into consideration sufficiently by our educational authorities. There are at the present several examples of actions taken by local educational authorities which are resented by the parents concerned. There have been reports in the Press of school authorities deciding on an unprecedented fee hike. Exorbitant building funds are being levied, changes made in the existing system of testing and no teachers are being provided for most of the year in senior classes.

Parents can and must exercise influences on the course of educational events at various levels. In common with other adult citizens, they are collectively responsible for electing the parliamentary party from which the government is formed. Politicians talk of education being high on their priority lists. They can play a part in determining the general pattern of education provision, influence the composition of local education authorities and consequently the policy adopted by that authority, give credence to and recognise ‘dyslexia’, arrange for alternative assessment facilities for the dyslexic and insist on operative experienced counsellors in schools.

Parents, for their part, must ensure that their elected candidate is capable and cares about the education of children. Then they can remain in contact with those immediately responsible for teaching their own children either by corresponding with or visiting the head of the school and the individual teachers concerned, or by joining a parent-teacher association and taking an active part in the proceedings.

The influence that parents can exert through the central and local administrative authorities depends to some extent on the efforts that they are prepared to make to keep themselves informed about the current policies and programmes. In a complex society such as ours, this is by no means easy, and the specific difficulties result from the fact that parents don’t have the time, and those who do, often learn about changes when they are imminent, even though, theoretically, information has been available to them for a considerable time. What usually happens is that parents do not follow the trend of events. It is only when they learn through their children of the impending rearrangements that they begin to take lively interest in the matter.

Parents are not necessarily to blame for this. This is not so much a question of apathy as a weakness in the system of communication between authorities and parents. The position is rather analogous to the alternative arrangements for the payment of political dues by trade unionists in the days gone by over which there has been considerable controversy.

The present relationship between the authorities and parents involves for the most part the "contracting out" arrangements. In other words, the authorities make proposals which they put into effect if a sufficient number of parents do not specifically object. Perhaps a desirable reform would be the introduction of something akin to the "contracting in" system. In these circumstances a school authority could only institute a major change after it had succeeded in persuading a large number of parents to lend their assent to the proposals.

Psychologists are more interested, of course, in the problems involved in the more direct relationship between the parents and the teachers in a particular school. These problems are in my view largely unsolved. I know of very few really successful parent-teacher associations. I shall probably find myself in even deeper trouble for adding that I also believed that the blame for this attributable to teachers rather than parents. I have met quite a few ‘heads’ who refuse to have parent-teacher association at all. In defending their views they use such phrases as ‘before you know where you are the parents are running the place’. And the word ‘interference’ crops up regularly in their discussions on this topic. The attitude seems to me to be deplorable and is symptomatic of a complete misunderstanding of the purpose that a parent-teacher association should endeavour to fulfil and of the role that a teacher should properly play in the education of these pupils.

It is the task of teachers to cooperate with parents in seeking as complete an understanding as is possible of each child’s background and needs in order to ensure that his development can proceed with minimum hindrance. If the scale of values and teaching methods adopted by the teacher are inconsistent with those of the child’s parents, the child, is of course, in a situation of conflict. Such a conflict certainly cannot be resolved by pretending that it does not exist. However difficult the task may be, an attempt should be made in such circumstances to secure an agreement with the targets that the school regards as appropriate for its endeavour and about the means that it selects in order to realise its aims.

There are teachers who point to the apathy of the parents with whom they have to deal. In my experience even the most unlikely parents respond to enthusiasm and sincerity.