Chapter 9 ~ The Power of the Parent - Why Educators Stop Trying to Really Educate

Why?

Why would someone give everything they have to another person? All of their love, all of their belief, all of their time, energy, effort and strength............Why would someone give their life to another?

The answer is simple......because the person they are giving all this to is that important to them, and to the world.

In education, "that person" is the student. If that student was the teacher's own child, there's no doubt that as that child's parent, everything would be given to their full development. The love of a parent for their child is enormous and never-ending.

But even if a student isn't the teacher's own child, they are somebody's child. They are loved and believed in and the most precious treasure in the world to somebody else. And doesn't that make them deserving of all of you and your best treatment of them? If you're a doctor treating a patient who isn't your own child shouldn't you treat them with the same love and effectiveness as if they were?

And if a student's parent(s) has forgotten how precious their child is, shouldn't you remember it for them, and treat and develop their child so well they do things so incredible and fantastic that it wakes up and reminds their parents how truly capable and special their child really is?

This isn't easy to do of course, and the reason why it's rarely done, because it's not easy and takes an enormous amount out of a person to even try to do, let alone do correctly (I just noticed I italicized the words "not", "even" and "try", which put together is "not even try") . These teachers not even trying are good people, very loving people, but very tired and worn out.

Add parents blaming you as the cause for their child's lack of success and you begin to wonder why you're even trying.....and once that thought is asked enough times it begins to take root, and eventually does grow into not even trying to truly educate students more than just telling them how to solve and memorize problems to prepare them to pass a test.

At least everybody looks good.

The only problem is that a human filled with knowledge is no more impressive or valuable than a laptop computer with access to the internet.....I have one for $300. There is no way I can let anyone leave me being worth no more than a few hundred bucks. I don't care how good I look.

Educating someone in the real sense of the word, getting them to think for themselves and teaching them how to solve problems on their own that they haven't been "taught", or told, how to do, to be able to deal with and overcome failure so it's never more than temporary.......this is worlds more difficult and challenging than teaching someone how to memorize knowledge to get an A on a test.

And it requires you to create what's not yet there; new worlds of possibility for yourself and others, literally changing the history of those involved.

(The power of the parent to help or hurt their child's education is so great there's more on this to come.....Like having the parents' permission to kick the desk out of the way.)