06/02/08

Re: Bill Maxwell’s letter (Chronicle, 5/5/03): Parents are the Forgotten Treasure in Public Education.

As a child I went to a small Catholic school in a small town.  The same school my father attended as a child.  That school always had a reputation for spitting out the higher achieving students in our town.

When my father attended, the school was your basic pre-Vatican II Catholic school full of nuns who, according to my father, “ate nails for breakfast just to ensure meanness”.  They were strict and mean and would beat the life out of you if you misbehaved.  They taught “the basics” and kept tight discipline.  Those kids grew up to be college professors and doctors.

Then there was my generation…

I went to the same school in the early 70’s.  At that time it was run by two nuns, a hippy religious brother, and a whole slew of laity.  It was “open concept”, individualized, feel-good education with very slack discipline and an emphasis on the arts.  It continued to produce college professors and doctors, as well as musicians and artists.

How could two such completely disparate learning environments produce such similar results?  How could a school that enforces strict discipline and emphasizes the basics produce the same high-achieving students as one with very little discipline and an emphasis on the arts?

Was it the quality of the teachers?  I’d have to say that was part of it.  Was it the inherent intelligence of Catholics?  Hardly, since Catholics are no more intelligent than any other faith.

Than what was the one factor that was the same for both generations of that school?

It took me a long to time to figure it out, and when it hit me it seemed so simple!  We lived in a college town.  The college was a Catholic college.  Most of the parents who sent their children to this school were college professors.  The school succeeded not because of the intelligence of the parents, but because of the importance of education those parents instilled in their children.

That was it.  That was the one factor that ensured our success. 

Strict discipline, teaching the basics, individualized learning, whole language, arts-infusion, standardized testing. . . these are all good things or bad things depending on how they are used, but the best schools can do very little with a student whose parents don’t see education as important.

I never remember my parents telling me, “You WILL go to college.”  It was just expected.  It was assumed.  So I went to college and am now a teacher with 17 years experience.  Those 17 years have taught me that I can work wonders with my children by myself, but I can work miracles with parental support and an importance placed on education.

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