Schoolproofing and a Great “National Post” Series

Kate Tennier has a series of three op-eds beginning in today’s National Post that begins with the question Why Does More Classroom Time Actually Hinder Learning?   She looks at it from the premise that parents have a false sense of security - insurance, she calls it - about the education system.

“Why is it that more schooling can actually hinder learning? Perhaps it’s time to start pointing the finger at moral hazard, the blanket scholastic insurance policy that induces  those insured - students and their parents - to become less inclined to take an active role in securing their own education. Examples abound of the phenomenon at work.

“The first comes from a story told by a remedial reading teacher. After a week of individualized instruction, the mother of one of her students announced she would no longer need to read with her son at home because the ‘teacher was taking care of that at school’. The mother thought her son’s literacy skills were ‘insured’ so she became negligent about insuring them herself, even though the vigilance a parent provides - reading with a child at home - has a much greater long-term impact than that which schools can offer.”

At SQE, we have seen this many times - not because parents have abandoned their responsibilities, but more often because the school system tells us that “things will be fine” and the non-reader will just “get it” somewhere down the line.  Parents trust that education is supposed to work for their kids.  The popularity of remedial programs, like our own free Stairway to Reading and the growth of private tutoring lead us to believe that this trust needs to be earned much better.  We have long advocated that parents take responsibility and schoolproof their kids.  Either that, or let them choose schools that work successfully for their children’s needs.

We look forward to the next installment of Kate’s articles.

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