Involvement Of Parents In Children's Education Quotes

Children, who have so much to learn in so short a time, had involved the tendency to trust adults to instruct them in the collective knowledge of our species, and this trust confers survival value. But it also makes children vulnerable to being tricked and adults who exploit this vulnerability should be deeply ashamed.

Progress is hardly ever dramatic; in fact, it is usually very slow. As every parent and teacher knows, education is never a matter of ten-step plans or quick formulas, but of faithful commitment to the mundane challenges of daily life: getting up from the sofa to spend time with our children, loving them and disciplining them, becoming involved in their lives at school and, most important, making sure they have a wholesome family life to return to at home. Maybe that is why Jesus teaches us to ask for strength little by little, on a daily basis - "Give us this day our daily bread" - and why he stresses the significance of even the smallest, humblest beginnings: "Wherever two of you agree about anything you ask for, it shall be done for you... For where two or three come together in my name, I shall be with them" (Mt. 18:19-20).

One of the most serious blows to American education has been the loss of parent involvement. Many parents, for various reasons, including increasing work pressures, have stepped back from their children’s education. Schools—willingly or not—now often find themselves educating children without a strong partnership with parents. From that distance, parents are left feeling guilty and empty-handed.

A cult is a group of people who share an obsessive devotion to a person or idea. The cults described in this book use violent tactics to recruit, indoctrinate, and keep members. Ritual abuse is defined as the emotionally, physically, and sexually abusive acts performed by violent cults. Most violent cults do not openly express their beliefs and practices, and they tend to live separately in noncommunal environments to avoid detection. Some victims of ritual abuse are children abused outside the home by nonfamily members, in public settings such as day care. Other victims are children and teenagers who are forced by their parents to witness and participate in violent rituals. Adult ritual abuse victims often include these grown children who were forced from childhood to be a member of the group. Other adult and teenage victims are people who unknowingly joined social groups or organizations that slowly manipulated and blackmailed them into becoming permanent members of the group. All cases of ritual abuse, no matter what the age of the victim, involve intense physical and emotional trauma. Violent cults may sacrifice humans and animals as part of religious rituals. They use torture to silence victims and other unwilling participants. Ritual abuse victims say they are degraded and humiliated and are often forced to torture, kill, and sexually violate other helpless victims. The purpose of the ritual abuse is usually indoctrination. The cults intend to destroy these victims' free will by undermining their sense of safety in the world and by forcing them to hurt others. In the last ten years, a number of people have been convicted on sexual abuse charges in cases where the abused children had reported elements of ritual child abuse. These children described being raped by groups of adults who wore costumes or masks and said they were forced to witness religious-type rituals in which animals and humans were tortured or killed. In one case, the defense introduced in court photographs of the children being abused by the defendants[.1] In another case, the police found tunnels etched with crosses and pentacles along with stone altars and candles in a cemetery where abuse had been reported. The defendants in this case pleaded guilty to charges of incest, cruelty, and indecent assault.[2] Ritual abuse allegations have been made in England, the United States, and Canada.[3] Many myths abound concerning the parents and children who report ritual abuse. Some people suggest that the tales of ritual abuse are "mass hysteria." They say the parents of these children who report ritual abuse are often overly zealous Christians on a "witch-hunt" to persecute satanists. These skeptics say the parents are fearful of satanism, and they use their knowledge of the Black Mass (a historically well-known, sexualized ritual in which animals and humans are sacrificed) to brainwash their children into saying they were abused by satanists.[4] In 1992 I conducted a study to separate fact from fiction in regard to the disclosures of children who report ritual abuse.[5] The study was conducted through Believe the Children, a national organization that provides support and educational sources for ritual abuse survivors and their families.

I am not sure whether you could call this abuse, but when I was (long ago) abroad in the world of dry men, I saw parents, usually upscale and educated and talented and functional and white, patient and loving and supportive and concerned and involved in their children’s lives, profilgate with compliments and diplomatic with constructive criticism, loquacious in their pronouncements of unconditional love for and approval of their children, conforming to every last jot-tittle in any conceivably definition of a good parent, I saw parent after unimpeachable parent who raised kids who were (a) emotionally retarded or (b) lethally self-indulgent or (c) chronically depressed or (d) borderline psychotic or (e) consumed with narcissistic self-loathing or (f) neurotically driven/addicted or (g) variously psychosomatically Disabled or (h) some conjunctive permutation of (a) … (g). Why is this. Why do many parents who seem relentlessly bent on producing children who feel they are good persons deserving of love produce children who grow to feel they are hideous persons not deserving of love who just happen to have lucked into having parents so marvelous that the parents love them even though they are hideous? Is it a sign of abuse if a mother produces a child who believes not that he is innately beautiful and lovable and deserving of magnificent maternal treatment but somehow that he is a hideous unlovable child who has somehow lucked in to having a really magnificent mother? Probably not. But could such a mother then really be all that magnificent, if that’s the child’s view of himself? ...I think, Mrs. Starkly, that I am speaking of Mrs. Avril M.-T. Incandenza, although the woman is so multileveled and indictment-proof that it is difficult to feel comfortable with any sort of univocal accusation of anything. Something just was not right, is the only way to put it. Something creepy, even on the culturally stellar surface.

the ability to attend to a task and stick to long-term goals is the greatest predictor of success, greater than academic achievement, extracurricular involvement, test scores, and IQ. She calls this grit, and first discovered its power in the classroom, while teaching seventh-grade math. She left teaching to pursue research on her hunch, and her findings have changed the way educators perceive student potential. Gritty students succeed, and failure strengthens grit like no other crucible.

They suspected that children learned best through undirected free play—and that a child’s psyche was sensitive and fragile. During the 1980s and 1990s, American parents and teachers had been bombarded by claims that children’s self-esteem needed to be protected from competition (and reality) in order for them to succeed. Despite a lack of evidence, the self-esteem movement took hold in the United States in a way that it did not in most of the world. So, it was understandable that PTA parents focused their energies on the nonacademic side of their children’s school. They dutifully sold cupcakes at the bake sales and helped coach the soccer teams. They doled out praise and trophies at a rate unmatched in other countries. They were their kids’ boosters, their number-one fans. These were the parents that Kim’s principal in Oklahoma praised as highly involved. And PTA parents certainly contributed to the school’s culture, budget, and sense of community. However, there was not much evidence that PTA parents helped their children become critical thinkers. In most of the countries where parents took the PISA survey, parents who participated in a PTA had teenagers who performed worse in reading. Korean parenting, by contrast, were coaches. Coach parents cared deeply about their children, too. Yet they spent less time attending school events and more time training their children at home: reading to them, quizzing them on their multiplication tables while they were cooking dinner, and pushing them to try harder. They saw education as one of their jobs.

Mommy’s contradictions crashed and slammed against one another like bumper cars at Coney Island. White folks, she felt, were implicitly evil toward blacks, yet she forced us to go to white schools to get the best education. Blacks could be trusted more, but anything involving blacks was probably slightly substandard. She disliked people with money yet was in constant need of it. She couldn’t stand racists of either color and had great distaste for bourgeois blacks who sought to emulate rich whites by putting on airs and “doing silly things like covering their couches with plastic and holding teacups with their pinkies out.” “What fools!” she’d hiss. She wouldn’t be bothered with parents who bragged about their children’s accomplishments, yet she insisted we strive for the highest professional goals. She was against welfare and never applied for it despite our need, but championed those who availed themselves of it.

Parents in the early half of the twentieth century were primarily concerned with the development of character in their children. They wanted to be certain that their children were ready to cope with adversity, for it was surely coming to them one day whether in personal or national life. The development of character involves self-discipline and often sacrifice of one's own desires for the good of self and others. Montessori education, developed in this historical period, reflects this emphasis on the formation of the child's character. However, parents today are more likely to say their primary wish for their children is that they be happy. In pursuit of this goal they indulge their children, often unconsciously, to a degree that is startling to previous generations. All parents need to remember that true happiness comes through having character and discipline, and living a life of meaningful contribution -- not by having and doing whatever you wish.

This kind of parenting was typical in much of Asia—and among Asian immigrant parents living in the United States. Contrary to the stereotype, it did not necessarily make children miserable. In fact, children raised in this way in the United States tended not only to do better in school but to actually enjoy reading and school more than their Caucasian peers enrolled in the same schools. While American parents gave their kids placemats with numbers on them and called it a day, Asian parents taught their children to add before they could read. They did it systematically and directly, say, from six-thirty to seven each night, with a workbook—not organically, the way many American parents preferred their children to learn math. The coach parent did not necessarily have to earn a lot of money or be highly educated. Nor did a coach parent have to be Asian, needless to say. The research showed that European-American parents who acted more like coaches tended to raise smarter kids, too. Parents who read to their children weekly or daily when they were young raised children who scored twenty-five points higher on PISA by the time they were fifteen years old. That was almost a full year of learning. More affluent parents were more likely to read to their children almost everywhere, but even among families within the same socioeconomic group, parents who read to their children tended to raise kids who scored fourteen points higher on PISA. By contrast, parents who regularly played with alphabet toys with their young children saw no such benefit. And at least one high-impact form of parental involvement did not actually involve kids or schools at all: If parents simply read for pleasure at home on their own, their children were more likely to enjoy reading, too. That pattern held fast across very different countries and different levels of family income. Kids could see what parents valued, and it mattered more than what parents said. Only four in ten parents in the PISA survey regularly read at home for enjoyment. What if they knew that this one change—which they might even vaguely enjoy—would help their children become better readers themselves? What if schools, instead of pleading with parents to donate time, muffins, or money, loaned books and magazines to parents and urged them to read on their own and talk about what they’d read in order to help their kids? The evidence suggested that every parent could do things that helped create strong readers and thinkers, once they knew what those things were. Parents could go too far with the drills and practice in academics, just as they could in sports, and many, many Korean parents did go too far. The opposite was also true. A coddled, moon bounce of a childhood could lead to young adults who had never experienced failure or developed self-control or endurance—experiences that mattered as much or more than academic skills. The evidence suggested that many American parents treated their children as if they were delicate flowers. In one Columbia University study, 85 percent of American parents surveyed said that they thought they needed to praise their children’s intelligence in order to assure them they were smart. However, the actual research on praise suggested the opposite was true. Praise that was vague, insincere, or excessive tended to discourage kids from working hard and trying new things. It had a toxic effect, the opposite of what parents intended. To work, praise had to be specific, authentic, and rare. Yet the same culture of self-esteem boosting extended to many U.S. classrooms.

Out of 1,016 study subjects who’d been involved with the Moonies, 90 percent of those who’d been interested enough to attend one of the workshops where this so-called brainwashing occurred decided that the whole thing wasn’t really their cup of tea and quickly ended their Moonie careers. They couldn’t be converted. Of the remaining 10 percent who joined, half left on their own steam within a couple of years. So what made the other 5 percent stay? Prevailing wisdom would tell you that only the intellectually deficient or psychologically unstable would stick by a “cult” that long. But scholars have disproven this, too. In Barker’s studies, she compared the most committed Moonie converts with a control group—the latter had gone through life experiences that might make them very “suggestive” (“Like having an unhappy childhood or being rather low-intelligence,” she said). But in the end, the control group either didn’t join at all or left after a week or two. A common belief is that cult indoctrinators look for individuals who have “psychological problems” because they are easier to deceive. But former cult recruiters say their ideal candidates were actually good-natured, service-minded, and sharp. Steven Hassan, an ex-Moonie himself, used to recruit people to the Unification Church, so he knows a little something about the type of individual cults go for. “When I was a leader in the Moonies we selectively recruited . . . those who were strong, caring, and motivated,” he wrote in his 1998 book Combatting Cult Mind Control. Because it took so much time and money to enlist a new member, they avoided wasting resources on someone who seemed liable to break down right away. (Similarly, multilevel marketing higher-ups agree that their most profitable recruits aren’t those in urgent need of cash but instead folks determined and upbeat enough to play the long game. More on that in part 4.) Eileen Barker’s studies of the Moonies confirmed that their most obedient members were intelligent, chin-up folks. They were the children of activists, educators, and public servants (as opposed to wary scientists, like my parents). They were raised to see the good in people, even to their own detriment. In this way, it’s not desperation or mental illness that consistently suckers people into exploitative groups—instead, it’s an overabundance of optimism.

Any parent would be dismayed to think that this was their child’s experience of learning, of socializing, and of herself. Maya is an introvert; she is out of her element in a noisy and overstimulating classroom where lessons are taught in large groups. Her teacher told me that she’d do much better in a school with a calm atmosphere where she could work with other kids who are “equally hardworking and attentive to detail,” and where a larger portion of the day would involve independent work. Maya needs to learn to assert herself in groups, of course, but will experiences like the one I witnessed teach her this skill? The truth is that many schools are designed for extroverts. Introverts need different kinds of instruction from extroverts, write College of William and Mary education scholars Jill Burruss and Lisa Kaenzig. And too often, “very little is made available to that learner except constant advice on becoming more social and gregarious.” We tend to forget that there’s nothing sacrosanct about learning in large group classrooms, and that we organize students this way not because it’s the best way to learn but because it’s cost-efficient, and what else would we do with our children while the grown-ups are at work? If your child prefers to work autonomously and socialize one-on-one, there’s nothing wrong with her; she just happens not to fit the prevailing model. The purpose of school should be to prepare kids for the rest of their lives, but too often what kids need to be prepared for is surviving the school day itself. The school environment can be highly unnatural, especially from the perspective of an introverted child who loves to work intensely on projects he cares about, and hang out with one or two friends at a time. In the morning, the door to the bus opens and discharges its occupants in a noisy, jostling mass. Academic classes are dominated by group discussions in which a teacher prods him to speak up. He eats lunch in the cacophonous din of the cafeteria, where he has to jockey for a place at a crowded table. Worst of all, there’s little time to think or create. The structure of the day is almost guaranteed to sap his energy rather than stimulate it. Why do we accept this one-size-fits-all situation as a given when we know perfectly well that adults don’t organize themselves this way? We often marvel at how introverted, geeky kids “blossom” into secure and happy adults. We liken it to a metamorphosis. However, maybe it’s not the children who change but their environments. As adults, they get to select the careers, spouses, and social circles that suit them. They don’t have to live in whatever culture they’re plunked into. Research from a field known as “person-environment fit” shows that people flourish when, in the words of psychologist Brian Little, they’re “engaged in occupations, roles or settings that are concordant with their personalities.” The inverse is also true: kids stop learning when they feel emotionally threatened.

Effective crime reduction policies involved early parenting classes, increasing the quality of education that children received, and providing children with a safe environment after school. 

satisfying a child’s physical and financial needs is not the same as meeting that child’s emotional needs. For instance, if you needed someone to listen—to provide essential emotional connection—receiving money or a good education might distract you from that need, but it wouldn’t fill it.

Enroll in the Best Hebrew School Atlanta for a Rich Cultural Experience Welcome to Hebrew School Atlanta, where they give a transforming educational path that celebrates Jewish heritage while also providing a rich cultural experience. Their school is committed to instilling a love of the Hebrew language, Jewish traditions, and values in each student while also encouraging individual growth and development. They think that education is about more than just learning; it is about developing a meaningful connection to one's heritage and community. They try to establish an inclusive and supportive environment in which students can explore their Jewish identity, develop a strong sense of belonging, and form lifelong connections. Their school is more than simply a place to learn; it's a thriving community that welcomes families from all walks of life. They encourage family involvement and provide opportunities for families to participate in their children's educational path. They think that fostering a compassionate and supportive atmosphere that promotes holistic growth requires a strong relationship between parents, educators, and students. Enrolling your child in the top Hebrew School in Atlanta means laying the groundwork for a lifetime of Jewish involvement, cultural awareness, and personal development. Join us on this extraordinary trip as we arouse curiosity, create a love of Hebrew, and foster a deep appreciation for Jewish School education. Let us work together to produce a wonderful cultural experience. Contact the head of the department at The Epstein School.

I HAVE WRITTEN LARGELY with reference to students spending an unreasonably long time in gaining an education; but I hope I shall not be misunderstood in regard to what is essential education. I do not mean that a superficial work should be done, that may be illustrated by the way in which some portions of the land are worked in Australia. The plow was put into the soil to the depth of only a few inches, the ground was not prepared for the seed, and the harvest was meager, corresponding to the superficial preparation that was given to the land. God has given inquiring minds to youth and children. Their reasoning powers are entrusted to them as precious talents. It is the duty of parents to keep the matter of their education before them in its true meaning: for it comprehends many lines. They should be used in the service of Christ for the uplifting of fallen humanity. Our schools are the Lord’s special instrumentality to fit up the children and the youth for missionary work. Parents should understand their responsibility, and help their children to appreciate the great blessings and privileges that God has provided for them in educational advantages. But their domestic education should keep pace with their education in literary lines. In childhood and youth, practical and literary training should be combined, and the mind stored with knowledge. Parents should feel that they have solemn work to do, and should take hold of it earnestly. They are to train and mold the characters of their children. They should not be satisfied with doing a surface work. Before every child is opened up a life involved with highest interests; for they are to be made complete in Christ through the instrumentalities which God has furnished. The soil in the heart should be preoccupied, the seeds of truth should be sown there in the earliest years. If parents are careless in this matter, they will be called to account for their unfaithful stewardship. Children should be dealt with tenderly and lovingly, and taught that Christ is {10} their personal Saviour, and that by the simple process of giving their hearts and minds to Him, they become His disciples.

Involve them with college savings. Even though your kids should contribute to their college education expenses, most parents recognize that the high cost of college effectively puts this burden on the parents. Open an account for each of your children and make contributions to each one equitably. Show them how their fund is growing—and how it compares to the cost of the education they want.

Every leader must be challenged to educate their followers and capacitate them with knowledge, tools and a voice to champion their own causes and become actively involved in setting the agenda for citizen participation in social transformation. Don’t create a dependent constituency; develop and lead other leaders who demonstrate a growing personal responsibility for their own success as well as for those around them.

For instance, if a Black person is watching tv, instead of being bombarded by anti-Black images and messages hour after hour, they should be able to relax and be at peace in the knowledge that Black people control the media.  When their children go off to school in the morning, Black parents and other members of their community who provide love and support for their children, should be able to know that the teachers won’t be anti-Black and won’t fill their children’s heads with ideas that make them hate themselves or feel less worthy and less valuable.  The Black community should be confident that their children are being taught their history, their ideas (Black Thought), and are being told they are beautiful and good.  There shouldn’t be any worries about schoolmates of another race making their children feel inferior.  When they grow up and go to college, Black students should be confident that Black administrators and Black professors have created an environment and curriculum which encourages their entire educational development, not only providing skills for the workplace but nurturing their minds and their sense of community.  And when these students go out into the workplace, they should be confident that Black-controlled industries will be hiring them with Black managers in charge.  Racism will become a non-factor. Most significantly, when Black people have control over their community and have Black citizenship they won’t be forced to go through every day under the constant terror of being harassed, brutalized and killed by the police.  The psychological weight that would be lifted from them would be historic.  A new sense of energy and security could be channeled into self-affirmation and community-building.  I have little doubt that such a moment in history would lead to unprecedented strong race relations between citizens of this Black nation and whites in the current nation.  It’s almost impossible to have truly strong or positive race relations when one group is constantly required to bear the burden of oppression, and the other group feels the need to ignore or deny the existence of this oppression while also enforcing it.  The levels of tension and dishonesty are an enormous drain on everyone involved.  What a sweet and beautiful day it would be when Black people would simply not have to think about whites anymore.  In the same way that amerikans spend so little of our time thinking about Lithuanians or Norwegians.  And when you aren’t forced to think about someone, or forced to live the way they tell you to live, it’s a pleasure to get together and visit voluntarily.  Black people and Europeans on this continent (amerikans) would still talk to one another.  We might even still live in the same neighborhoods.  But the difference is that Black people would be their own people.  They would no longer be surrounded by the circle of whiteness.  The black dot on the white page: the exception to the rule.  White rule.  Black people would be a nation.  An entity unto themselves.  They would not be required to imagine themselves within the context of whiteness.  Their minds would be freed from the perpetual interpretation of every action and word (it seems even every thought) through whiteness.  Africans (Black people) would simply be Africans.  A people defined by their own terms, their identity neither within nor without the boundaries of whiteness.

Many students described their parents’ support in nonacademic activities as being equal to their support in school. Importantly, they felt this support was instrumental in helping them do well academically because it was viewed as a general interest in their life overall

Whereas traditional forms of involvement would require parents to engage in any number of activities similar to those examined in this study, stage setting only requires that parents focus on two factors: messages and life space.

They mentioned things such as, “They were supportive in life”; “They attended my band concerts”; “They left schooling up to me”; or “They did not talk much at all about school.” At one point students were asked, “Did any of your parents read books to you when you were a child, join PTA meetings, regularly converse with your teachers, or discuss college plans with you?

affluent parents are more involved than their less advantaged counterparts. Educators will find the anecdotally observed relationship between parental involvement and high achievement too appealing to ignore and will promote parental involvement as the answer to most of the problems within K–12. But as we show, an extensive quantitative assessment only lends moderate support for these anecdotal observations. What we propose is that affluent parents have created a space that sets these children up for success.

effective stage setting is more rooted in lifestyle than in parental involvement activities. Once the stage is set for academic success, children are on course toward being academically successful.

parents are responsible for creating a context that allows their children to assume the identity of an academically successful student. Thus, we define stage setting as the process of (1) conveying the importance of education to children in a manner that leads schooling to become central to how they define themselves, and (2) creating and maintaining an environment (or life space) for them in which learning can be maximized or not compromised.

it is a mistake to conclude that the level of parental involvement of minority groups is the reason for the racial achievement gap or that greater parental involvement from minority groups will lead to gap convergence. Our findings suggest that socioeconomic resources explain a greater share of the racial achievement disparities than parental involvement.

Therefore, it is perhaps best to listen to Kant on what the best moral education of young children involves, and to take this as a clue to what he learned from his own parents. In his so-called Lectures on Pedagogy he differentiates between a physical education that is based on discipline and a moral education that is based on maxims. The former does not allow children to think, it simply trains them. Moral education is based on maxims. In it, he thinks, “everything is lost when it is founded on examples, threats, punishment,

Q:What will be the influence of communist society on the family? A: It will transform the relations between the sexes into a purely private matter which concerns only the persons involved and into which society has no occasion to intervene. It can do this since it does away with private property and educates children on a communal basis, and in this way removes the two bases of traditional marriage – the dependence rooted in private property, of the women on the man, and of the children on the parents. And here is the answer to the outcry of the highly moral philistines against the “community of women”. Community of women is a condition which belongs entirely to bourgeois society and which today finds its complete expression in prostitution. But prostitution is based on private property and falls with it. Thus, communist society, instead of introducing community of women, in fact abolishes it.

Hockey and soccer are just games, of course, involving a select few. But these exact same biases also show up in areas of much more consequence, like education. Parents with a child born at the end of the calendar year often think about holding their child back before the start of kindergarten: it’s hard for a five-year-old to keep up with a child born many months earlier. But most parents, one suspects, think that whatever disadvantage a younger child faces in kindergarten eventually goes away. But it doesn’t. It’s just like hockey. The small initial advantage that the child born in the early part of the year has over the child born at the end of the year persists. It locks children into patterns of achievement and underachievement, encouragement and discouragement, that stretch on and on for years.

Thomas Jefferson, for instance, recognized the essential connection between education and freedom, writing in 1816, “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.”12 Still, the institution of the family prevailed over the interests of the state. Jefferson advocated for a highly decentralized system of education, locally controlled by parents in small districts, or “wards” as he called them, with little government involvement. He also believed that parental rights and individual liberty outweighed mandatory compliance. In 1817, Jefferson wrote, “It is better to tolerate the rare instance of a parent refusing to let his child be educated, than to shock the common feelings and ideas by forcible asportation and education of the infant against the will of the father.

MATTERS: The child’s parents are involved in the PTA. DOESN’T: The child frequently watches television. A child whose parents are involved in the PTA tends to do well in school—which probably indicates that parents with a strong relationship to education get involved in the PTA, not that their PTA involvement somehow makes their children smarter. The ECLS data show no correlation, meanwhile, between a child’s test scores and the amount of television he watches. Despite the conventional wisdom, watching television apparently does not turn a child’s brain to mush. (In Finland, whose education system has been ranked the world’s best, most children do not begin school until age seven but have often learned to read on their own by watching American television with Finnish subtitles.) Nor, however, does using a computer at home turn a child into Einstein: the ECLS data show no correlation between computer use and school test scores.

Most of us would speak to the most casual acquaintance with more apparent respect than to our own children, or the children with whom we work in the classroom. Why? Because we do not have power over the near-stranger; because we have no ego-involvement with that person…

Effective crime reduction policies involved early parenting classes, increasing the quality of education that children received, and providing children with a safe environment after school. Those options always looked too soft in the public arena.

What actually happened was this. Over the last twenty years, we have delighted in our children, and have had many of them. We don’t shuttle them off to day care or leave them with professional care providers. And we homeschool them or have them in schools which encourage direct parental involvement. Our families are tight. We have had many children because we love them, despite hostile stares or comments from those outside our community. To quote a comment made to my wife on the street years ago, “My, you don’t believe in the pill, do you?” But we didn’t mind—kids are a kick. And, as I can now say, grandkids are a kick. It just keeps getting better. But then one day, we were distracted from our work by all this yelling that was coming from the general direction of the Moscow School District. “Where have the kids gone!? How could this have happened? Maybe they moved out of the state!” And the powers that be put lighter fluid in their hair, set it ablaze, and ran in tight little circles. “Where are the kids?” You see the state takes away money for each little breathing bipedal carbon unit that doesn’t show up in the classroom each autumn, and it turns out this is serious business. So, against my better judgment, I say something like this: “Um—maybe you don’t have kids in your schools because you quit having them. And if any actually make it into the womb, you think it should be legal to get them out of there violently. Talk about eviction. And if any of successfully run that gauntlet and actually show up, you provide them with a fifth-rate education and then turn them loose into your hollow and ugly world. And maybe you don’t have access to our kids anymore because we looked at all this and quit handing them to you to educate. Just a thought.” Take care not to get the whole thing turned around. Susan’s sign-off—“breeding my way to a better tomorrow” reminds me of a joke that can be reapplied to our situation. Early in the twentieth century, a refined woman from Boston was at a high brow social gathering where she met a woman from Chicago, who didn’t quite fit with the refined lady’s ideas of deportment. “Here in Boston,” the great lady said with a sniff, “we think breeding is everything.” “Well,” the other lady said, “out in Chicago we think it is a lot of fun, but we don’t think it’s everything.

They [Joan’s adopted twin daughters] tell people they had a marvelous childhood. I hope they did. I tried to give them that — because it’s really all that a patent can do. A parent has to guide, advise, educate, and love them. If they’re sure of the love, they’ll accept the guidance. I think that children benefit in all sorts of ways when they have mothers who have their own fascinating jobs. It’s good for them to know that mother is involved in other things besides smothering them with love. They respect that. When children are neglected it’s usually because their mothers are so bored and discontent that they fill their days with golf, bridge, and matinees and live the children to fend for themselves. A working woman loves coming home and making special time for her children. But few husbands understand the full range of her responsibilities.

A physical education expert, asked to visit a grade school in East Orange, is astonished to be told that jump ropes are in short supply and that the children therefore have to jump “in groups.” Basketball courts, however, “are in abundance” in these schools, the visitor says, because the game involves little expense. Defendants in a recent suit brought by the parents of schoolchildren in New Jersey’s poorest districts claimed that differences like these, far from being offensive, should be honored as the consequence of “local choice”—the inference being that local choice in urban schools elects to let black children gravitate to basketball. But this “choice”—which feeds one of the most intransigent myths about black teen-age boys—is determined by the lack of other choices. Children in East Orange cannot choose to play lacrosse or soccer, or to practice modern dance, on fields or in dance studios they do not have; nor can they keep their bodies clean in showers that their schools cannot afford. Little children in East Orange do not choose to wait for 15 minutes for a chance to hold a jump rope.

East Side High became well known some years ago when its former principal, a colorful and controversial figure named Joe Clark, was given special praise by U.S. Education Secretary William Bennett. Bennett called the school “a mecca of education” and paid tribute to Joe Clark for throwing out 300 students who were thought to be involved with violence or drugs. “He was a perfect hero,” says a school official who has dinner with me the next evening, “for an age in which the ethos was to cut down on the carrots and increase the sticks. The day that Bennett made his visit, Clark came out and walked the hallways with a bullhorn and a bat. If you didn’t know he was a principal, you would have thought he was the warden of a jail. Bennett created Joe Clark as a hero for white people. He was on the cover of Time magazine. Parents and kids were held in thrall after the president endorsed him. “In certain respects, this set a pattern for the national agenda. Find black principals who don’t identify with civil rights concerns but are prepared to whip black children into line. Throw out the kids who cause you trouble. It’s an easy way to raise the average scores. Where do you put these kids once they’re expelled? You build more prisons. Two thirds of the kids that Clark threw out are in Passaic County Jail. “This is a very popular approach in the United States today. Don’t provide the kids with a new building. Don’t provide them with more teachers or more books or more computers. Don’t even breathe a whisper of desegregation. Keep them in confinement so they can’t subvert the education of the suburbs. Don’t permit them ‘frills’ like art or poetry or theater. Carry a bat and tell them they’re no good if they can’t pass the state exam. Then, when they are ruined, throw them into prison. Will it surprise you to be told that Paterson destroyed a library because it needed space to build a jail?

With such a complicated and crucial part of a child's education in jeopardy, there are many forces at work -- a sort of conspiracy of mediocrity that denies children the chance to develop a love of reading and become good readers. It is a pattern that involves our system, parents, teachers, and sometimes even librarians.

Parents of students from lower social economic status families may find it challenging to be actively involved in their children's education due to long working hours and financial difficulties.

But let them work problems out on their own. This can start early in life, by giving even very young children the space and trust to try moving through conflict to a resolution themselves; for example, watching from a close distance without getting involved as your young child gets into an argument at the playground, or giving siblings some room to work out disagreements by themselves. We are often quick to jump in and solve our children’s problems for them — I can certainly empathise with this urge — but having the chance to try to fix problems and get it wrong sometimes is key if children are to develop resilience.

Married officers with a family often bought a place, often near their first service base or near some other location they imagined was going to be central to their lives, like West Point. They bought the place and usually left it empty while they lived overseas. The point was to have an anchor, somewhere identifiable they knew they would come back to when it was all over. Or somewhere their families could live if the overseas posting was unsuitable, or if their children’s education demanded consistency. Reacher’s parents had not taken that route. They had never bought a place. Reacher had never lived in a house. Grim service bungalows and army bunkhouses were where he had lived, and since then, cheap motels. And he was pretty sure he never wanted anything different. He was pretty sure he didn’t want to live in a house. The desire just passed him by. The necessary involvement intimidated him. It was a physical weight, exactly like the suitcase in his hand. The bills, the property taxes, the insurance, the warranties, the repairs, the maintenance, the decisions, new roof or new stove, carpeting or rugs, the budgets. The yard work. He stepped over and looked out of the window at the lawn. Yard work summed up the whole futile procedure. First you spend a lot of time and money making the grass grow, just so you can spend a lot of time and money cutting it down again a little while later. You curse about it getting too long, and then you worry about it staying too short and you sprinkle expensive water on it all summer, and expensive chemicals all fall.