I just read this book a few days ago, and the author tells how no one in his family ever told him the importance of homework, getting good grades, how to apply to college, etc. It's tough to escape poverty when you don't know how. It was a good read.
Into the Magic Shop, by James Doty, MD.
https://www.amazon.com/Into-Magic-Shop-Neurosurgeons-Mysteries-ebook/dp/B00YBBKMHA/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1506792215&sr=8-1&keywords=into+the+magic+shop+by+james+doty
Agreed, parental guidance and family culture is a very strong indicator of success. All of the yammering about more money for poor urban schools (mine already has one of the highest per capita spending in the state) ignores that fact.
It's unfortunate but for people that work in education, they can't fix parental involvement. I recall seeing a stat that success can pretty much be predicted by how many books a student's parents own. That sucks. I can speak from experience that my parents drove home the importance of education. If I had trouble in class they were always willing to help me with my homework or meetwo with my teachers or find someone willing to help me. I cannot imagine what it would be like to not have that.
The notion that kids will absorb their parents' attitudes toward education is not completely accurate. My daughter had two years of my very best effort-- and if my book ownership was any predictor of her success she'd be Doogie Howser by now. It didn't stick. I was able to get her through 10th grade and part of 11th, but ultimately the ready availability of a group of people who really, truly, honestly don't believe that education is important ended up being more of an influence.
I'm one of the best tutors in town, but ironically as an educator I've been an utter failure with my daughter. I did bring her reading level up from 2nd grade to 9th with some highly unorthodox methods, but I can't tutor someone who is not willing to look at the book, pick up a pencil, do an exercise, or do anything but pout or throw tantrums instead of completing an assignment or following the teacher's instructions or mine. My power is limited. I can only teach someone who wants to learn.
When a child who doesn't want to learn has access to a house where she or he can go instead of being in school, when there's someone willing to come pick the minor up from his or her home, take the minor out of that home, and drive the minor somewhere else without the parent's knowledge or consent, and when there are adults with vehicles ready and waiting to pick the minor up from school, the parent can't do a damn thing. School rules prohibit the parent from showing up to frog-march the high school student from one class to another, and because there are breaks between classes and students are entitled to bathroom breaks, a student who wants to escape from the school generally can. To keep a child in school therefore requires the united effort of an entire community, neighborhood, or extended family.
More than once, I've had one of my child's school friends ask if they could "hang out" at my place during school hours. I said no. My home is closed while my daughter is at school and I'm at work. Just because I occasionally work from home does not mean I'm available to babysit somebody who is playing truant. Unfortunately, nobody in my daughter's bio-family has that mentality. So she runs to the bio-family and to various lowlife friends (and in my opinion, anyone willing to sabotage a child's education is a lowlife) and POW! Not only does she get away with not being in school, but she sets off an enormous shitstorm.
The upshot of all of this is that my daughter, with a great deal of help from the lowlifes in her life, has chosen to be a pig-ignorant dropout. She's starting to figure out what she can actually afford with a dropout education and a dropout work ethic. It's not pretty and it's going to get uglier when she reaches her majority. She's chosen a life of extreme poverty because she refuses to do what it takes to get skills to exchange for an honest dollar.
Parental involvement means diddly-ding if there's a gigantic enabler network in place to reward dropout behavior or to at least delay its consequences. In the underclass, just such an enabler network exists. Plenty of people are thrilled to open their homes to a teen who ought to be in school, if it means that teen can babysit younger children while Mommy works, goes shopping, or naps. Lots of people are overjoyed to take a teen along to an ultrasound appointment, or the mall, or a hair or nail appointment during the day, just to have company. If the teen gets an allowance or has access to resources, clothing, or anything else that can be mooched away, so much the better! So the teen feels important and gets lots of what feels like love and respect, and gleefully deep-sixes his or her own education in order to gratify and enable various lowlifes. Result: eventually one more lowlife joins the herd.
We're dealing with an un-motivated teen as well. Not unreliable in any other way, no other problems. In his case I think it will take a few years of watching his peers move on, and a few years of working crap jobs for him to see the light.
I don't know what we'd do if we had all the contributing factors you're dealing with.
Its frustrating b/c we've tried to steer him to success. We're two well educated professionals with the ability to send him to any state 'U' here. We've offered him tutors, our tutoring, and the opportunity for him to live away at school if he wanted - he'd have to work a little job somewhere to help fund his spending money. He wouldn't go to school with a new car and the best "stuff". All he had to do was show he was serious by earning the grades. And he hasn't done that.
Funny thing is that he is a square away hard worker otherwise, just not academically.
I made some of these same mistakes a few decades ago. We're alot alike him and me. He's a late bloomer - mature in some ways and on topics of school and starting adult life he's not. Meanwhile very trustworthy to go out and do the right things and get home by curfew.
One day the light will go on over his head and he'll have to do what I did and work his way through college. We won't likely be in a position to help him as much then. School of hard knocks and all that...
I'm hoping that after graduation rather than waste two or three good years he'll be conducive to attending a vocational school. He is a hands on guy. I think it would really appeal to him if he'd give it a chance. Would be a good pairing with the things he says he wants to do in college. That broad academic background...
The thing we are doing that my parents didn't do and DW's parents did is provide a place for safe landings. We don't fight about anything. It just shuts him down and he won't talk about his problems with us so the communication would stop. Arguments function as mechanisms that cause him to isolate himself from us, not change the heading of his life's ship.
He isn't "wired" for confrontational discussions that lead to solutions. It could just drive him into the influence of someone else or escapism. I know how much this sounds like we are passive enablers but there is a larger plan and we're just waiting out the school year. That's the next hard turning point.
I'm not going to risk our relationship with him over school where he is one of thousands of students and communication with the teachers is not great and their expectations/assignments/instruction are not always clear.
I look back on my HS years as a period of conflict and more stress than I could handle with my parents that have left their mark decades later. Those grades were imperative. And I still didn't earn good grades b/c I wasn't mature enough to value the education. That led to my "path less traveled" and that was much better - a series of crap jobs, the military, the end of parents' rule over my life, college on my own dime, etc. It was hard though. It made me a stronger person though.
We'll be encouraging through the end of HS and then his life gets real serious. I fully expect he'll still be financially struggling five years after that but we won't be dealing with the "he said/teacher said" ambiguity. The middle school, high school, college route is not for everyone.
Topic: Relatives who just don't get it (Read 3715039 times)
