Personally, I'm not seeing why this is a huge issue. In the 1980s, parents of at least the private school that I used would get a syllabus containing all the homework and class plans for the year.
If you wanted to know what was happening on week #7, you just had to look it up on paper without having a handy app to put it on your calendar. It wasn't seen as surveillance, but rather normal planning. If the teacher and school system know what's upcoming, then why shouldn't parents. It was seen as obvious that parents would help their children with homework, and that education necessarily involved parental support.
Along the way if there were any disciplinary or academic issues, parents would have to sign-off on handling minor problems, and would get a personal phone call from the school for major ones. This is in addition to monthly meetings, PTA, etc.
Has the world changed so much nowadays that people just drop off young children at school and can reasonably expect to be totally uninvolved?
Now to contrast, in my country, secondary school (13-17) is usually boarding so kids are 100% outside of your view for 4 years and are forcibly made independent.
As a kid this is exactly what I believed. Parents believe otherwise, of course.
I feel like one of those old people complaining that "kids these days aren't allowed to go play on their own, climb a tree, scrape their knees, etc". But this seems really troubling on a whole new psychological level. IMO kids need autonomy to mature, which can't happen if their parent can "magically" know anything.
The stress you are talking about seems to me like the hallmark of an overbearing parent. Let your child fail sometimes. That's ok, they need to experience that, that's how you learn. You can't let them think that someone else will always take care of the things they don't. You're not doing them any favors by ensuring they always succeed.
"The stress you are talking about seems to me like the hallmark of an overbearing parent" Maybe but I have kids, and most of the parents I know are the same way, so I guess there are a ton of us that are wrong. Your opinion may change once you have kids.
"Let your child fail sometimes. That's ok, they need to experience that, that's how you learn." Appreciate the advice and I accept it as its advice I would have given when I did not have kids, thought I had it all figured out and believed raising kids was easy.
You feed the toddler.
You pack and give food to the 5-10 year old. They feed themselves.
You supervise the 10-teenageish to gather/pack their own food.
After "teenageish" you do in fact leave them out on the hills to fend for themselves...
... and part of fending for yourself, is to know when to ask for help. But the terms of help is hopefully between two capable humans at that point.
In the school system, I would expect that teachers are not asking 5-10 year olds to do complicated tasks. But to do simple tasks outside of school hours (homework) and know how to dress on any given day is totally appropriate. Parents can assist their kid to be so organised as and how they can. But the kid themselves are responsible to the school if they aren't.
No, 5year-olds can't [all] track the three different "special" outfit days in a week and know whether to take in the clothes or dress in them in the morning. Many five-year-olds don't know which day comes after which, and most don't have literary skills to write themselves a reminder or to log on to a computer calendar and check. They need parental help. I can tell you that some of us parents find it difficult to track these things and keep everything straight, too.
Teachers absolutely do ask children to do tasks they can't achieve on their own (eg. I guess maybe rich families might have all the stuff to do an impromptu craft project but if you need pipe-cleaners and black card to make a spider for Hallowe'en then you need an adult to shop for/with you). But parent-child cooperative projects lead to better outcomes and children feel more engaged when their parents take part with them.
In our house there's no space in our kitchen for each person to make their own sandwiches, and that would be super inefficient. But yes, teenagers could take turns making for everyone; that's not good for our family though.
Little children need the habit formation brought on by asking if their homework is done everyday, how they're doing in school, and if there are any upcoming projects because they just don't have the discipline at that age usually. As they get older these checks can lessen if they've formed the correct habits. It also emphasizes that their education is important to you so that they realize it probably should be important to them.
Some children form it earlier than others but you're setting your future kid up for failure and being behind early if you think you should be totally hands off with their education.
Also all the other good parents will be ensuring their kids succeed and children start getting sorted out by grades fairly early in their education. Letting them take a bunch of preventable failures early on before they even realize the importance of education, when you do just seems cruel.
To do all the things you said, does not require me to have an itinerary app or sheet.
It requires me to ask my kid, be involved with my kid, support my kid to be organised.
Where are you from?
In the 7 different (pre-university) schools I went to in Sweden, none of them had paper folders, and only one had a digital platform like this. And that one was only for teachers and students, parents didn't have access.
There is a fine, fine, fine line to walk between the two. Knowing how your kid is doing, asking questions, and being interested in their schooling is okay. Using it to force action without learning consequence is not.
It is, sometimes, okay for a kid to miss an assignment because they're not great at time management. That's how they learn consequences for their actions.
Anyway, you two have a fundamental disagreement, I believe, about the level of interaction and control required to be involved.
This isn't a black and white issue and as I said, it depends on their age. As I understand it we are talking about more or less preteens here.
Micromanaging the completion of their school-assigned busywork is something different.
Looking up their schedule on a website is passive involvement.
I'm relieved these systems didn't exist when I was a child.
One bad test, one missed homework, turns into a spiral of shame that makes children hide the truth out of a fear for their parent's and other trusted adults' disappointment (real or imagined). If my parents knew the truth - when I know the truth - we can fix it before it spirals into an unfixable situation, and not after.
Not all children are perfect, nor perfectly able to remember every event and assignment they have.
> study for their weekly spelling tests for 10 minutes a day
Aside: Spending 1.5+ hours per week between home and school studying spelling per se in the way students typically study spelling is an outrageous waste of time.
Arguably studying spelling per se is a waste of time in any quantity (as compared to spending that time on intrinsically motivated reading and writing, and learning how to spell as a side effect), but anyone who cares enough about this to devote hundreds of hours to it should set up some kind of spaced repetition system.
It turns out that kids are not adults. Part of raising them is teaching them life skills such as time management is something that takes a of time and management. You may be lucky and have a child that manages time well, or you may have a contrarian that does what they want. Part of being that manager, is knowing exactly what you are managing and having readily available data is part of that.
Rejoice if your kid is difficult. They see a problem. Adults need to help them understand it.
Part of being a good parent in this scenario is being able to tell the difference. Data can probably help- is my kid getting a D because he doesn't turn things in, or because he can't do long division?
Sir Humphrey: Well I should have thought that being bored stiff for three quarters of the time was an excellent preparation for working life.
- Yes Minister (Season 2, Episode 7 : National Education System)
You’ll pay back your initial time investment within a month or two, and you’ll end up with a dramatic improvement to efficiency and long-term retention, as well as teaching a useful tool/skill that can be put to good effect if the kid ever needs to memorize trivia for med school or bar quizzes.
Trying to cram-learn a new list of miscellaneous things every week is a fool’s game. The key to human memory is connections, context, and repeated exposure, not brute-force effort.
Personally I always just read science fiction books hidden in my lap during spelling time in school, and my teachers gave up on trying to get me to study lists of words I already knew how to spell. My older brother’s strategy was to just do poorly on spelling tests because he thought it was a waste of time: never seemed to hurt him, and decades later he can spell as well as anyone. YMMV.
Expecting more from a child's brain than you do of yourself is folly.
And much like their calendars, we do not ourselves set every event that appears on our calendars.
I was also absolutely terrible at remembering what's for homework and when the school exams are... so I learned to write it all down in a notebook so I didn't miss anything. No fancy parent control required. That was basically standard practice ingrained from first grade onwards.
...And how do you think that happens?
"Sarah, I can't help but notice that you have emotional regulation issues. Go get better at it."
"I feel like she would be missing out on important aspects of life; the pride and comfort that comes with self sufficiency and personal accomplishment." letting kids fail a ton of stuff in school so that they can learn better strategies sounds good in practice but in reality it will probably end up in the kid feeling terrible about themselves, and mentally resigning themselves to academic failure. Kids don't need strategy they need to know their family cares about them and are actively there to support and work with them.
On the other hand, you seem to be anti-strategy but you say that you need to 'sit down with them, go over the subject matter and discuss it with them to ensure they understand'. Isn't going over the material a strategy to do better next time?
It may be that the word 'strategy' is just ill defined here. I mean, this isn't the military, so isn't a valid strategy the application of any plan whether it be as simple as "hey kid, study before the test" or "let me teach you English-comprehension personally"?
School age kids don't start at 14 when you can discuss strategies. It starts at 6 when the kid starts mostly confused and excited.
That sounds like a reasonable approach for some parent-kid combinations. But as far as this discussion goes...
It was about an app that provided information like grades and that a test was coming up with the parent. It sounds like it would be a perfectly fine complement to your approach, no?
I don't see how it is some sort of replacement that is going to make everyone into helicopter parents. (And the problem with helicopter parents is not caused by some app.) In fact, I have trouble seeing how it intrudes more than the entirely nondigital approach to school-parent communication used when I was a kid - bring back this piece of paper with a parent's signature.
The goal of school isn't just to pass the tests. If a kid fails to revise for a test, but it doesn't matter because their parent will just look up the schedule and force them to revise, then they learn nothing beyond what's in the test.
If they fail to revise and as a result do badly at the test, then next time they might actually take the initiative and revise through their own motivation, and that's a far more valuable skill than anything that might actually be in the test.
Not really. Schooling is largely targeted towards the great masses in the middle of the Bell curve. These kids will need help, prodding, and other forms of encouragement in order to keep their basic schoolwork up.
There are a smaller number of kids on the left and right tails that will, for the former, never make any effort; and for the latter, will require nothing other than support. That's just the way things are, I didn't make it that way, and there is nearly nothing that can be done to change it, and recognizing that fact will do more for most children than trying to pretend it doesn't exist.
The mass of kids who need the aid of their parents are helped when the parents can follow along. I have to use a system similar to the broken Swedish one for my kids. It's a mishmash of various systems, and sometimes teachers just give up and use something else, or use a less appropriate method (like a shared Google doc or similar). Keeping up with simple things like "when is the next math test" is a real chore.
While it would be great to be able to instill "initiative" into the souls of kids, it's unlikely to work. Unless you happen to know of a magick elixir that can do so, in which case there are a crapload of adults who could use a dose of this wizardry.
It helps to not romanticize children. Kids are dumb. Even the smart ones. They have little life experience, and their brains are still wired in such a way that they struggle to see consequences. Most of schooling is just a grind to slowly teach them enough basics that they can operate relatively efficiently. Left to their own devices, they will play games, eat candy, and believe that they will make a living as a Twitch streamer or something equally ridiculous.
The thing is, hands off approach really works and motivates kids - but it still requires attention and correction. And it does not work with all kids at all ages.
Most people remember 15 years old self and assume kids all ages are as mature as they remember themselves. Meanwhile, most 6 years old are much less developed.
The other option is to ask in the evening "have you done homework". One of my kids would never lie and other only rarely, so it worked.
To add to it, old system was not freedom. One feature of old "parents know only what kids tell them" system was that many parents learned about issues only when inevitable end of semester report/grades came. At that point, issues grew large. Even worst, parents were surprised and shocked, tended to react badly, punish the kid , yell, beat them etc. I remember reading about flux of kids running away each time reports come.
The whole point of child raising is to raise the child. Not to go "kiddy, if you are not born organized and attentive, tough luck, we gonna do nothing and then blame you for being bad in school when you grow".
My point is that by the standards of that comment, you are micromanaging. I think those standards are ridiculous, though.
Plainly, parents of successful kids are all very involved. This sort of “you sink or swim on your own merits” nonsense is moronic bullshit.
Hahaha no. Have you met an 8 year old? Homo economicus they are not.
A school will grade a student down, but often kids will simply just not care about that unless there's impetus to do so from their peer group or people they rely on as a role models (e.g. parents).
Also, when talking about kids... I think it's useful to clarify what age group you think a particular standard applies to. Kindergarteners need more parent care and management than secondary schoolers. It's more okay for a 6 year old to fail a test, than a 17 year old prepping for university. The stakes are different, and the mental abilities of the child are different. What is reasonable for one is not necessarily reasonable for another.
(US review) to study again something you have already learned, in preparation for an exam: We're revising (algebra) for the test tomorrow.
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/ja/dictionary/english/revis...
I don't want an itinerary app. I don't want to know the schedule/homework directly.
But I will absolutely ask my kid if they know, and make the point that they should know, and work with them to remediate that if required.
And as they learn I will get to step back a bit at a time and let them go for it.
You are doing your child a disservice by ensuring they are always prepared for every challenge they face.
"so you're too close to the situation to have an unbiased view, but realize that the math is only a small part of what your child is learning here" I appreciate the perspective, on the other hand you don't have kids so have not experienced the situation at all. The idea that a parent is doing a young child a disservice by sitting with them, reviewing their homework and discussing their day is pretty strange. I wish you well when you have children of your own. Now if you will excuse me I have to go and tell Brady how to improve the snap in his throws.
Edit: "I know you have kids, so you're too close to the situation to have an unbiased view, but realize that the math is only a small part of what your child is learning here". Your argument boils down to people without kids are the best people to know what is best for kids as people with kids are too close to the situation. That makes no sense and I disagree.
Some people here (not you) seem to think that one shoe fits all -- that because they didn't want the parents to be involved, that's what best for everyone.
When in fact kids (and grown up people too) can be very different from each other