What is your child learning at school? Are subjects like arithmetic, language arts, social studies, science, and PE enough to prepare them for the real world? In recent years—more accurately, for the past few decades—the North American school systems have come under fire from critics who argue that schools are not adequately preparing children for life. With competition from countries like China and Japan, which seem to have cornered the market on academic success, it appears today’s schools may not be preparing children for the future.
The question is: Is school preparing our kids for the real world? Even more importantly, is it the school’s job to prepare kids for the real world, or does that responsibility fall on the parents? Or perhaps it’s a combination of both?
As a parent, you send your child to school to get an education. You trust that the state makes mandates and regulates how your child learns and achieves academic success. In your particular school system, this might involve standardized tests. At the end of the school year, what your child receives is a grade on their report card. The problem is, this grade doesn’t always serve as the determining factor for which kids succeed in life and which do not. Beyond the math tests and writing assessments, there are many other lessons that need to be learned for success in life. While schools can lay a foundation of responsibility and respect and provide an environment for academic learning, they aren’t the sole factor in preparing kids for the real world.
In fact, the number one complaint from teachers is that they often don’t receive the necessary parental support to effectively teach children. A teacher may assign detention for a lack of responsibility when a child hands in their paper late, but unless the parents follow through with the lesson, the message is often lost. Similarly, school administrators can be punitive when behavior problems persist, but without parental follow-up, the child may face no consequences, undermining the lesson.
Teachers are expected to uphold rules and mandates for countless students at a time, while many families with two to four children struggle to keep up with each individual child’s needs.
What Does the “Real World” Really Look Like?
And when it comes to the “real world,” what exactly is that? The definition of the “real world” differs greatly from one city, state, or country to another. For some children, it may mean growing up in a middle-class suburban area, while for others, it could mean poverty-stricken inner-city life. How are children supposed to experience and prepare for the real world beyond their own experience—especially when school systems vary so widely from one location to another, and from one country to another?
Dr. Steven Robinson, President of the Southern Association of Independent Schools (SAIS), believes that:
“A common misconception about schools is that they are artificial environments in which students lack exposure to the ‘real world.’ This argument comes from those outside of the school world who believe we must expose students to the ethnic, cultural, and socio-economic diversity of their communities in order to provide a real-world experience.”
He goes on to explain that, more often than not, the “real-world” experiences students encounter at school can be unhealthy.
Obviously, a child attends school to acquire knowledge—and for most, they do. But is that learning truly compulsory? Would their time in math class be better spent learning how to create a household budget or how to invest, rather than solving algebraic equations? Would their time in science be better spent learning to live off the land and conserve the environment, rather than memorizing the periodic table? Wouldn’t it be more beneficial to mandate the learning of secondary languages such as Arabic and Spanish across the country, so that children could communicate more effectively in our globalized world?
Arguments can be made that children do not receive enough real-world experience in school. The environment is so controlled and structured that the real world is often absent. While the responsibility for the success of generations often falls on teachers, the truth is that the real responsibility lies on the parents and guardians of the children.
In some ways, rather than judging teachers based on test scores, perhaps we should judge parents’ success by their child’s performance at school—and in life. Maybe, if further regulations were implemented to monitor parenting, children would learn more about life from the people who make the biggest difference in their lives: their parents and family.
This is not to say that teachers cannot make a difference—they certainly can. However, the burden of preparing children for life needs to fall back on the parents. It is well-known that school systems are not designed to fully prepare children for life. They are essentially institutionalized sources of information. Just like you can lead a horse to water but can’t make it drink, you can’t lead a child to education and expect them to be fully prepared for life.
There are many factors that must come together to prepare a child for life. Education is just one of them—one crucial component. Parents must recognize that school is not a cure-all for a successful life, and it is their responsibility and duty to teach their children the lessons that schools cannot—or will not.
