Society, Parents & Education
Societies need people to make children. Children need parents to survive and to thrive - to become future citizens. The parent needs communities of people and organisations that will help in their endeavours. Societies are hopefully supporting and listening to them.
Some form of education is necessary for a child to become a citizen. We, as parents, are the first and most-enduring teacher, continually raising, caring and educating our child throughout childhood, adolescence and young adulthood. Second to that responsibility are our extended families, neighbours, friends and community organisations such as sporting and artistic facilities, specialised instruction and coaching, and of course schools, including day cares, before school care and after school care. Together with our parental teaching, they enhance our child’s capacity to learn, engage in meaningful activities and to socialise: all necessary for citizenship.
What’s also necessary for citizenship and for societies to function, is working. Employment which pays directly and indirectly for all the above, as well as for our own care and subsistence. And while the work of parenting is no slouchy endeavour, it’s unpaid. But this fact is underscored by our biological urge to procreate. To have the parenting experience. To enrichen and give meaning to our existence. So, the need to keep working despite having the additional responsibility of raising children, persists, mostly without question. And societies benefit from that silent persistence.
While societies are willing to contribute to that educational citizenship, the parenting challenges of simultaneously contributing as a taxpayer and as an unpaid child-rearer, are visible all around us. The question of ‘who is ultimately responsible for our child’s education?’ becomes ‘who wants to take on that responsibility in practice?’. And when our families or school systems are strained, breakdown or become incapacitated in those efforts, the results are devastating for all, especially for our children. Society takes that risk, and we as individuals within that society, that is, as citizens, are called to gaze inwardly - to summon our own personal agencies to mitigate that possibility for ourselves - to make informed decisions based on what’s around us, and inside us. If not, those decisions may be made for us, and we may not like the price we need to pay for those decisions.
Definition of parent: a person or persons who protect, provide for, care for, and raise babies, children, adolescents and young adults towards adult citizenship, on a continuing and largely-uninterrupted, and hopefully shared, basis.