Can you buy responsibility?

Dear parents,

I am writing you this letter because our school, as many others in this area; is failing miserably. Mostly, I write to you out of my dismay and disconcert because I can't find any visible trace of parent’s responsibility, involvement, and accountability in their children’s education; and I want to pass on you my entrenched concerns.

We are parents of three wonderful children, and we love them with all the power of our existences. All of them are attending to different schools and preparing diligently themselves the best they can for the defying challenges of their life ahead. My wife and I have been involved actively in our children’s education and in their schools since day one as much as our busy lives permits, and this is because we faithfully believe that education with accountability is effective and beneficial; and education without this primal principle is a detrimental irresponsibility, and the best recipe for the ignominy of your unsuspecting children.

Today we have an imperative and fundamental crisis with education at our schools. This issue takes precedence to any other issue in the life of our children, however, this critical issue affects your child directly more than anyone else at our school. This letter is an appeal to you, parent, and is the only warning I can offer you for the upcoming perils in your child’s immediate and long term future.

Most school's administration vision for your children's education is very simple. The school administration, teachers, and educators are doing everything possible at their disposal to provide your child with the best, the most complete, safest, and loving education possible, and they waste no time, efforts, or resources in doing so. Some responsible parents are involved as well providing support and helping with this effort of utmost importance on behalf of your children and the outcome of their education.

When I say “some responsible parents”, I really mean that, just some responsible parents. During the past five years I have been able to see a sad and miserable average of about 5% of the parents attending important activities at school. In one of our schools, and perhaps in yours too, we have close to 500 families with children attending to their education; however, the Semper Absent parents have showed me graphically, time and again; that they don’t give a hoot about their children’s education.

This might sound harsh, inappropriate, ruthless, or even insolent to you, and that is fine with me because, frankly I don’t care! A healthy and vigorous dosage of reality will not kill you or anyone, and I hope reality captures your attention. I am not here today to praise and ignore your irresponsibility and negligent attitude towards your children’s education. I am not here to teach you how to be a parent, or to tell you that you are doing a great job with your children’s education, because you are not, because you are doing a terrible job, because you are doing it all wrong, and because you are providing the highest level of disservice to your, beloved I hope, children.

I don’t care if you like or not my lecture to you because this sermon is not directed to all parents, is directed to the ones that have dropped and ditched their parental responsibility and accountability; and you know who you are. To those few parents that have taken their parental responsibility with involvement and accountability at school, I do not need to thank you for what is our obligation and our fiduciary responsibility to our children, because you understand and embrace these basic principles as such, and because you are involved dearly in your children’s education. You also know who you are.

Yes, I am angry, aggravated, frustrated, and awfully disappointed of most of our parents at our school for their manifest lack of parental responsibility, absence of involvement, evasive accountability, intellectual dishonesty, thoughtfulness inertia, insensible stance, and just flat laziness towards the most crucial time of great consequence to the fragile lives of your children: their education. I just greatly dislike players with the wrong color shirt!

If you think you are a responsible, accountable, and a loving parent, you have to show it! Sixty percent of success resides solely in showing up! Parents must be involved at all levels in the education of their own children, and that is not negotiable. We personally, are far from being perfect parents, but we honestly strive to be the best, we spare no efforts in trying to improve, we take with lethal responsibility the future of our kids, and we show up in their education process as much as we can possibly do.

One of the schools where one of our children is attending to is now in a perilous, delicate, and perhaps terminal path. Other schools in the area are quickly spiraling their way down to failure, and many others have already reached the dark point of no return. We are not there yet, but we are closing on it as quick as hyenas close on their pray, and the gap between starting to fail and total and irreversible catastrophe is very, very narrow now. Some schools are so desperate and in such state of uncontrolled panic to avoid general educational bankruptcy, that have resorted to pay the children to improve!

I have been following the many publications made over time on the theme of rewarding students financially for improved scores, and I am appalled and saddened of what I have read so far.

I am all for incentivizing kids to do better at school and helping them to realize their dreams and ambitions, but backhanding them with deceptive, illusory, and undermining practices to procure their performance it is flat wrong. These rituals may bring tremendous debauching moral and social consequences instead of success. What happened to the old principle of the benefits of self-improving? What happened to truthfully earning your life? What happened to deserve a prominent site in the society warranted by effort, honesty, and respect?

When I was a student, my parents incentivized me to do well in school so I could become a self-sufficient, honest, and a good contributing citizen, but above all; for myself and for my own happiness. Education will help anyone to enjoy the financial and principled benefits a more educated and responsible professional could aspire to, and to be an essential mechanism of the direct cause of improving future generations and the society your children will construct.

We need to get back to basics. Respected and honest citizens do not build their careers in a jail path. Some of our kids need to become less slothful and get a hold of responsibility, they need to become less lazy and embrace their duties and obligations as well; they need to acquire a sense of reality, and we parents, have a fiduciary duty and an obligated responsibility to their future and education. Exercise it! What are you waiting for? Who is in charge in your household?

At our school, we have a great and solid educational base, a caring and prepared scholastic team, a responsible and responsive administration, and a few preoccupied and contributing parents. We need to do more for our kids, however, not all the responsibility of your children's education rests on the shoulders of the school. The school is an important, but a mere instrument to aid you with your children’s education. It is not the responsibility, nor the obligation of the school to raise and educate your children. Education is 100% parent’s obligation... for those responsible parents that is.

A change in the governance of your responsibilities will provide accountability and progress. What that has to do with the performance of your children in school? Well, accountability is about everything, and about each and every single aspect in life. If you are not accountable, you will not have a good outcome at the end of the journey. If we parents do not provide accountability for the education of our children, their lives will not come out right, or they will not be competent in our gung ho society.

The administrative and docent team at our school along with providing accountability, they try really hard to engage parents and the community to support the educational system, and your children's education. We parents ought to be more responsive. We have to be.

How can I help to put the challenge of the education of our children back into the parent’s conscience? Well I am trying this way now! I hear and see a lot of debate about teachers, principals, resources, tests, evaluations, and efforts of the school on behalf of our children, but I really think that it is time to put an equal or greater amount of debate around the parent’s responsibility, involvement, and accountability in their children's education.

Parents have to play a major and a more responsible role in here, and be the unconditional advocates of their children! The Principal and the team of our school are always looking at ways to maximize parental involvement because this is important in order to engage progressively our children in a more meaningful way; but unfortunately the parents don't care, they do not want to be involved.

You do not have to be always there, you do not have to attend all the meetings, you do not have to volunteer all the time, and you do not have to contribute permanently. You just need to try a little harder than you are doing now.

Ask yourselves, how many times have I sat with my children to do homework? How many times I have reviewed their homework? How many times I have talked to my children’s teacher about their performance? How many times I have offered to my children help with the school work? How many times I have attended to an important meeting at school? How many times I have volunteered time to help with their school activities? How many times I have questioned their performance? How many times I have offered help instead complaints? How many times I have questioned my contribution to their education? How many times I have been too unconcern and lazy to do something responsible about my children education? How many times I have offered advise instead of empty whining? How many times I have failed them? I hope you are counting… This is why I am in such wrath.

What education really is? Education encompasses both the teaching and learning of knowledge, proper conduct, and technical competency. It thus focuses on the cultivation of skills, trades or professions, as well as mental, moral, and aesthetic development. Formal education consists of systematic instruction, teaching, and training by professional teachers. This consists of the application of pedagogy and the development of curricula. In a liberal education tradition, teachers draw on many different disciplines for their lessons, including psychology, philosophy, linguistics, biology, and sociology. Teachers in specialized professions such as astrophysics, law, or zoology may teach only in a narrow area, usually as professors at institutions of higher learning. There is much specialist instruction in fields of trade for those who want specific skills, such as required to be a pilot, for example. Finally, there is an array of educational opportunities in the informal sphere; and for this reason society subsidizes institutions such as museums and libraries. Informal education also includes knowledge and skills learned and refined during the course of life, including education that comes from experience in practicing a profession.

The right to education has been described as a fundamental human right: since 1952, Article 2 of the first Protocol to the European Convention on Human Rights obliges all signatory parties to guarantee the right to education. At world level, the United Nations' International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights of 1966 guarantees this right under its Article 13, and blah, blah, blah, and more blah!…. And if you do not believe me, look it up in Wikipedia! You don't need this crap to understand that education is of nuclear importance to your children!

What your children’s education it really comes down to is all of the above, and to parent’s responsibility, involvement, and accountability.

Parent’s responsibility, involvement and accountability in their children’s education it is not an easy task, and as a matter of fact, it is so difficult, that many of our children are failing today in school, and the saddest fact it is that failure will affect only them, and in a more direct way than you think it could. Education is “our” job, parents with the support of the school. Most children are not guilty of failing; we are a great quota in the cause of their collapse.

I also acknowledge that people has complicated and busy lives. There are plenty of reasons and excuses: single parents, too many jobs to make ends meet, too many obligations, too many activities, too many responsibilities, to many worries, too many family members, too many problems, too many distressed homes, too many sicknesses, too many demanding jobs, too many economic blues, too many tears, too many tired people, too many preoccupations, too many endless days, and too many of everything all of the time, and there is just so much you can take in.

If you are already making an effort to participate, and you are doing what you can to aid your children’s education by getting involved in it, I thank you sincerely from the bottom of my heart which is deep, solid, and tremendously wide. Believe me, I am with you on this, however, we are talking about our kids here. They trust us and love us, and they blindly believe in their young hearts and pristine souls that we are doing the absolute best we can for them. Let’s not deceive them. Although deception is an intrinsic part of our lives, been deceived by an enemy can never compare to been deceived by someone who is supposed to loved us. That, dear parents, is high treason.

I promise you that the journey will be long, strenuous, and bitter many times. It will be full of impossible moments, with plenty of sacrifices, plagued with frustrating interludes, and paved with disenchantments, but at the sweet end, the rewards will be infinite! In the future (which is coming real fast at you!) you will be able to feel and say that you were part master crafter of those bright and successful lives of your children, or you not have other remedy that to concede that you contributed largely to their demise, and you have perpetuated mediocrity within mediocrity in their lives due to your parental inertia. It is your responsibility and duty to choose the outcome of this simple riddle.

As for my wife and I, we will continue to support and do whatever we can to help with our children’s education in all levels, in the schools, at home, and within the family and the community. I could talk to you for at least three days uninterruptedly about parent’s responsibility, involvement, and accountability in their children’s education, but I wanted to give you just a glance of what is in my scorching mind today.

If you got enraged and mad at me because of what you have read in my letter, perhaps is just because you have inadvertently, but consciously admitted guiltiness, otherwise you will agree with me. I hope you think about this and join in helping the school, the administration, the teachers, and most important of all, your beloved children. If you don't do it now, you will never have another chance.

And one more thing... I certainly did take the time to write this to you, and to pour my frustration in this pamphlet because I do care about my children and I do care about yours too; after all, they are all citizens under the same flag. As for my children, they are doing wonderful in spite of their surroundings, because education is nothing but what you make of it. I am not worried at all for my children, and I beg you pardon for my impudent and perhaps insolent nosiness, but I am tremendously worried about yours.

Thank you.