Nothing can adequately prepare you for the educational rollercoaster that is parenthood. I have analyzed thousands of studies on education and given advice to educators worldwide. However, even after twenty years as a father, I’m still not sure Extracurriculars and Homework would be best for our kids.
Like most parents, we have experienced everything: tense Sundays filling in the blanks in our kids’ reading logs; nights spent pleading with them to finish their homework; and paying substitutes for a junior football team that, over the course of multiple seasons, never won a single game.
Parents appear to be investing more time and money in educational pursuits, constantly taking their kids to sports and music courses, frog-marching them to museums and galleries, and taking vacations to expose them to other cultures and improve their resumes. However, there isn’t much guidance available to parents regarding what matters in school, even in the face of growing pressures.
Our bewilderment is only increased by the most recent study. According to a recent study, reading aloud to kids or assisting them with math has very little effect. More specifically, it concludes that engaging in sports or music with your kids has no positive impact on their academic achievement. It is responding to the incorrect exam question, as is the case with many such studies.
Children’s prospects are significantly impacted by a parent’s personal circumstances. Compared to children of graduate parents, children of non-graduate parents are much less likely to grow up in family-owned and two-parent households. In contrast, students from the wealthiest households are twice as likely as those from the poorest households to gain from private tutoring.
Simple household routines can have a profound impact on people’s lives, according to my research. For example, a child’s learning can be transformed by spending just 20 minutes a day with a book. In addition to preparing kids for school (making sure they get enough food and sleep to learn), regular routines (meal, bath, and bedtime) are important. Quizzing is the best way to help kids recall information, so if you want to help them with their revision, do it.
Sports and the arts have enormous educational value in and of themselves. They support the development of social and leadership skills, wellbeing, self-worth, and confidence. Given that music, art, and sports are being squeezed out of the school curriculum, it is crucial that parents support them. Children should, in my opinion, spend as much time in art and sports as they do in major academic subjects.
The issue is the growing gap between parents who can help their kids with their extracurricular education and those who can’t. Although there has always been a parental gap, the Covid epidemic has made it worse in the twenty-first century. Surveys conducted after school closures revealed that while some parents were more involved in their kids’ education, others were not. The work of American sociologist Annette Lareau appears to be more pertinent than ever in a society outside of schools that is becoming more divisive. Middle-class parents engage their kids in scheduled cultural activities and conversations at the dinner table, which Lareau described as “concerted cultivation.”
These are generalizations since parents from all socioeconomic backgrounds have different parenting philosophies. However, we must avoid adopting a deficit attitude and accusing parents of falling behind their children in all of these extracurricular activities. Parents may not have the time or finances to provide the best possible assistance for their children when they are balancing many unstable jobs to make ends meet or when they don’t fully understand how the educational system operates. In fact, even children’s fundamental rights—such as access to enough food, clothing, warmth, transportation to school, and study space—have been compromised in the post-pandemic age.
Understanding that Lareau’s “cultivated” youngsters are prepared to thrive in school settings and are encouraged to ask their instructor for clarification if they don’t grasp anything is crucial if we are to address educational inequities. Other kids are left behind.
In my collaboration with school administrators, we look at how to build mutually beneficial, non-hierarchical connections with every parent. Parent partnership plans should be published by all schools and made available to the entire school community. This would show what the schools are doing to enable all parents to support the development of habits in the home learning environment. Teachers would benefit from this “parent promise” since kids would be more likely to go to school and be more ready to learn in class. Guidance on how to collaborate with parents should also be provided to teachers.
I fear that one of our most significant roles as parents will continue to be a hit-or-miss situation until we close this gap. Academic grades are just one aspect of education.
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