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The Fourth R: The Repatriation of the School
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11201 |
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Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
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| Issue
Date : |
3 / 1986 |
6,899 Words |
| Author
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Brigitte Berger
Brigitte Berger is a professor of sociology at Boston
University. Among the books she has authored or coauthored,
the following relate to issues of the family: Societies in
Change, The Homeless Mind: Modernization Consciousness, Child
Care and Mediating Structures, and The War over the Family:
Capturing the Middle Ground. Her most recent book, The Culture
of Entrepeneurship (a book in which the family figures
prominently), will be published in October 1991 by ICS Press
(Institute of Contemporary Studies), San Francisco. |
It is an undeniable fact that parents all over the world, regardless of race, ethnicity, religion, and social class, are concerned with the well-being and progress of their children. No other social concern activates and, at times, even enrages people more than this. Across all cultures and throughout history parents have gone to great and extraordinary lengths to search for what they deem to be optimal or, at least, tolerable situations for their children to grow up and prosper in. American parents are no exception to this rule. In twentieth-century American parental preoccupations with the welfare and advancement of their children have been linked in a singularly close, albeit ambivalent, way to schools as the most decisive instrument for the realization of these expectations and hopes.
For this reason the short shrift given to the role of the family in the most recent commotion over the dismal state of the nation's school is a puzzling omission in the rousing call for the reform of schools, the reaffirmation of excellence, and the restoration of discipline. To be sure, amid the outpouring of reports, books, and articles on the current crisis in American education, one still comes across the customary genuflection before this much abused social institution. Supreme Court pronouncements, presidential speeches, and sundry statements from the non-elite press of the nation are replete with declarations about the primary role of parents in the upbringing of their children. Yet to the powerful axis of educators, policymakers, and pundits of the media--a formidable political-education establishment, by any measure--the affirmation of the family's role in the education of its children is more of an embarrassment than a serious recommendation. Although more conservative groups are straining to revive the role of parents in
... (1990 of 43938 Characters)
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