Today, a more direct role of the school in children's development of values, morals, and character is not enough. Raising children in today's world is much more challenging than it was in the Fifties. Many parents, whether in intact families, single-parent families, divorced families, or remarried families with stepchildren and half siblings, are crying out for help.
The role of public schools needs to be expanded and revamped in response to the realities of today and include, among other things, much more help for parents. Specifically, they should provide tax-supported:
1. Services for helping children cope with divorce, stepparents, and other adjustments associated with the modern extended family
2. Guidance and assistance to children in coping with other common problems such as drug abuse, pregnancy, prevention of pregnancy, aggression and violence
3. Programs designed to help high school students understand:
a. Nature of marriage and personal commitment
b. Techniques for establishing and maintaining a healthy relationship with a marriage partner through various techniques such as win-win conflict resolution
c. Virtues of sexual abstinence
d. Birth control in marriage
e. Rights of newborn, necessary commitment
f. Parent training
g. Setting up and maintaining a family budget
4. Extended-day school programs that provide:
a. Before-school child care for parents who leave early for work
b. After-school child care for parents who arrive home from work after regular school hours
c. Various needs of parents and other adults described below
5. Family counseling services to deal with various matters such as:
a. Parent-child conflict resolution
b. Sibling rivalry
c. Stepchildren, stepparents, stepsiblings, half siblings
d. Maintaining individual identity within family
e. Organizational skills for the family and child
6. Expansion of continuing education programs to meet adult needs in:
a. Basic skills such as literacy, organizing and maintaining a family budget
b. General Equivalency Diploma (GED)
c. New skills such as computer literacy, language
d. Parenting
e. Development and clarification of parents' values/morals/ethics
f. Understanding how to help children develop desirable values and morals
g. Maintaining a home environment that enhances a child's success at school
7. Referral services for parents and other adults:
a. Marriage counseling
b. Coping with divorce, single parenthood, remarriage, and stepchildren
c. Substance abuse, including alcoholism
d. Unemployment, retraining for job market
Costs Involved in Programs vs. Costs Involved in Crime
What about the cost of these changes? Aren't these services and programs going to cost a great deal? Can we afford them? A better question is: Can we not afford them?
Consideration of the costs of crime makes the costs of these proposals pale by comparison. And this doesn't include intangibles, such as the deteriorating quality of life and shrinking freedoms -- all directly related to our growing fear of crime.
I believe that we are now reaping the harvest of societal changes that began in the late Sixties and have continued since: Children who have received inadequate supervision and guidance at home. Disagree?
Comparison of the educational and home/family backgrounds of prison inmates with those of the general population is revealing. Inmates' home/family childhood backgrounds include higher incidences of divorced parents, single parents, parents who are poorly educated, alcohol and drug abuse, child neglect and abuse, higher unemployment, and parents with low self-esteem.
Parents need help. The longer implementation of fundamental changes is delayed, the more costly it will be.
Reprinted with permission of the publisher,
New Falcon Publications. ©1997. http://www.newfalcon.com.
This article is excerpted with permission from
The Challenge of the New Millennium - Winning The Struggle With Ourselves
by Jerral Hicks, Ed.D.
A serious examination of what we are as a species, how we have changed as a society during the 30 years past, and what might be done to make society and life more pleasant and worthwhile. It takes a hard look at some unpleasant realities, and some brutal truths about human nature.
Info/Order this book.
About The Author
Jerral Hicks, Ed.D., has taught at the public school and university levels for over thirty years. His service as a public school classroom teacher in the mid-1960s, and again in the mid-1980s, provided opportunities for first-hand observations about changes and problems in children, families, and society. His other works include Let's Get Serious About Teaching Children To Write and "He Got More Than I Did!": A Parent's Guide to Treating Children Impartially
