"Both parents and communities must be involved in the local schools. Education is too important to leave solely to a group of professional educators."
Should parents and communities participate in local education because education is too important to leave to professional educators, as the speaker asserts? It might be tempting to agree with the speaker, based on a parent's legal authority over, familiarity with, and interest in his or her own children. However, a far more compelling argument can be made that, except for major decisions such as choice of school, a child's education is best left to professional educators.
Communities of parents concerned about their children's education rely on three arguments for active parental and community participation in that process. The first argument, and the one expressed most often and vociferously, is that parents hold the ultimately legal authority to make key decisions about what and how their own children learn including choice of curriculum and text books, pace and schedule for learning, and the extent to which their child should learn alongside other children. The second argument is that only a parent can truly know the unique needs of a child including what educational choices are best suited for the child. The third argument is that parents are more motivated--by pride and ego--than any other person to take whatever measures are needed to ensure their children receive the best possible education.
Careful examination of these three arguments, however, reveals that they are specious at best. As for the first one, were we to allow parents the right to make all major decisions regarding the education of their children, many children would go with little or no education. In a perfect world parents would always make their children's education one of their highest priorities. Yet, in fact many parents do not. As for the second argument, parents are not necessarily best equipped to know what is best for their child when it comes to education. Although most parents might think they are sufficiently expert by virtue of having gone through formal education themselves, parents lack the specialized training to appreciate what pedagogical methods are most effective, what constitutes a balanced education, how developmental psychology affects a child's capacity for learning at different levels and at different stages of childhood. Professional educators, by virtue of their specialized training in these areas, are far better able to ensure that a child receives a balanced, properly paced education.
There are two additional compelling arguments against the speaker's contention. First, parents are too subjective to always know what is truly best for their children. For example, many parents try to overcome their own shortcomings and failed self-expectations vicariously through their children's accomplishments. Most of us have known parents who push their child to excel in certain areas--to the emotional and psychological detriment of the child. Secondly, if too many parties become involved in making decisions about day-to-day instruction, the end result might be infighting, legal battles, boycotts, and other protests, all of which impede the educational process; and the ultimate victims are the children themselves. Finally, in many jurisdictions parents now have the option of schooling their children at home, as long as certain state requirements are met. In my observation, home schooling allows parents who prefer it great control over a child's education, while allowing the professional educators to discharge their responsibilities as effectively as possible--unfettered by gadfly parents who constantly interfere and intervene.
In sum, while parents might seem better able and better motivated to make key decisions about their child's education, in many cases they are not. With the possible exceptions of responsible home-schoolers, a child's intellectual, social, and psychological development is at risk when communities of parents dominate the decision-making process involving education.
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