March 13, 2010
I just finished reading a study titled “The 10 Billion Dollar Man”, which itemizes the annual cost to taxpayers in our United States for services extended to fatherless households. That astronomical total includes everything, from the monthly aid in real dollars a mother receives for food and non-perishables, to government-provided health insurance, to counseling a child may receive –from childhood to adulthood, resulting from the maladjustment that can occur when a child grows up without a father. The portion of the study that caught my eye was the stats outlining the poor scholastic performance by many children who live in fatherless homes. These boys and girls are more likely to become adults who work in lower paying jobs and, possibly, dependent on some of the same social services that sustained their households growing up. It doesn’t take a mental heavyweight to know that that those more thoroughly educated are in position for better paying jobs, which results in a better quality of life.
This study jives with those that show the difference in scholastic performance of those students raised by parents who are present in their children’s lives and active participants in their education, and those parents who are not. Three years after the “No Child Left Behind” legislation was enacted and curriculums implemented, studies were conducted that showed teachers can implement that curriculum until they’re blue in the face, but if the parents, the child’s first teachers, are not re-enforcing what’s done in the classroom, visiting their children’s school, and providing some type of learning opportunities in the home, their (teachers) work is a waste, easily forgotten and replaced by whatever scenes or sounds that are prevalent in the child’s social environment. In some cases, those scenes and sounds are not always good. Parents must be involved in the learning process, from reading to a child each night during those early years, to meeting with teachers and administrators to make sure a child is being intellectually stimulated and challenged in the classroom, to simply asking a child “what did you learn at school today” when they come home from school.
That is why I will use this site for, among other things, providing details, times and locations for Trenton School Board meetings and as many Parent/Teacher meetings at our city’s schools as I can learn about. I will attend some of these gatherings, to get insight from both those attending and those facilitating, and relay it to you via this space. With that, I’d like to make sure you, the parent of a student attending a Trenton Public School, and taxpayers, are aware of the next meeting of the Trenton School Board. It is Monday, March 22nd, at 7pm, at the Trenton School Board, located at 108 North Clinton Avenue. Please try to attend so you may be informed and involved.
Skip Harrison is an educator, freelance journalist and parent who resides in Trenton, New Jersey.
