By Dr. Aribino Nicholas
The growth and development of children cannot be fully realised without parental involvement. One of our lecturers at the University of Zimbabwe, Reverend Rinashe used to intimate that parents are the first and natural teachers of their children. The premise of Reverend’s Rinashe’s argumentation is that parents are primary socialisation agents whose behaviours, actions or inactions can largely influence the growth and development of their children. The process of socialisation comes with values, norms, beliefs and practices that by and by are inculcated in children. Sigmund Freud, a psychoanalyst believes that the personality of a child is formed during formative years (0-5/6 years). Sigmund Freud’s characterisation of the development of personality gives credence to the import of parents in influencing the growth and development of their children. Observably, Reverend Rinashe and Sigmund Freud seem to converge on the understanding that the formative years are critical in shaping children’s personalities. It is the object of this opinion piece to argue for parental involvement in the education of their children.
Parents wield immense influence over their young children. When children are growing up, they look up to their parents as immortal, omnipotent, omnipresent and omniscient beings. For example, when a child is beaten up at play, we often hear this statement, ‘ I will report you to my father.’ This statement demonstrates what the child holds about his / her father. By inference, the child’s father is the Mike Tyson of the village, meaning that no one can beat him, hence the notion of omnipotence. As children grow up, they have faith, confidence and trust in their parents. Their impressionable minds bask in the security of the omnipresence of their parents. Given what children hold about their parents, parents therefore have a duty and obligation to impart values and norms of civility, co-existence, tolerance, positive reciprocity in communication, interactive justice, love, respect, equity, social justice and humility. These values if properly built into the personalities of children will help them fit properly into the school system. With globalisation, schools and classrooms have become multicultural sites that thrive on understanding and appreciating diversity. Parents should be seen to identify with the success goals of the schools to which they send their children and similarly schools should understand that children do not come to school as entities separate from their home, background and community. This understanding of children as having multiple belongings will assist teachers to treat them as individuals who have own cultures and identities that ought to be tolerated in the process of knowledge dissemination and distribution.
Observably, some parents want quality education for their children, but don’t want to pay for it. Often-times, schools have challenges in terms of their budgets because most parents will not have paid school fees for their children. Parental involvement is about organisational citizenship, that is a spirit of identifying with the vision, mission and core values of a school to which their children go. Parents have diverse skills-set -engineers, doctors, painters, accountants, psychologists, counsellors, musicians, artists, journalists, sculptors, carpenters, builders, footballers and comedians, among others. From this array of professions, schools can immensely benefit when these parents in their different occupations decide to offer voluntary services in areas that they are adept at. Imagine a school in the neighbourhood of Moses Chunga (footballer), having this legendary coming to train children in the domain of soccer and the school in Kapfupi’s neighbourhood having him as a resource person in music and drama. The argument above about parental involvement is as clear as a bell in advising that parental involvement is much more than just paying school fees for children.
In some countries like America there is a designated National Teacher Day for honouring teachers and recognising the lasting contributions they make to the lives of their students. On the teachers’ appreciation day, parents visit schools of their children with different gifts for teachers. Teachers in a country like Zimbabwe work like elephants but at the end of the day feed like rats and the same goes for university lecturers. They need to be motivated; motivation of teachers is critical in terms of pepping up their spirits. Imagine a child is driven to school in a Toyota Fortuner to meet a teacher who has been dropped off at the same school by a Honda Fit (Zvipipi). Sad. Arguably, growth thrives in conducive environments, one cannot expect a goose to lay golden eggs if it is not given food. Parents should appreciate that teaching has lost its touch of respect and dignity because of measly salaries, teachers’ so called ‘take home’ is no longer enough to take them home. Parents who are concerned about the education of their children should realise that achieving quality education is a function of a multi-pronged process that needs all the hands to be on deck. The welfare of teachers should not just be the concern of a government but should be equally the concern of parents. The government has competing needs, and its tax base is so lean that it cannot handsomely reward teachers. Parents through schools’ development committees and as individuals should go a stage further to investigate what they can do to spark morale into the psyche of their teachers. The same parents also should also know and appreciate that for their children to thrive at school they need a home where they feel valued and cared for, both physically and emotionally.
