Posted on 11/11/2008 6:40:40 PM PST by reaganaut1
JERICHO, N.Y. — For school officials here, the numbers did not add up. Even as enrollment swelled to 3,200, from 2,600 a decade ago, attendance at Parent-Teacher Association meetings shriveled by half. Even as more students got accepted to Ivy League schools, turnout for the guidance department’s information nights was so anemic that counselors cajoled students to come — and bring along their parents.
Then teachers and administrators noticed something else: Jericho High School’s 90-member orchestra had become 70 percent Asian-American (the student body over all is about 30 percent Asian-American), but it still played for a mostly white audience at concerts with many empty seats.
The Chinese and Korean families that flocked to Jericho for its stellar schools shared their Jewish and Italian predecessors’ priorities on excellent education. But the new diversity of the district has revealed a cultural chasm over the meaning of parental involvement. Many of the Asian-Americans whose children now make up a third of the district’s enrollment grew up in places where parents showed up on campus only when their children were in trouble.
“They think, ‘My kids are doing well — why should I come?’ ” said Sophia Bae, 38, a Korean immigrant who shied away from P.T.A. meetings when she first moved here from Queens four years ago. Now a member of the organization, she invites other Koreans to her home and encourages them to participate in pretzel sales. “They don’t realize it’s necessary to come and join the school to understand their kids’ lives.”
...
[T]he district’s superintendent, Henry L. Grishman, sees parental involvement in all aspects of school life as critical to improving communication and helping students become emotionally well-adjusted and socially successful.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
My wife and I are Indian, and we instruct our kids in math and other subjects at home, because we think the schools are moving too slowly.
Yo no habla Ingles
You want parents? Here’s how to increase parent involvement. Just start randomly flunking about 20% of the kids.
Look, dummies, if it ain’t broke, don’t try to fix it. Leave the parents alone.
They’re just upset that they can’t play their power mind games on the people who aren’t attending.
I agree, why do parents need to come if the kids are doing fine?
That’s the flip side of not being able to get parents to help their kids who are discipline problems or failing.
Good problem to have.
This seems like an invented problem, invented by someone with too much time on their hands.
I am all in favor of parental involvement in the schools, and with their kids education. These particular parents are doing something right, if their kids are doing well in school and not getting into trouble.
That’s great. I have met more genius Indian mathematicians then I can count. I’ve met a few European-American ones too, of course. But the percentage of Indians is so high. Of course the USA imported a few hundred thousand Indian Comp. Sci engineers in the 1990s, so it’s not a normal sample.
But still! I have one friend who can do six digit square roots w/ perfect accuracy. The formulas he created for our software was amazing. (Microsoft eventually hired him.)
I’m sure it’s a lot ‘nurture’, but I think there is some ‘nature’ in there too.
Public schools = Stalinist indoctrination sausage factories.
exactly... that's what I tell my wife for my son but she has no courage...
Don’t worry - Lord Obummer will pass an executive order forcing parents into the indoctrination cages with their children.
It sucks when you can't get the suckers in your church.
Bingo! Right on! The indoctrination starts with the kids and then "trickles up" to the parents.
If parents aren’t attending the PTA, it’s because they probably don’t have the time.
If this is NY, they’re most likely moonlighting two jobs each to afford the taxes.
You, sir, are to be applauded, as is your wife! Kudos for taking the initiative on behalf of your children. The teachers who want to do the right thing are strapped to burdens of ridiculous paperwork and politically correct silliness, thanks to the bloated beached whale carcass that is the NEA.
As for parents not attending PTA—why should they, after years of being told they are superfluous anyway?
Just a guess. Maybe Parents stopped participating in PTA when they realized their voices were not being listened to. Teacher unions determine what happens in the schools, not the parents.
It’s all about the money.
The purpose of the PTA is to raise money — get the kids to sell stuff — which the parents end up buying.
The schools are underfunded, and the PTA tries to make up the difference from getting money from the parents.
You can run from the PTA, but they’ll find you and extract their pound of flesh in the form of magazine or candy sales.
Bored housewives use the PTA as their own personal source for a social life and purpose in life. I am instantly transported back in time to cliques, Bunco parties and other inane idiocies that I was glad to leave behind in the ninth grade.
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