Quote:
Originally Posted by wdfifteen
Hard to say we "overspend." What is a good education worth?
Parents are by far the biggest influence on student success. Without parental buy-in, we can't have good educations for our children.
Agreed.
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I certainly agree what what you said about parental/guardian influence. If there's no focus on education at home, or no consequences (that a student cares about) for blowing education off, then the student's only motivation to study and learn is whatever is internal to that student.
You've got a point about education spending. We should be prepared to spend on education, but at the same time, I believe that there can be overspend (if the spending isn't smart and effective, assuming there's no bloat, fraud, etc...).
Parents need to push students to learn and do well, and the parents need to be respected by the children. I'm sure that you have parents that tell kids "you need to learn" and the kids just don't care what the parents say. What I assume is more likely is that the parents don't care if the kids learn because the parents never learned.
There are cultures where there's a strong focus on education, and whether that focus is cultures that come to mind (China and Japan immediately come to mind) or just that some parents believe that education is important and something that their kids need to do to better themselves. So "culture" the way that I'm using it could be due to ethnicity, familial group, etc...
There are cultures (whether it's based on one family or a neighborhood or whatever) where the assumption is that it doesn't matter what you do, you and your life is going to suck whether you learn or not. (maybe that's not the underlying cause, but it seems to me that must in some cases or at some level be what's going on). In those cases, if the kids get crap grades or don't even go to school, whatever, it doesn't matter.
There are people that will overcome the odds and strive or even excel on their own, but I think they are the minority. Most of the time, lack of support and peer pressure win out. So when the authority pressure and peer pressure is positive, the end is probably at least average. If it's negative then the result is probably negative.
And remember, not everyone has the ability to mentally excel to the same level. There will always be folks that struggle even if they want to learn. Some folks just don't have the capability.