Successful school year begins in the home

The start of the school year in Sikeston and elsewhere always reminds me of the massive task and challenge teachers face each and every year.

What prompted this thought process was a letter from a teacher in the South who outlined the struggles of teaching in today's society.

And by any measure, this ain't your grandma's education system.

Here's the dilemma.

Students in all grades but especially in the early years come to school with widely different backgrounds.

Some kids arise in a two-parent household, eat a good breakfast and pack their homework which they completed with the help of a parent.

They are dressed, clean and -- like a sponge -- ready to absorb the lesson of the day.

Other kids however come to school woefully unprepared.

They lack a support system at home. They are often plagued by generational poverty. And above all else, they come from a home where there is no premium placed on education.

For the parents of those students, school is a necessary process, a free day care and a process in which they hold low expectations.

And yet, into this environment, we ask teachers to educate each student in the same way with the same tools.

But the flaw is that all too often we expect equal outcomes.

Life does not guarantee equal outcomes. We should have and must have equal opportunities in our schools and elsewhere. But the resulting outcomes may vary widely.

The letter from the southern teacher addressed the challenges and struggles of attempting to prepare and implement study sessions with students of vastly different abilities.

And in the end, most of those struggles did not end well.

We put hyper-focus on the role of the teachers in our society and put little emphasis on the failure of parents or a parent to do their part.

We abandon all common sense and logic when it comes to the utopian mindset that each child can rise to a certain level of learning in the same time and fashion.

It just ain't so!

When half of classroom time is lost in trying to corral 25 or so kids into a focused environment, then the best we can hope for is half success.

But don't blame a teacher or a curriculum or a textbook. Blame a parent.

If parents would embrace education for their children and participate, this discussion would be moot.

But society has yet to design a plan that would mandate parental responsibility.

And sadly, it never will.