It is fairly well accepted that dysfunctional families have a negative impact on the capacity of children to learn. Last year the Association of Teachers and Lecturers in the UK made reference to research in both Europe and the United States which showed that “family stability – or the lack of it – was an important determinant of a child’s educational outcomes.” The association went on to warn: “If we are not careful we could reach that crossover point when no matter how much we invest in education and no matter how hard schools and teachers try, they will not be able to overcome the negative impact of broken and dysfunctional families.” It should be noted that they also added poverty to the mix as representing a key factor in making children unable to learn.
This country is not lacking in examples of families afflicted by both poverty and dysfunctionality, which will have the same effect on educational outcomes here as it does elsewhere. However, it should be noted that there are additional factors putting our children at a much greater educational disadvantage than those in the UK, among them a severe shortage of qualified, conscientious teachers. Even if pupils – advantaged or disadvantaged – do attend school regularly, therefore, they may be the victims of poor, or no instruction. There is no shortage of examples of children whom the parents have dutifully sent to school every day and who have actually attended school every day, but who have emerged from the primary tops and community high schools unable to read and write.
It is not that dysfunctional families or poverty either, for that matter, are anything new in this society, but that the context in which the society attempts to educate its children has changed dramatically in other ways. A few generations ago, there were still extended families in this country all of whose members would take some responsibility for all of its children. Nowadays with massive emigration, a single mother who works twelve hours a day as a security guard, say, may have no one to whom she can entrust her children when she is not there to supervise them, and if they get into mischief, there is no one to reprimand or guide them.
A great deal has been written about absent fathers, especially in the United States, and the deleterious effects this has had on the family structure and the educational achievement of boys in particular, but in this society some decades ago, even if a mother had to contend with an absent or irresponsible father, there was invariably a male role model around to deal with errant boys. That man might even be the schoolmaster himself, who was very much regarded by all and sundry as operating in loco parentis.
Nowadays, of course, it is not just – as mentioned above – that migration has had a serious impact on family structure, but that teachers have lost their status in the community, and receive respect neither from pupils nor from parents. Where the matter of male role models for boys is concerned, few men now opt to go into teaching because the remuneration is so low, and in the view of many educationalists such as Dr Tony Sewell, formerly of Leeds University, the schools need more male teachers. He was referring to the UK, but the point undoubtedly holds good for this country as well.
Of course, education in general has lost its status as a desirable objective. It requires sustained application over many years not to mention discipline, and while the person who achieves scholarly success might be conferred with a certain amount of status, at least overseas, s/he for the most part will not be the beneficiary of great financial reward. For the male youngster liming in the street, the people who seem to have it made are the drug traders, who offer the promise of getting rich quickly. If their chosen route to ‘success’ is attended by a certain amount of risk, then it will only increase its appeal for a young teenage boy, who is at an age when he wants to take risks. The anti-social code he learns on the street, may be reinforced by some of the music to which he listens, which teaches him disrespect for women, among other things.
To get back to the example of our hypothetical single mother working twelve hours a day: she will arrive home exhausted, and while she will try her best to see that her children are clean, clothed and fed, she will have little time or energy to do much else. In any case, if her own educational background is deficient, she may also not be in a position herself to ensure school work is done or encourage her child to read a book. Her easiest route to keeping order in the house, is to sit her younger offspring in front of the television; however, if there is no control over what they watch, many of the lessons they learn will be dubious ones. The mother may conscientiously send her children off to school in their uniforms in the morning, but she will have no idea if they don’t turn up unless the school alerts her to the fact they are truanting. One wonders just how many schools keep a tight grip on their attendance registers, and systematically follow up cases of missing students.
A casual look around the streets on an average school day suggests that quite a number of school-age children do not attend school regularly, and the periodic anti-truancy campaigns conducted by the Ministry of Education in the past, suggest that the figures may be not insignificant. One suspects too, that there may even be children slipping through the bureaucratic cracks who have never attended school at all. There are certainly cases of parents who have migrated, no doubt with the intention of eventually sending for their children, but who in the meantime leave them unsupervised at home, living off the remittances they send. It is a disastrous decision, both in terms of the failure to impart a work ethic, in terms of lack of discipline, in terms of the loss of a structured family life and the contact with loving parents, and in terms of the loss of role models.
And what should the government be doing? The matter of poverty alleviation is a larger issue which we will leave aside, while no administration has much direct purchase on family dysfunctionality. The authorities have it in their power, however, to do something about truancy, and they can do it now. And the schools, of course, come directly under their purview, and where these are concerned, those in office have to bite the bullet of the teacher shortage. The equation is simple: no teachers, no education. At the bottom of the problem is remuneration; if qualified educators, including men, could be attracted back into the profession so the schools are fully and competently staffed, that would be step one. A greater professionalism in all our classrooms, instead of some of them, might also restore some kind of respect for teachers in the community.
After that, with the help of perhaps more than one ministry, schools and other agencies could work out programmes for reaching out to parents, particularly the most disadvantaged, so they can be persuaded of the importance of education for their children, and can work with teachers to ensure their children attend school and are given a better environment for learning. In the end, working to bring parents on board the educational enterprise will help to make a difference, just as it did in years gone by. It is essential that everyone is sold on the idea that education is transformational.
