Asking the wrong questions

I am sure many of you are aware of the issues we have in our education system. “The most recent PISA results, from 2015, placed the U.S. an unimpressive 38th out of 71 countries in math and 24th in science.” (http://www.pewresearch.org). These numbers fail to encourage the average parent or I expect most anyone else. But what is the problem?

Many of my friends and I have been discussing this issue for the last couple of years and while we have come up with some reasonable answers and interesting solutions I am not sure we have been asking the correct questions. Yes the educational system is broken. Yes the teachers are struggling. But what is the true issue?

After attending yet again another meeting for the parents I noticed something I missed last time. Out of a possible 250 families who were invited to the meeting only around 14% attended. Of these 14% not many were actually listening, which was made evident by the questions asked after the talk. The reality I missed last time is that these are the parents that care about their children. Now it is true there are a very large amount of reasons people would not be able to attend. But please remember we make time for what matters, we always have.

Is the real problem with the educational system the parents? If so this would result in many of the problems we see in our schools that are the issues our teachers and administrators take time and effort dealing with instead of taking that time and effort teaching. Clinton said “it takes a village to raise a child”. No. It takes a parent to raise a child. We have clearly proven a village fails quite miserably. I am beginning to believe that we have very few parents left.

So perhaps the question we need to be asking is not “How do we fix our schools” but instead asking a much more difficult one, “How do we fix the lack of parents?”

Please feel free to disagree, I would love to be wrong. I just do not think I am.