Education is a fact that involves many elements: parents, family, school, media, society and students themselves. And, although I believe that we must recover the student, the child, as the main and central element in the educational process, today I want to talk about everything parents can teach their children by completing school.
With the logical exceptions that always exist in human processes, the role of parents in education is very important, so much so that they are considered to be the most important educators and from whom their children will learn more.
I do not refer to values, converting and acting in society, aspects in which I think the family is, whatever type it is, the main cell and that it is the parents (and the family in general) who transmit empathy, respect and coexistence. I'm going to refer to academic content that parents can perfectly teach children, what we all understand when we talk about learning.
Empower education
I always say that all families, when they delegate part of their children's education to academic institutions, must remain aware that No one should take away the capacity and responsibility for learning quality of their children.
I don't say that is simple. The working parents have very little time, they arrive home exhausted and, when their children start Primary, they also have to help them review the school content and, above all, help them, often with their homework. But there lots of knowledge and content that complement school books and are available to everyone.
It is clear to me, my duties are horrified. With the hours children spend in school I think it should be enough for them to learn the official contents. If that fails, it fails, the system fails. But that is another subject.
The reality is that many times it is because parents get involved and children learn what they are taught in school. If they did not study at home and did not do homework, they might not arrive. I don't like it, but it's the reality, and it reveals that academic learning in school often fails, especially when I see that home-educated children learn the same thing in half the time.
The word "empowerment", which is often used in other areas, although I am aware that it does not exist in Spanish, is a word that I think should exist in Spanish. It is very powerful. Become owner, have the power of what belongs to you. And I think education is crucial empower themselves with the education of their children.
What can parents teach their children?
There are many topics on which the family can help complement school education of their children, becoming even the main source of knowledge.
The first thing is that you have to decide to be active educators of children and not pretend that knowledge is provided only by the school. Once this decision is made, each family has to assess their deficiencies and strengths, improving what they need to improve and offering children an intense approach to the issues that their parents dominate and love.
Having a broad cultural life is important, because children learn, above all, from what they see. If parents read, attend cultural activities and are always eager to learn new things, they will assume it as normal and desirable.
But if parents limit themselves to seeing shows of poor quality and are never interested in learning new things, little can they teach their children since they do not even teach the motivation and pleasure to learn. There are things that children need to do and things that we can teach them, everything is really involved in their education and personal growth.
Yes passion and curiosity they are transmitted, the content is equally important, although the content is variable and there are so many things to learn that we can relax and let the child's interest or our own interests lead us.
In the family environment, today, they have almost infinite educational resources at our disposal and we shouldn't fear making them part of our lives, sharing them with children and dedicating part of our family leisure time to them.
On the one hand we have books at affordable prices, great libraries and surely friends with more books to complement ours. Many quality films and documentaries Even on free TV, at no additional cost, they are another element that we can include in our family educational plan, commenting on them and expanding the topics discussed.
Internet It is a wonderful source of knowledge available immediately, and its use and the necessary discernment that information is rigorous and which is no longer an essential knowledge in which we can be educators of our children. Before any topic of conversation of your interest we can search with them specialized data, videos and pages, there are many magnificent on all kinds of topics and many made by scientific and cultural institutions of great reliability.
In addition, of course, conversation and activities of daily living They offer us thousands of opportunities to complete the learning of our children by making them collaborate in daily shopping, cooking, home organization and their care and even explaining, at their level, family finances. And to schedule visits to museums, interpretation centers and archeological sites or monuments, preparing with them the contents, is another magnificent opportunity to complement your training in an active and pleasant way.
Finally, we must not forget the opportunities it offers us nature: fields, forests, beaches, sea, mountains and natural parks are places where you can learn a lot more zoology, botany and geology than in any classroom.
With this I give you an invitation and I leave some ideas for that parents can teach many things to their children by complementing the schoolSurely you also have a lot to share and we can analyze in detail each family educational environment.
