False Conflicts: The Achilles heel of American debate

 

In 2011, Kelli Stargel, a Republican Florida state representative, wrote a bill that required public school teachers to grade parents of students in kindergarten through the third grade. According to Stargel, there was accountability for students, teachers, and administrators, but parent accountability was the missing link.  A parent grade of “satisfactory”, “unsatisfactory”, or “needs improvement” was proposed to go along with student report cards.

Steve Perry, the founder of Capital Preparatory Magnet School in Hartford, Connecticut, didn’t care for the bill. He said a good education was based on what a child learns in the classroom and not what a parent might know. Perry also said, “There is nothing in any teacher’s training that would put them in a position to be able to effectively judge the parenting of one of their students.”

Perry was right. The bill didn’t pass.

Since politicians are rarely proactive, what exactly was Stargel’s bill an overreaction too?

That same year, Psychology Today published an essay called: A Lack of Parent Engagement Helps Create Failing Schools. The author wrote, “For the first time in history, a generation of American students will be less well-educated than their parents. Teachers are getting the blame [but] not much is being said about disengaged parents.”

The 1996 book, Beyond the Classroom: Why School Reform Has Failed and What Parents Need to Do, had some disturbing data that remained constant 15 years after it was published.

1). Nearly one-third of students say their parents have no idea how they are doing in school.

2). About one-sixth of students report that their parents don’t care whether they make good grades in school or not.

3). Only about one-fifth of parents consistently attend school programs, while more than 40 percent never do.

It was easy for Stargel to take this data and translate “disengaged parents” into “bad parents”.

However, studies published in 2009 and 2010 explained there were barriers to parent involvement such as inflexible work hours, insufficient financial resources, and lack of transportation. Other barriers included feelings of inadequacy, limited school background, and preoccupation with basic necessities.

This proved “disengaged parents” shouldn’t be translated into “bad parents”.

But the Psychology Today essay about failing schools asked: Who was more at fault, teachers or parents?

This question demonstrates the Achilles heel of debate in America. It’s dominated by false conflicts, two sides placed in opposition that ordinarily wouldn’t have friction. For example, during the 1990s parenting magazines debated spanking vs. timeout. Parents took sides, but once the sides were taken, neither side could see that it was a false conflict, nor were the side takers willing to accept that the other side had utility.

A decade after Stargel’s failed bill and Psychology Today presented the public with a false conflict between parents and teachers, it appears the political parties have taken sides in a false conflict between parents and school boards.

The instigators of this false conflict were Virginia’s gubernatorial candidates.

During their final debate, Republican candidate Glenn Youngkin remarked that parents should be more involved in the decision of local school districts. In response, the Democratic candidate, Terry McAuliffe, argued that parents should not tell schools what to teach.

Both positions made national headlines, and partisans took their respective sides.

Then the USA/Suffolk poll asked voters, “Should parents or school boards have more of an influence on a school’s curriculum?” Overall, 50 percent answered parents while 39 percent answered school boards. But the breakdown by political party reveals the Achilles heel in American debate. The Republican side was 79 percent to 12 percent in favor of parents, while the Democratic side was 70 percent to 16 percent in favor of the school boards.

It’s a fact that elections have consequences. So does taking sides in false conflicts.

First published in the New Pittsburgh Courier 11/3/21