Where are the Parents? (103109) by J. F. Kelly, Jr.

A commentary by J. F. Kelly, Jr. First Lady Michelle Obama recently wrote a commentary on the importance of teachers. “America’s future lies in its teachers,” she wrote. She spoke of a shortage of good teachers in the “high-need schools that face some of the most daunting obstacles.” She is right, of course, but a shortage of good teachers is not the greatest challenge to America’s future. Even more critical, in my view, is the shortage of good parents. “Good” may not be the proper adjective. Most parents are good in the sense that they love their children and want the best for them. But as we know, the best may not necessarily be what the children want at the moment. To be more precise, we have a shortage of effective parents. Parenting skills are at an all-time low in America and the kids themselves, along with the rest of society, are paying the price. In San Diego County recently, two horrific auto accidents were caused by teen-age drivers, driving after 11:00pm, on provisional licenses, with other teens in the car and without a licensed adult present, all in violation of the law. Loss of vehicular control by the youthful, inexperienced drivers was a common factor. Death resulted in both cases and the victims were reportedly not wearing seat belts, also a violation of the law. Who knows what other distractions may have been involved? What was the parental involvement here? Did they lay down the rules regarding operation of a motor vehicle by minors? Did they insist on compliance? Each year, over 5000 teens die in car accidents. Drivers aged 16-19 are four times more likely to be involved in car accidents than any other age group. In spite of these well-publicized statistics, many parents are too quick to turn the car keys over to their children and too slow to emphasize and enforce the rules. Their own kids are special, of course. They are more mature, more responsible. They are indeed responsible; responsible for a percentage of accidents far out of proportion to their share of the population. The gruesome ritual is all too familiar. Makeshift roadside memorials shown on the evening news. Sobbing friends and parents “searching for answers”. Here are two to consider: (1) Raise the legal driving age and save lives. (Don’t hold your breath waiting for this one. What’s a few thousand lives when it comes to accommodating our kids?) (2) Enforce the rules on teen age driving which are clearly set forth in the California Driver Handbook. The fastest route to reducing teen age driving fatalities is through more parental involvement. Parents have to learn to enforce rules for the sake of everyone’s safety and stop trying so hard to be a pal to their kids. In Richmond, California, recently, a crowd of people, mostly teens, watched as a young girl was gang-raped, sodomized with a foreign object and beaten on a high school campus during a student dance. No one helped her or even, apparently, tried to get help. Some reported cheered. Some even took photos. Who raised these thugs and turned them loose on society? Where was the parental supervision that might have prevented this savagery? The U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan recently held forth on the state of teacher training, complaining that it was not producing enough good teachers. What the Secretary failed to address is why students in some demographic groups, notably Asian, do so well in the same supposedly substandard schools staffed by the same supposedly sub-par teaches. Could it be better parenting skills, more parental involvement and the values and discipline that these parents instill in their children? Frankly, I am tired of schools and teachers being scapegoated when it should be obvious to anyone with a brain that we have a larger crisis in parenting. We have an abundance of parents, many of them children themselves, who are too busy, or too lazy, or too ignorant or too clueless to do their essential part in the moral and educational development of their juvenile offspring once they grow beyond the cute, cuddly, easily-managed stage. They, far more than the teachers, who must work with what they are given, are failing their children and America’s future. Copyright 2009 by J. F. Kelly, Jr.